The Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland that ought to know better, gave space yesterday (1 August 2010) for a letter writer to crow that the Tinkhundla system of government (undemocratic, all political parties banned, ruled over by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch) in Swaziland was gathering support from all over the world.
The evidence for this? Someone has set up a site on the Internet site Facebook and it has 122 members and ‘the number keeps growing’.
This the Times Sunday erroneously stated gives one ‘food for thought’ and asked readers for their comments.
Well here’s one. The Facebook site for the Swaziland Solidarity Network, which is ‘an open forum for everyone interested in seeing Swaziland, Afrika’'s last absolute monarchy, evolve freely into a democratic society’ has 1,699 members – that’s nearly 14 times as many people in favour of multiparty democracy than against it.
Also, the Facebook site for the Swaziland Democracy Campaign for democracy in the kingdom has 565 members (at least four times the Tinkhundla site).
I look forward to next week’s Times Sunday giving as much space to that as it did to the sad apologists for King Mswati’s corrupt regime.
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