Barnabas Dlamini, the illegally-appointed Prime Minister of Swaziland, has vowed to get the Facebooker who has published reports about his alleged illegitimate child on the Internet.
Well actually, Dlamini didn’t reveal that last part. He just said that ‘Gangada Masilela’ who set up the Facebook site Umgosi Eswatini the Real Staff, the return would be caught and punished.
The Prime Minister was responding to the growing concern among Swaziland senators that Swazi people were publishing material on the Internet that was critical of the ruling elite.
Masilela’s Facebook site specialises in publishing material about the private lives of people in power.
In the past week there have been reports all over the Internet that the Prime Minister has an illegitimate child that stays with its mother in Siteki in the Lowveld that the PM refuses to maintain.
It is further reported that the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, has been tipped off about the child and has photographs. The paper, which is running a campaign against Dlamini at present, was said to be considering publication but did not.
Dlamini told the Swazi Senate it would not be long before Masilela was exposed and there was ‘no safe haven from the full force of the law’.
The Observer reported today (25 March 2011) that Senator Moi Moi Masilela complained that Gangadza Masilela ‘was always posting stories on the social site that tarnished the image of the country’.
The senator said someone showed him the disturbing statements posted by Gangadza and after reading them he felt there was a need to nail him. He did not say what these statements were, but it is a fair assumption they were the reports about the Prime Minister’s sex life.
The PM yesterday said Gangadza should not have confidence in himself because he would be brought to book
‘Angatetsembi. We will get this person,’ said the PM.
The PM told senators that sites like Facebook were not controlled in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, stating that this was the downsides that came with technology.
The PM’s vow to get Gangadza Masilela is in direct conflict with his statement, also made yesterday and published in the Swaziland media, that the government would not respond to comments made on social network sites because ‘it was not its policy to respond to every gratuitous comment appearing in these sites and by anonymous people’.
Clearly, there is one ‘policy’ for comments made about King Mswati and another when it’s Prime Minister Dlamini in the spotlight.
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