This report is from the Associated Press news agency and quotes a trades union leader describing Swaziland as a ‘military state’. It is circulating around the world this weekend and will probably appear in hundreds of newspapers and other media outlets before it finishes.
Last weekend, the AP reported how Swazi teachers were preparing to mobilize mass action against the government, it too appeared allover the world.
Swaziland nurses strike, closing public hospitals
Associated Press
12 March 2011
MANZINI, Swaziland—A Swaziland union official says public hospitals closed for three days this week after nurses went on strike in the country with the highest rate of HIV in the world.
Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union spokesman Sibusiso Lushaba said Saturday that the strike for overtime wages would resume next week. He says police armed with rifles and batons tried to stop 400 peacefully marching nurses from protesting Monday and Tuesday ahead of the strike that began Wednesday.
Lushaba called the small southern African nation a ‘military state,’ saying nurses could only march with government permission. Swaziland is Africa's last absolute monarchy.
Some 185,000 of Swaziland's 1 million people are HIV positive, and 30,000 are receiving antiretroviral drugs.
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