Stiffkitten blog
26 April 2012
The democratic
movement that cried wolf
Messages proclaiming the final days of king Mswati’s
absolute monarchy in Swaziland, or the revolutionary uprising of thousands of
Swazis, have been conveyed many times by individuals and organisations within
Swaziland’s democratic movement.
Here are a few examples from the past year:
“The people of Swaziland are convinced that no muti or
ritual will ever stop the tide of the revolution. The year 2012 will be the
year that king Mswati’s dictatorship finally ends and a new democratic
dispensation takes its place.” (Swaziland Solidarity Network statement, December 2011).
“They should prepare to govern. Tinkundla, or whatever
this royal mess is called, is well and truly over. Come April 12 we will be
sweeping its remains off our country.” (Swazi April 12
Uprising statement, April 2011).
“PUDEMO proclaims the final days of the Tinkundla
supremacists.” (PUDEMO
statement, April 2012)
What such messages all have in common is that they turn
out to be disappointingly far from the truth, that they therefore create false
expectations, both inside and outside Swaziland, and that the discrepancy
between the predictions and the outcome of the actual protest action reflects
poorly on the democratic movement at large – regardless of the fact that much
of the democratic movement has for decades worked vigorously and bravely to try
and convince the majority of Swazis to stand up and demand democracy and economic
justice.
According to Dumezweni Dlamini from the Swazi NGO, Foundation for Socio-Economic Justice, the more boisterous
part of the democratic movement needs to talk less and act more. “Can we spare
the talk and let actions speak more. We are making a lot of noise without
action so that it’s so noisy that we cannot even hear what we are saying
ourselves.”
And all this in turn leads to apathy amongst Swazi’s
otherwise willing to demand democratisation and to foreign newspapers not
bothering to run stories about the ‘Swazi Uprising.’
“The April 12 Uprising Facebook group led people outside
Swaziland to believe that there was a real demand, not only for change, but for
revolutionary change in the kingdom,” says Richard Rooney, a journalist and
former University of Swaziland associate professor, as well as currently being
one of the best sources of continuous and uncensored news about Swaziland
through his Swazi
Media Commentary.
“I had many contacts from the international media at this
time [April 2011] who genuinely believed there was to be a revolution in
Swaziland. Many came to Swaziland for the event and were bitterly disappointed
that nothing happened. There was no ‘uprising’, nor anything close to it. This
year the media by and large stayed away on April 12, I believe because
(correctly as it turned out) they didn’t expect much to happen. It will be very
difficult to convince them in the future that people Swaziland are serious
about protesting for change.”
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