The Times Sunday
newspaper in Swaziland has been caught out censoring one of its regular writers
because he made mild criticisms of King Sobhuza II, the father of the kingdom’s
present autocratic king.
Musa Hlophe, who is the coordinator of the Swaziland Coalition
of Concerned Civic Organisations, a prodemocracy group, was commenting on the
40th anniversary of King Sobhuza’s proclamation in 1973 that ushered in a state
of emergency into the kingdom that has never been completely rescinded. The
anniversary is on 12 April.
But, the fact that his original article was censored by
the newspaper has been revealed on social media sites across Africa.
Hlophe , who writes each week for the newspaper, wrote
that this proclamation has led directly to the present situation in Swaziland.
Today. King Mswati III rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch and
the governments appointed by the king silence discussion and debate.
Here is part of what Holphe originally wrote before the
censors took a hand. Some of the text was altered by the newspaper’s editors to
minimize criticism of the king. Other parts of the text were cut out altogether.
‘In 1973, His Majesty, declared a state of emergency that
has never been openly repealed. He set
up an army that is only capable of threatening or harming its own people.
‘Worst of all, he set in motion a series of events that
has led to Swaziland being among the sickest, the poorest, the most corrupt and
the unhappiest nations in the world. Swaziland
is no longer a place of African heritage and pride, it is now a place that most
other Africans either pity or scorn.
‘Of course that was not his plan.
‘I believe that he thought that he had the best interests
of the nation at heart.
‘As the Father of the Nation, he felt could not allow us
to descend into the open conflict and civil war that he saw breaking out across
the continent at that time.
‘He thought that he knew best for all of us.
‘I am afraid that, like everyone else who spends more
time being revered, rather than challenged, he was wrong.
‘In trying to prevent the completely imagined threat of a
deadly internal war, he also stopped the possibility of the discussions that
could have brought the nation to peaceful, wealthy, happiness.
‘His declaration was not a way to bring our nation
together under one common vision but an attempt to say that people who to
publicly disagreed with him, could, should, and would, be silenced.
‘His basic aim was to stop people coming together to
discuss and debate ideas. He wanted to
maintain the Swazi custom of us talking as lowly individuals to the
powerful. That way he could stop us
forming organised oppositions.
‘But, in our Swazi culture we say “a chief is a chief
because of his people.” This means that
a chief should listen. In April 1973
King Sobhuza slit the throat of that idea.
It took a while to die, but die it surely did.
‘Look at the conflicts that are now arising in the very
heart of our culture - our chieftaincies. I read recently that there are over one
hundred chieftaincy disputes now in Swaziland. That is nearly one in three!
‘We used to have a settled way of appointing chiefs,
based on family discussions, community dialogues and mutual respect between
communities and the higher authorities.
Now that we have moved the powers of appointment from the communities to
those authorities, we have exactly the type of conflicts that King Sobhuza II
was trying to prevent. We can now see
that his proclamation in 1973 actually caused them.’
Holphe also wrote, ‘Even though the traditional
authorities and the government have tried to stop ordinary Swazis speaking,
they cannot stop us feeling or thinking.
‘I, and the people that I work with, have spent hundreds
of hours working with normal people on the ground, mainly in rural areas of
Swaziland. What we hear is that people
are not only unhappy but they are now angry. People also know where the real
causes of their problems lie, in the waste, the greed and the arrogance of the
powerful.’
See also
‘THE FAILURE OF SWAZI POLITICS’
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-failure-of-swazi-politics.html
No comments:
Post a Comment