Swaziland’s Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini is too blinkered
to have seen the irony when last week he told newspaper editors that the Swazi
people had made it clear they were happy with the political situation in the kingdom and then days later the police, acting without a court
order, stopped a public debate taking place on the same subject, declaring it
was a threat to national security.
Dlamini was commenting on the forthcoming national
election in Swaziland where political parties are banned. In recent months
there has been an increasingly vocal campaign in the kingdom to boycott the
election unless parties are allowed to take part.
The PM told a meeting of editors that the people had been
asked a number of times whether they wanted to change from the present system.
For the past 40 years Swaziland has been under the rule of an autocratic
monarchy. In 1973 King Sobhuza II made a Royal decree that junked the
Constitution and allowed himself to make any laws or change existing ones as he
saw fit.
The decree has not been rescinded since and today his son
King Mswati III rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
Dlamini is entirely wrong when he asserts that the people
of Swaziland have given their support to the current political system. In fact
they have never been asked.
The closest the kingdom’s rulers got to asking the
question was in the ten years running up to the writing of what is known as the
2005 Swaziland Constitution. But the
authorities had so little confidence that people would support the status quo
that they did not allow them to discuss in any meaningful way what should be in
the constitution.
The only submissions that were allowed on the subject had
to come from individual people expressing personal opinions. NGOs, professors
from universities, research groups or any collection of people who might have
had expertise on constitutional matters or the political and economic situation
pertaining in Swaziland were barred.
The consultation was so flawed that the International BarAssociation (IBA), a group of experienced lawyers called in by King Mswati to
comment on the first draft of the constitution, called the process ‘flawed’ and
reported that one critic went so far as to call it a ‘fraud’.
The IBA pointed out that the judiciary and non-government
organisations (NGOs) were not allowed to take part in the consultation. Also,
individuals were interviewed in front of their chiefs so were not free to say
what they really thought about the powers of the king and what he and his
followers like to call Swaziland’s ‘unique democracy’, the Tinkhundla system.
IBA said the consultation did not allow for groups to
make submissions and incomplete records were kept of the submissions that were
made so, IBA said, there was no formal record of how Swazi citizens presented
their views and of what in fact they said.
On top of this the IBA reported that the Swaziland media were not allowed to report on the submissions.
‘Furthermore, information was elicited in a highly charged atmosphere. Individuals were reportedly asked, in the presence of chiefs, whether they wanted to retain the King and whether they preferred political parties,’ IBA said.
Under these circumstances it is obvious why the people said they wanted to keep the existing system.
So, we must not allow the king and the unelected Prime
Minister he personally chose to claim that the people have made it clear they are
happy with things the way they are.
See also
POLICE BAN DEMOCRACY MEETING
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