Accusations
of corruption surrounding the Sikhuphe International Airport project in Swaziland have surfaced after
state documents relating to contracts disappeared.
Sikhuphe is the airport, dubbed by critics a vanity
project for King Mswati III, which was due to open in June 2010, but has still
not.
The Times
of Swaziland, the only independent
daily newspaper in Swaziland, where King Mswati rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch, reported that documents relating to contracts at the airport disappeared
from the office of the Legal
Advisor to the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development.
The Times called the documents ‘sensitive’
and the disappearance ‘corruption’.
It said, ‘It
doesn’t take a particularly brilliant mind to figure out that an audit must be
coming down soon and the documents were spirited away. That is the only
explanation for confidential state documents being removed from an office
without lawful authority, which is what the custodian of those documents,
Phesheya Dlamini, claims.
‘This is a red flag
that there is rot within the Sikhuphe project that requires an immediate
investigation from the Anti-Corruption Commission. Billions have gone into this
airport and it is still non-operational. What more proof do we need that events
have gone very wrong there?’
The newspaper did not give the background to the Sikhuphe
project, because it involves King Mswati and in Swaziland the media never
criticise him. The king has been the leading force behind the airport which is
being built in a wilderness in eastern Swaziland, about 80km from the kingdom’s
capital, Mbabane
The Sikhuphe project started in 2003 and is part of the king’s
attempt to show that his impoverished kingdom is close to attaining what he
calls ‘first world status’. No needs analysis on the airport was ever
undertaken and in the decade since no
airline outside of Swaziland has signed contracts to use it when it
eventually opens. Only Swazi Airlink, which is run in partnership with the
government, has said it will use Sikhuphe.
In 2003, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) said building the airport was a waste of
resources that could be better used on pro-poor development projects. About
seven in ten of the king’s 1.3 million subjects live in abject poverty, earning
less than US$2 per day.
Meanwhile, the king has a
lavish lifestyle, including a personal fortune, once estimated by Forbes magazine to be US$200 million, 13
palaces, a private jet and fleets of top-of-the range Mercedes and BMW cars.
It is impossible to get an accurate estimate on how much the
airport has cost so far. In June 2013 the South African Mail
and Guardian newspaper put the bill
at E2.6 billion (US$26 million), which the newspaper estimated was 20 percent
of Swaziland’s annual national budget.
In 2010, the Swazi
Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by the king, estimated
the cost at US$1 billion (E10 billion), but gave no breakdown of how that
figure was arrived at.
The Sikhuphe project has been the subject of much
misinformation from the king, the government he hand picks, and civil aviation
officials in Swaziland.
They regularly
announce new deadlines for completion and opening of the airport, but these
dates come and go and Sikhuphe remains unfinished. No explanations for the
missed deadlines are usually given. When they are they often relate to claims
that ‘bad weather’ hampered construction work.
The Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority (SWACAA) has projected
300,000 passengers will use the airport each year, raising E7 million
(US$700,000) per year in service charges. Although SWACAA did not say so, this
equates to only 822 passengers on average per day. Swaziland at present has an
airport at Matsapha, close to the main cities of Mbabane and Manzini, but it
only manages to attract about 70,000 passengers a year.
Critics of Sikhuphe have argued for years that there is no
potential for the airport. Major airports already exist less than an hour’s
flying time away in South Africa with connecting routes to Swaziland and there
is no reason to suspect passengers would want to use the airport at Sikhuphe as
an alternative.
The Times is not
the only newspaper to allege corruption at Sikhuphe. In June 2013, the Mail and Guardian reported on two
confidential technical reports by engineer Derrick Dlamini alleging that
there were major structural defects in the airport’s concrete apron and ‘that
it is unfit for use by large commercial aircraft’.
The newspaper also said that there might be ‘widespread
fraud and other irregularities’ at the airport, but did not give details.
See also
DOUBTS OVER PROSPECTS FOR AIRPORT
PROOF: KING’S AIRPORT POINTLESS
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