The Swaziland Government proposal
to set up its own national airline to use at the kingdom’s proposed Sikhuphe
Airport is a waste of time and money.
It is estimated a single aircraft for the airline would
cost E700 million (US$70 million). This compares to the E125 million budgeted
for free primary school education in Swaziland this year.
Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority (SWACAA) says it needs
to set up its own national airline to encourage international airlines to use
the airport, which is being built 80km from the kingdom’s capital, Mbabane.
Sikhuphe is an on-going project to build an
‘international airport’ in the wilderness in Swaziland. Since the idea for the
airport was first raised by King Mswati, who rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch, more than 10 years ago independent observers have called it a
waste of resources.
In 2003, the International Monetary Fund said it should not be built
because it would divert funds away from much needed projects to fight
poverty in Swaziland. About seven in ten of King Mswati’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.
Solomon Dube, Director of SWACAA was reported by local media
saying Swaziland needed a national airline because every time he went abroad to
market the new airport, ‘reputable airlines’ demanded that the kingdom should
have a national airline which would ferry, on-transit passengers.
He said they wanted to buy a 90- to 100-seater jet that would
cost around E700 million.
The Times
Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, reported Dube saying big
airliners agreed ‘in principle’ to bring passengers to Swaziland but wanted to
know if these passengers would not be stuck in the kingdom.
‘They all demand that we have a national airline that
will transport the many passengers they would be transporting from all over the
world to Southern Africa,’ he said.
‘They want us to distribute passengers from Europe to Sikhuphe Airport if they are travelling to places like Zimbabwe and Botswana for example,’ he said.
‘They tell us that they do not want their important passengers to be stranded in a Third World country and, therefore, if we want them to use our airport, we should also have a national airline which they would work with.’
Dube did not reveal how many aircraft would be needed to fulfil
this role.
Dube and the Swazi Government have forgotten one
important point. The only reason passengers would fly to Swaziland was because
they kingdom was their final destination. If they wanted to go to some other
country in southern Africa they would fly into airports in neighbouring South
Africa and take already existing routes to their intended destination.
So, setting up a national airline for Swaziland would
have no effect on that.
Dube has made a number of unsustainable statements in an
attempt to ‘talk-up’ the airport and its usefulness.
Last month (October 2013) he claimed SWACAA had targeted
small and medium business travellers to use the airport. He said low-cost
airlines were interested in using Sikhuphe for business travellers who might
want to fly to nearby countries ‘on a daily basis’.
It was, of course, fanciful, since there is an existing airport
at Matsapha and if there was such a market it would already be met.
Dube insisted last month that Sikhuphe would be operational
by the end of October 2013, but there are no signs that it is. To date no
international airline has announced it intends to use Sikhuphe when it
eventually opens.
See also
KING’S VANITY COMES BEFORE THE POOR
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