People in rural Swaziland are about to die of hunger, a newspaper
in the kingdom has reported.
The Swazi Observer
visited the village of KaMbhoke in the Shiselweni region and described it as a ‘valley
of death’.
Rains have been scarce this season and crops have failed
and now, the newspaper reported, food has run out.
The newspaper reported one unnamed elderly woman saying, ‘We
are starving, literally starving my child. Just like most of the kitchens in
this community right now, there is absolutely no food.’
The newspaper also quoted Simon Mdluli, the locally
elected representative of the area, saying, ‘Somebody is really going to die.’ He
said people in the area had nothing to put on their table.
The newspaper described the whole area as ‘poverty
stricken.’
Mdluli told the Observer,
‘Everybody is calling me to their homes just to watch helplessly as their loved
ones, especially children and those on retroviral treatment [for HIV] reel in
pain because of hunger.’
People in KaMbhoke had in the past received rice from Taiwan
as part of the international food aid, but this had now been used up.
Poverty and hunger is widespread in Swaziland where seven
in ten of the 1.3 million population earn less than US$2 per day.
The extent of near-starvation in the kingdom is unknown.
It is rare for news media in Swaziland to visit rural areas to investigate.
International media are also ignorant of the true extent
of hunger in Swaziland. They rarely report on the kingdom and when they do they
tend to concentrate on stories of the fabulous wealth of King Mswati III, who
rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. The King has a personal
fortune estimated by Forbes magazine to
be US$200 million. While his subjects exist in abject poverty he has 13
palaces, a private jet and fleets of top-of-the range BMW and Mercedes cars.
Last month (January 2014) it was reported that the King
was extending
one of his palaces and homes and a school would have to be demolished to
accommodate it. He is also reported to be building an underground bunker.
In a New
Year message to his subjects, King Mswati said that ‘hard work and prayer’
would solve hunger in his kingdom.
In January 2013,the Swaziland Vulnerability Assessment
Committee in
a report predicted a total of 115,712 people (one in ten of the population)
in Swaziland would go hungry in 2013 as the kingdom struggled to feed its
population as the economy remained in the doldrums.
The report said problems with the Swazi economy were
major factors. The kingdom was too dependent on food imports and because of
high price inflation in Swaziland people could not afford to buy food.
This was not an isolated statement. In 2012, three
separate reports from the World Economic Forum, United Nations and the
Institute for Security Studies all concluded the Swazi Government was largely
to blame for the economic recession and subsequent increasing number of Swazis
who had to skip meals.
See also
HUNGER IS FAULT OF GOVERNMENT
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