A new report
shows Swaziland spent about US$112 million on the military in 2013 and US$478
million over the past four years.
In 2013 military spending
amounted to 8.6 percent of all government, spending in Swaziland, according to
the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its Military Expenditure
Database for 2014.
King Mswati III, who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s
last absolute monarch, and the government he handpicks, refuse to publicly
discuss military spending citing ‘national security’ issues as an excuse.
Swaziland is a tiny landlocked kingdom with a population of 1.3 million
people and is not at war and there are no potential enemies at the borders
ready to invade. Swaziland’s international obligations in the military arena
are few, and Swazi troops are not expected to be deployed abroad anytime soon.
Despite the
reluctance of the King and Government to discuss military spending it is
possible to piece together a picture of what might be behind the large
spending.
In 2011, the Swazi Government set aside more than E1 billion (US$100 million)
for spending on the army and police force and the then Finance Minister Majozi
Sithole admitted
that the army was prepared for an uprising by the population in Swaziland.
This followed a series of prodemocracy uprisings in North Africa,
leading to what became known as the ‘Arab Spring’. King Mswati was fearful
something similar could happen in his kingdom.
A Facebook group calling itself the April 12 Uprising had already called
for an overthrow of the King.
In February 2011, Sithole told an open stakeholder dialogue on the 2011-2012 budget and Fiscal Adjustment
Roadmap, ‘Yes, we are spending a lot on the army but we are not anticipating
what is happening in North Africa to come here,’ he said.
He added, ‘However,
the army is there to avoid such situations.’
Sithole was responding to a question about why so much money was being
spent on the army and police – the total budget for Swaziland in the year was
only E10.7 billion. The budget for the army and police was the equivalent of
about half the national budget deficit (E2.243 billion for the 2011/12 fiscal year).
In 2009, the Swazi
Government was revealed to be engaged in arms dealing by the United States. A
diplomatic cable written by Maurice Parker, the then US Ambassador to Swaziland,
and later published by WikiLeaks revealed that the UK Government had blocked an
arms deal between a UK company Unionlet and the Swaziland Government because it
feared their ‘possible use for
internal repression’.
The Swazi Government wanted to buy equipment worth US$60 million.
Among items listed for purchase were, ‘3 Bell Model UH-1H helicopters, FN Herstal 7.6251mm Minimi light machine
guns, blank and tracer ammunition, armored personnel carriers, command and
control vehicles including one fitted with a 12.7x99mm M2 Browning heavy
machine gun and others fitted with the FN Herstal light machine guns, military
ambulances, armored repair and recovery vehicles, weapon sights, military image
intensifier equipment, optical target surveillance equipment, 620 Heckler &
Koch G36E assault rifles, 240 Heckler & Koch G36K assault rifles, 65
Heckler & Koch G36E rifles, 75 Heckler & Koch UMP submachine guns
9x19mm, and 35 Heckler & Koch USP semi-automatic pistols’.
The Swaziland
Government said it wanted the items to fulfil its United Nations ‘peacekeeping’
obligations in Africa.
The UK Government
did not believe it and thought either the weapons would be used against the
Swazi civilian population, or they were being bought in order to sell on to
another country, possibly Iran. The UK Government blocked the deal.
In his diplomatic
cable, Parker said, ‘The array of weapons requested would not be needed for the
first phases of peacekeeping, although it is possible someone tried to convince
the Swazi government they were required. The GKOS [Government of the Kingdom of
Swaziland] may have been attempting to build up domestic capability to deal
with unrest, or was possibly acting as an intermediary for a third party such
as Zimbabwe or a Middle Eastern country that had cash, diamonds or goods to
trade.’
The Guardian
newspaper in the United Kingdom, which first broke the story, reported at
the time, Swaziland had a poor human rights record which was criticised by the
US state department in its 2009 report (the year the deal was to have taken
place).
‘Government agents
continued to commit or condone serious abuses, and the human rights situation
in the country deteriorated. Human rights problems included inability of
citizens to change their government; extrajudicial killings by security forces;
mob killings; police use of torture, beatings, and excessive force on
detainees,’ the report said.
In the months
before the attempted arms sale, Swaziland's government declared the People’s
United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) the main opposition political party a
terrorist organisation, and arrested its leader, Mario Masuku.
Once the cable
became public in 2011, John Kunene, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of
Defence, who signed
the original deal in 2008, said the kingdom had never given up trying to
buy the weapons.
The Swazi News,
an independent newspaper in Swaziland, reported (26 February 2011) that Kunene
was still
trying to broker a deal.
In March 2011 Lutfo
Dlamini, who was then Minister of Defence, denied the Wikileaks report and, according to a report in the Times of Swaziland, told
the Swazi Senate there was at no stage where the country spoke of
purchasing guns.
The Swazi
Observer reported him saying, ‘We never bought any guns anywhere and never
spent E429 million. The information leaked was misleading, it was written by
someone who had his own agendas.’
Clearly, Lutfo
Dlamini was not telling the truth since Kunene had already confirmed that he
was still trying to broker the deal.
In March 2011
Kunene was sacked
from his job after a disclosure that the Umbutfu Swaziland Defence Force
(the army) had run out of food to feed its soldiers.
A month after the
Wikleaks revelation about possible arms sales to the Middle East, the AFP news
agency reported Swaziland was importing
two containers of firearms through a Mozambican port.
AFP quoted
Mozambican state daily newspaper Noticias
as its source. It reported the arms arrived in Maputo, the Mozambican capital,
on a Panamanian vessel on 28 February 2011 from an unspecified country.
See also
ARMS SHIPMENT HEADS TO SWAZILAND
POLICE CONFIRM ARMS SHIPMENT
OUTRAGE OVER
SWAZI ARMS SHIPMENT
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