Hillary, along with the then (and present) Prime Minster Barnabas Dlamini, was at the centre of events in 2002 that led to Swaziland’s last major judicial crisis. At that time the entire bench of six Court of Appeal judges resigned in protest.
Hillary defied
a court order that he be jailed for contempt of court
and then challenged any police officer to try to arrest him.
The Swaziland High Court had found Hillary guilty of
defying repeated court orders to allow a group of evicted people to return to
their homes at the villages of Macetjeni and KaMkweli.
Hillary was charged along with Lubombo regional
police commander Agrippa Khumalo.
The South
Africa Press Association reported at the time that the saga
started in 2000 when Swaziland's King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch, appointed a new chief, Prince Maguga, to the area where the
villagers lived. Two acting chiefs in the area refused to pay Maguga any
allegiance, and the situation devolved into bloody fights between pro- and
anti-Maguga factions. Eventually the police were called in to restore order and
to force the rebels to leave the villages.
The rebels were later offered the opportunity to go
back, on condition that they recognised the new chief. They refused, and
successfully applied for a court order to allow them to return.
The Court of Appeal upheld the ruling of the High
Court against the government and police commissioner. The Court of Appeal also
confirmed that the order of immediate committal to prison of the police
officials concerned was justified, in view of their persistent and flagrant
disregard for the Court judgments.
Amnesty
International reported, ‘The Commissioner [Hillary]
himself was openly defiant and was reported to have declared that “only God can
issue instructions for [his] arrest”’.
Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini said in late
November 2002 that government would ignore the Court of Appeal ruling over
Hillary because it overturned King Mswati’s power to issue laws by decree,
thereby bypassing parliament.
He said on state-controlled radio, ‘The effect of
the Court of Appeal’s judgments would be to strip the King of some of his
powers, and the government is not prepared to sit idle and allow judges to take
from the King’s powers which were granted to him by the Swazi nation.’
He added, ‘The
government does not accept the judgment of the Court of Appeal in respect of
the actions of the commissioner of police and his officers who acted properly
and in accordance with Swazi Law and Custom.’
Six South African judges on loan to Swaziland who
made up the kingdom’s highest judicial body, the Court of Appeal, resigned en
masse to protest the Swazi Government’s decision to ignore their rulings.
The Council of Swaziland Churches in
a statement released at the time said it feared
anarchy in the kingdom, and expressed ‘greatest disappointment at the blatant
abuse and disregard for the rule of law by the government’.
An unnamed Swazi attorney and Law Society member
told the IPS
news agency, ‘It would appear that the palace does
not understand the role of the courts, that they don’t exist as mere advisory
bodies to the King, as parliament and cabinet does, but they make independent
rulings based on law. In a monarchy, the King’s decision is the law.’
See also
SWAZI
MINISTER OF JUSTICE ARRESTED
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2015/04/swazi-minister-of-justice-arrested.html
No comments:
Post a Comment