The Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) said in a statement,
‘Reliable sources within the kingdom have informed our network that the company
flatly refused to yield to Mswati’s demand and would rather leave.’
It added, ‘If he does not back down from this demand
Coca-Cola will be forced to relocate its operations to another country, a move
that will be catastrophic for economy of the tiny impoverished kingdom and will
lead to the loss of many jobs.’
It added this would worsen ‘an already desperate
situation for Swazi workers’ as many of them became unemployed when the kingdom
lost beneficial trading rights with the United States under the Africa Growth Opportunities
Act (AGOA). This was because King Mswati, who is sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch, refused to allow democratic reforms in Swaziland.
Swaziland supplies
the Coca-Cola concentrate (the sugary syrup the drink is made from) to most
of Africa, big parts of Asia and all of Australia and New Zealand from its
industrial plant in Matsapha.
Swaziland has been mortgaged to Coca-Cola (trading
as Conco Swaziland) ever
since it allowed the company to use it in its fight against workers’ interests
in other countries. In 2009, Coca-Cola closed its concentrate supply plant in
Nigeria, citing an ‘unfriendly manufacturing environment’ in that country. It had made ‘little profits because of the high
manufacturing costs’.
Coca-Cola also has an impact on the international
standing of Swaziland’s economy. The money
generated by Coca-Cola is what largely accounts for the kingdom being
classified as a ‘lower-middle income developing country’ (and therefore not
eligible for certain types of international aid), even though seven in ten of Swaziland’s
one-million population live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2 a day.
Peter Kenworthy, of
Africa Contact, writing in 2011, said, ‘The real point, though, is that
Coca-Cola is probably in Swaziland because it is a dictatorship that oppresses
its unions and population. This allows wages to be kept low and unemployment
high.’
Kenworthy visited one of the sugar cane fields in
Eastern Swaziland, which produces sugar for Coca-Cola.
He wrote, ‘The area that I visited, Vuvulane, is
managed by the Vuvulane Irrigated Farms (VIF) but the sugar cane fields are
under the auspices of the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development
Enterprise and the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation who lease them to
individual farmers, who in turn employ casual labourers.
‘In a small village in Vuvulane, most of the adults
worked in the sugar fields as casual labourers for between 400 and 550 Rand
(US$40-55) per month. “This is not enough to pay for medicine, proper food or
school fees for our children,” one villager told me. “Sometimes we do not eat
for days. We used to have our own vegetable gardens but these were confiscated
by the sugar company. We sometimes fish in the nearby dam in the evening, when
it is dark. If we are caught we will be arrested as the dam is owned by the
sugar cane company,” another villager said.
‘Practically none of the children in the village,
who were clad in dirty and ripped clothes and looked underfed, attended school
and many of the villagers, receive food aid. In addition to this, the water
supply is controlled by a privately owned company that readily closes the water
supply form the village if they are not paid on time.’
In 2012, the prodemocracy group the Swaziland
Democracy Campaign called on Coca-Cola to
leave Swaziland immediately.
See also
SWAZILAND,
SPONSORED BY COCA-COLA
COCA-COLA
SUPPORTS SWAZI DICTATOR
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/01/coca-cola-supports-swazi-dictator.html
COCA-COLA COLONISES SWAZILAND
COCA-COLA COLONISES SWAZILAND
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