King Mswati III failed
in his promise to have a new SADC-wide university up and running in Swaziland before
his time as chair of the organisation ends this week (August 2017).
King Mswati, who rules
Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, announced in August
2016 after assuming the chair of the Southern African Development Community
(SADC) that a ‘university of transformation’ taking students from all over the region
would open by the time he stood down from the office.
Both the Times of Swaziland, the only independent daily newspaper in the
kingdom, and the Swazi Observer, which is in effect owned by the King, reported on
31 August 2016 that King Mswati told the SADC heads of state summit held at
Lozitha, ‘This initiative will give new hope and opportunity to our youth and
our women. The intention is to have the first intake of students prior to the
37th SADC summit in 2017.’
That summit is about to
start and the university remains a pipe-dream.
On Monday (14 August 2017) the South Africa Broadcasting
Corporation reported the King saying about the university, ‘We are
still looking at strategies and all that in terms of mobilising resources.’
The King and the media in
Swaziland that enthusiastically and uncritically reported his initial statement, gave
no indication of where the money would come from for the project, who would
teach at the university, what academic programmes it would run, and how programmes
would be administered.
The University of Swaziland
(UNISWA), the kingdom’s largest and oldest university, has been unable to start
teaching first year students this academic year because the government has
delayed in awarding scholarships. Over many years students have
been protesting against cuts in scholarships and lack of resources.
Shortly after his announcement of the new university the King said it would be hosted by Limkokwing University, a private institution which has come under fire for its poor standards.
According to its website, Limkokwing in Swaziland only offers ‘associate
degrees’ which are at a level below Bachelor degrees and in many universities
are known as diplomas.
In June 2012, Bandile Mkhonta, Head of Human Resource
for Limkokwing in Mbabane, Swaziland, told
local media that of 53 professional staff at the university only one had a
Ph.D doctorate. A Ph.D is usually considered by universities to be the minimum
qualification required to be given the rank of senior lecturer.
Limkokwing in Swaziland had no staff at professor rank
and no record of conducting scholarly research.
The failure to deliver the
university is one of a long line of broken promises made by the King. In
November 2009, King
Mswati announced a plan partly financed from in the oil state of Qatar
to build an E35bn (US$4.8bn at the then exchange rate) ‘world class
facility’ that would store at least a three-month supply of fuel for Swaziland.
It did not happen.
In November 2012 the king returned from a trip to the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Taiwan, claiming
that he had secured Taiwanese investment to build a pharmaceutical plant, a
food processing plant, a bottled water plant, a cosmetics plant and a granite
and marble venture – which, according to a report in the Times of Swaziland newspaper, were expected to create more than 3,000
jobs. It has not happened.
In April 2009 King Mswati III announced
the building of a multi-billion emalangeni Swazi City, financed by
international money and comprising a 25,000 sq m shopping, entertainment and
‘wellness’ centre ‘to rival the world’. There would be a Science and Technology
Park, a hi-technology industrial Site and an expansion of the Matsapha
Industrial Site. It would be completed by 2012, creating 15,000 new jobs. It
did not happen.
In October 2009 the government the King handpicked promised
an E1.5bn ‘facelift’ for the Swazi capital city Mbabane. That money would buy a civic
centre and a shopping mall, described at the time as a ‘fully fledged state of
the art 21st Century Civic Centre befitting a country’s capital city’. Work was
expected to start in June 2010 and take three years to build. It did not
happen.
In October 2010, the Swazi Government announced
its ‘fiscal adjustment roadmap’ to save the kingdom’s economy. This would
include attracting investment to create, ‘between 25,000 and 30,000 new jobs’
in the private sector. These jobs have not materialised.
In 1998 King
Mswati was said to have teamed up with pop singer Michael
Jackson to bring a ‘Netherland-style’
theme park to Swaziland.
See also
KING’S NEW UNWORKABLE UNIVERSITY
ABSOLUTE
KING TAKES CHAIR OF SADC
‘DICTATOR KING NOT FIT TO CHAIR SADC’
KING TO PARTY WHILE SWAZIS GO HUNGRY
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