The Swaziland Sugar Association which has celebrated
its 50th anniversary misled the world when it congratulated itself but
ignored the suffering of workers in the industry.
Sugar in Swaziland is controlled by the conglomerate
Tibiyo TakaNgwane which is supposed to hold a number of business for the
benefit of the Swazi people.
Tibiyo Managing Director Absalom Dlamini told a
banquet that 16,000 people were employed in the sector and this was ‘one of the
most remarkable accomplishments in the sector in the past 50 years’.
The Swazi
Observer newspaper, which is also owned by
Tibiyo, reported on Friday (29 September 2017), ‘He said the benefits have spilled
over to indirect beneficiaries including spouses, children, parents and
relatives of the people employed in the value chain.
‘Also, Dlamini said the sugar industry has made inroads in building capacity for many Swazis to take up highly specialised positions in the sector, including at leadership and other decision making levels.’
‘Also, Dlamini said the sugar industry has made inroads in building capacity for many Swazis to take up highly specialised positions in the sector, including at leadership and other decision making levels.’
His remarks were far from the truth as a report
published in 2016 by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
demonstrates.
The report called King
Mswati’s Gold showed that the absolute monarch of Swaziland uses
sugar profits to finance his own lavish lifestyle. Sugar cane production has brought
about more human suffering than development in Swaziland. Many people have been
evicted and the general conditions in the sugar industry are atrocious, the
report concluded.
As Peter
Kenworthy reported in October 2016, Swaziland’s main export
commodity is sugar, the so-called ‘Swazi gold’. With a population of only 1.3
million people, Swaziland is nevertheless the 4th largest sugar producer in
Africa. Sugar production accounts for almost 60 percent of Swaziland’s
agricultural output and 18 percent of Swaziland’s GDP. The biggest market for
Swazi sugar is the European Union (although the duty-free and quota-guaranteed
access to the EU market will end in 2017).
According to Manqoba Nxumalo, who authored the report, one would
therefore expect that the wealth generated from sugar sales would lead to
improving living standards for the Swazi population.
‘But as our research was able to prove, it is only a feeding ranch for
the royal family. Sugar has been the primary locomotive by which they have
mutated from a backward aristocracy to a new comprador class,’ says Nxumalo.
According to the report, the problems all lead back to a 1973 royal decree that banned political parties, criminalized political activism and vested all power in the King, thereby transforming Swaziland from a thriving constitutional democracy to royal dictatorship.
The decree thus created an absolute monarchy that was able to use its control over Swaziland’s wealth through companies such as Tibiyo Taka Ngwane to control the nation, the report concludes.
According to the report, the problems all lead back to a 1973 royal decree that banned political parties, criminalized political activism and vested all power in the King, thereby transforming Swaziland from a thriving constitutional democracy to royal dictatorship.
The decree thus created an absolute monarchy that was able to use its control over Swaziland’s wealth through companies such as Tibiyo Taka Ngwane to control the nation, the report concludes.
King Mswati is the sole trustee of Tibiyo, which was initially created
as a national trust. Today, however, ‘income from Tibiyo’s present worth around
US$ 2 billion supports King Mswati … Like Mswati, Tibiyo is immune from
taxation.
World sugar production has doubled in 30 years, and Mswati – who Forbes
estimates has a personal wealth of around US$200 million – has become
personally rich from Swazi sugar. The thousands of workers who produce the
sugar, on the other hand, have seen little of this wealth.
King Mswati, as the sole trustee of Tibiyo, is both a head of state and a
businessman unfairly competing with local and foreign businesses. The workers,
who work in Tibiyo-aligned companies, on the other hand live in squalor and
abhorring conditions, especially in the sugar industry.
King Mswati, and his father Sobhuza before him, have evicted and
forcefully relocated villagers from their lands without compensation to make
way for Tibiyo-controlled sugar-cane fields, the report says.
So being employed on one of the large-scale Tibiyo-owned farms as a
returning seasonal worker or casual employee has become a necessary alternative
to working one’s own fields, although it is a hard and accident-prone job where
chemicals such as roundup used to destroy weeds also destroys the people
employed to spray the weeds.
According to the report, casual employees make an average of US$5.32 per
day – hardly enough to pay for school fees for their children or, proper food
or medicine – and are not paid for overtime. They also receive no pension
benefits or medical aid.
As unemployment levels in Swaziland are over 40 percent, and the
alternative to a job is poverty and often starvation, many Swazis do not complain.
But sugar cane farmers in the impoverished area of Vuvulane have decided
that enough is enough. According to the report, there is an ongoing battle
between sugar cane farmers in the area and the Royal Swaziland Sugar
Corporation.
In February 2016, 22 Vuvulane farmers were evicted from lands that they
and their families had tended since 1963 by Vuvulane Irrigated Farms and the
Swaziland Sugar Corporation.
Such forced evictions have led to farmers storming Tiboyo-run farms, in an attempt to ensure their livelihoods and the burning of vast areas of Tibiyo-run sugar cane fields in connection with another round of evictions.
Such forced evictions have led to farmers storming Tiboyo-run farms, in an attempt to ensure their livelihoods and the burning of vast areas of Tibiyo-run sugar cane fields in connection with another round of evictions.
See also
MORE WORKERS JOIN SUGARCANE UNION
HUMAN
SUFFERING AND SWAZI SUGAR
KING
EXPLOITS SUGAR WORKERS
SUGAR STRIKERS WIN PAY INCREASE
POLICE CLASH WITH SUGAR STRIKERS
http://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/police-clash-with-sugar-strikers.html
SELF-CENSORSHIP AT ‘TIMES’ NEWSPAPER
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/self-censorship-at-times-newspaper.html
SELF-CENSORSHIP AT ‘TIMES’ NEWSPAPER
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