Widows in mourning in
Swaziland will not be allowed to contest this year’s national election, the
kingdom’s top traditionalist has ruled.
He contradicts a message
sent by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) last year.
Lusendvo Fakudze, the
acting Ludzidzini Governor, is considered to be the voice of King Mswati III on
traditional matters. The Ludzidzini Governor is sometimes called ‘the
traditional prime minister’ and has more authority than Barnabas Dlamini, the
man the King appointed Prime Minister in the House of Assembly.
King Mswati rules as
sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. Political parties are banned from
taking part in the election and the King chooses the Prime Minister and top
government ministers.
Fakudze told the Swazi Observer (12 April 2018), a
newspaper in effect owned by the King, that widows would not be allowed to
contest the election until they had been in mourning for two years and gone
through a cleansing ceremony.
The newspaper reported, ‘EBC
Chairperson Chief Gija Dlamini also confirmed that women who lost their
husbands could register for elections only after the two-year mourning period
and cleansing ceremony.’
The announcement
contradicts what the EBC said in April 2017. EBC commissioner Ncumbi Maziya
told a voter education meeting at Bulandzeni Chiefdom that women in mourning
had a constitutional right to stand for election, but he added that there might
be problems for a widow if she were elected.
The Swazi Observer reported at the time, ‘He said a person wearing a mourning gown was
not allowed to be near His Majesty the King. If a certain constituency elected
a person in such a situation, it was highly possible that the woman could not
attend the Parliament opening event, where the King would also be in
attendance. Maziya said that was when a woman would have to exercise conscience
by at least standing by the gate of Parliament, to avoid being near the King.’
There was a major row at
the election in 2013 when Dumisani Dlamini a chief’s headman in Ludzibini, an
area ruled by Chief Magudvulela a former Swazi Senator, threatened people would
be banished from their homes if they nominated Jennifer du Pont, a widow, for
the upcoming election.
The Times Sunday
reported at the time, ‘[Dlamini] warned that those who would nominate her
should be prepared to relocate to areas as distant as five chiefdoms away. Her
sin was that she attended the nominations only a few months after her husband
died.’
The newspaper reported, ‘He said she should still be
mourning her husband.’
The Times
reported Du Pont did not wear standard black mourning gowns and was dressed in
a blue wrap-around dress known as sidvwashi.
Enough people in the chiefdom defied Dlamini and du
Pont was duly nominated.
Elsewhere, during the primary elections nomination
held in August 2013, an 18-year-old woman was denied the chance to be nominated
to stand for parliament because she attended the nomination centre dressed in
jeans and a t-shirt.
In another case a woman was not allowed to nominate
a candidate because she was wearing cargo pants.
In February 2018 it was reported Swaziland’s Senate President Gelane Zwane had been ‘banned’ from attending
parliament for up to two years
because she is a widow in mourning. Minister of Labour and Social Security
Winnie Magagula met a similar fate.
See also
PRESIDENT
‘BANNED’ FROM SWAZI SENATE
‘VOTE
FOR WIDOW, GET EVICTED’
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/vote-for-widow-get-evicted.html
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