Countries outside Swaziland are reducing their donations
to feed starving children because they say there is enough money in the kingdom
but it is not fairly distributed.
The news comes as reports go global that Swaziland’s
absolute monarch King Mswati III wore a watch
worth US$1.6 million and a suit
studded with diamonds at a party for his 50th birthday. He also
took delivery of his second private jet which with VIP upgrades is
reported to have cost US$30 million.
Now, Lucky Ndlovu, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office
Director of Children Services, has revealed that Neighbourhood Care Points (NCP)
across Swaziland are short of food because donations are drying up.
The Sunday
Observer in Swaziland reported (6 May 2018) Ndlovu said the NCPs had no
budget from government.
The newspaper reported Ndlovu saying, ‘There is a lack
of support from those who used to supply the food. Most of the support was from
international donors who are now focussing on other countries which are not
classified as middle income countries.
‘The break in the supply resulted from the fact there is
a lack of appetite from the international community as they say we have enough
income but it is unfairly distributed to cushion the poor.
‘Government must come up with programmes that are pro-poor because the international community is now not willing to support us.’
‘Government must come up with programmes that are pro-poor because the international community is now not willing to support us.’
Ndlovu did not specifically mention the lavish
spending of King Mswati who has 13 palaces, two private jets and fleets of
top-of-the-range BMW and Mercedes cars. Members of his family regularly take international
shopping trips costing millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, seven in ten of the 1.1 million population
live in abject poverty with incomes less than the equivalent of US$2 per day.
Children in Swaziland have
been told by teachers to prepare themselves for starvation as the government failed to deliver free food to
schools over the past year. At the heart of the crisis is the Swazi
Government’s inability to pay its suppliers. In the March 2018 Budget, Finance
Minister Martin Dlamini said the government owed E3.1 billion and was trying to find a way to pay its bills.
As a result of unpaid
bills, suppliers have stopped delivering food, and medicines. Electricity supplies to government offices, law courts, police stations,
libraries, media houses, and border posts
have been cut.
In 2017, the global charity Oxfam named Swaziland as
the most unequal country in the world in a report called
Starting With People, a human economy approach to inclusive growth in Africa
that detailed the differences in countries between the top most earners and
those at the bottom.
The Oxfam report stated the government, which is
handpicked by King Mswati, ‘failed to put measures in place to tackle inequality,
with poor scores for social spending and progressive taxation, and a poor
record on labour rights’.
The extent of poverty in Swaziland has been reported
extensively outside of the kingdom. In its annual report on human rights in the
kingdom, published in March 2017, Amnesty
International said two thirds of the people in Swaziland continued to live
below the poverty line and that around half the population said they often went
without food and water, and over a third said that medical care was inadequate.
In a report in May 2017, the World
Food Program estimated 350,000 people of Swaziland’s population were in
need of food assistance. WFP helped 65,473 of them. It said it was regularly
feeding 52,000 orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) aged under eight years at
neighbourhood care points. About 45 percent of all children in thought to be
OVCs.
It reported chronic malnutrition affected 26 percent
of all children in Swaziland aged under five.
See also
SWAZI
KING AND QUEENS OF BLING
KING
WEARS WATCH WORTH US$1.6-million
KING
WEARS SUIT BEADED WITH DIAMONDS
SWAZI
ROYALS SPEND, SPEND, SPEND
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