The World Food Program has fallen more than US$9
million short in its fundraising to help ease the hunger crisis gripping
Swaziland / eSwatini.
That amounts to only 47 percent of the US$17.4 million
it hoped to raise, the WFP ‘resource
situation’ report for June 2019 states.
In a
separate briefing for May 2019 WFP says ‘an estimated 22 percent of the
population [of 1.1 million] has been food insecure in the past ten years’.
It adds, ‘Chronic malnutrition is a main concern in
Eswatini: stunting affects 26 percent of children under the age of five.’
WFP provides social safety nets for 55,000 young
orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) of pre-primary school age across the
kingdom at neighbourhood care points through access to food and basic social
services.
WFP reports, ‘Seventy percent of the rural population
live below the national poverty line and 25 percent are extremely poor.
Eswatini has a very high HIV prevalence, affecting 26 percent of the population
between the ages of 15-49. Life expectancy is 49 years, and 45 percent of
children are orphaned or vulnerable.’
In May 2017 the WFP
estimated 350,000 people of Swaziland’s population – more than one in three – needed
food assistance.
WFP gives no reason for its shortfall in funding but
there have been reports in recent years that international donors are concerned
about the lavish lifestyle of King Mswati III, who rules Swaziland as an
absolute monarch, and his family.
Swaziland is designated a ‘middle income’
country by the World Bank based on the Kingdom’s national income. The problem
in Swaziland is that this income is not evenly distributed among the
population. The King takes 25 percent of all mining royalties and controls the profits
of the conglomerate Tibiyo TakaNgwane. Officially he keeps these
monies ‘in trust’ for the Swazi nation, but in reality much of it goes to fund
his own lifestyle.
He has two private airplanes, at least 13 palaces and
fleets of top-of-the-range cars. At his 50th birthday in 2018 he
wore a watch
worth US$1.6 million and a suit
beaded with diamonds that weighed 6 kg. Days earlier he had taken
delivery of his second private jet. This one, an Airbus A340, cost US$13.2 to
purchase but with VIP upgrades
was estimated to have cost US$30 million.
In 2017 King Mswati was named the third wealthiest
King in Africa by the international
website Business Insider. It reported he had a net worth of US$200 million (about E2.8
billion in local Swazi currency).
In May 2018 Lucky Ndlovu, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office Director
of Children Services, revealed that neighbourhood care points that feed the
hungry across Swaziland were short of food because donations were drying up.
The Sunday Observer 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.’
He added, donors believed Swaziland had enough money but it was not
being directed towards the poor.
‘Government must come up with programmes that are pro-poor because the
international community is now not willing to support us,’ he said.
In 2018 Afrika Kontakt (Africa Contact), a Danish NGO,
reported
European Union taxpayers’ money was being used to finance the lavish
lifestyle of Swaziland’s royal family through money donated to develop the
kingdom’s sugar industry. The report called The European Union in Swaziland: In support
of an Authoritarian King? said since the King controlled much of this industry, EU money
‘benefits the Royal Family greatly’ and undermines democratic forces in
Swaziland.
The Afrika Kontakt report stated, ‘By continuing to
support these sectors, without raising demands from the Swazi Government to
prioritize its citizens’ well-being over the lavish lifestyle of its monarch,
it is essentially EU taxpayers’ money that finances the lavish spending of the
monarchy.’
A separate report written
by Klaus Stig Kristensen and published by Afrika Kontakt in 2017 stated that
in Swaziland almost 6 percent of the national budget was spent on the Royal
Family while only 3.3 percent was spent on agriculture, ‘the engine that is
supposed to pull the rural population out of poverty’.
In July 2016 Lisa Peterson, United States Ambassador
to Swaziland, warned Swaziland might not receive further food aid from her
country because of the Swazi King’s ‘lavish spending’ on holidays. She was
responding after it was revealed that at least three of King Mswati III’s wives
had been on holiday in Orlando, Florida – with an entourage of more than 100.
The cost of this holiday was equivalent to the drought
relief that the US was then providing to the drought-stricken kingdom – E14 million (US$1 million).
News24
in South Africa reported Peterson saying the US had limited funds for
drought relief. She said, ‘When we hear of the lavish spending by the Swazi
royal family – especially while a third of their citizens need food aid – it
becomes difficult to encourage our government to make more emergency aid
available. You can’t expect international donors to give more money to the
citizens of Swaziland than their own leaders give them.’
See also
King
takes US$10m from iron mine
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
No comments:
Post a Comment