COMMUNISTS MEET FOR FIRST SESSION

A statement from the recently-formed Communist Party of Swaziland, reporting its recent Central Committee meeting.

‘The tendency in some sections of the international press simply to present King Mswati as a buffoon masks the hard realities facing our people and the struggle for freedom and democracy in our country,’ it says.

SOURCE

Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Swaziland, 8 May 2011

The Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of Swaziland met in Mpumalanga Province in South Africa over the weekend of 7-8 May for its first session since the founding conference of the Party on 9 April this year.

The CPS reviewed the process of building the party’s structures and the work of its office holders, the current situation in Swaziland and the state of the broad movement for democratic change.

The CC of the CPS welcomes the growing unity within the trade union movement in Swaziland shown by the merging of the two union federations to form the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland. The CC noted that this is the result of persistent efforts to achieve unity within the Swazi labour movement and is an important advance for the working class. This will allow greater coordination among workers and their unions in fighting the efforts of the Mswati regime to slash wages and impose worse working conditions in an effort to stave off its economic collapse. It will also enable the working class to mobilise more effectively on the broad political agenda of democratic change in Swaziland and to increase the militancy of the working class against Mswati and his corrupt and useless government.

The CPS will work hard to help build TUCSWA [Trade Union Congress of Swaziland] to achieve the strongest possible base of unity within the organisation.

The CC discussed the state of the pro-democracy movement in Swaziland and the need for a more concerted socialist perspective and agenda within the movement. The CC noted that recent and past protests in Swaziland on labour issues and for democratic change were carries first and foremost by the working class and the poor. It is their representation within the broad movement for democracy – including within PUDEMO – that needs to be strengthened.

The CC discussed the growing efforts internationally to draw attention to the callous and wasteful behaviour of the Mswati court and welcomed calls by the ANCYL on artists to boycott the celebration of Mswati’s birthday. The CC further calls for a comprehensive commercial, cultural and sports boycott of Swaziland. Much of the campaigning work of the CPS will be devoted to raising support for such a boycott, in addition to stepping up the use of border blockades to disrupt the economic lifelines of the Mswati regime.

The CC noted that the increased attention on the behaviour of the Mswati regime internationally needs to be augmented by more information on Swaziland’s political and economic situation. The tendency in some sections of the international press simply to present Mswati as a buffoon masks the hard realities facing our people and the struggle for freedom and democracy in our country.

The CC examined the development of the CPS’s work and discussed how to make it more effective despite the situation of scarce resources. The Party is in the early stages of its development and needs to work simultaneously on a number of fronts to build its capacity while advancing the form and content of the struggle in Swaziland – principally among the working class and the poor – and in cooperation with key structures of the pro-democracy movement. The CC also looked at the efforts of the CPS to develop its international and solidarity work and information work, as well as the organisation and work of the CPS commissions on women, workers, peasants and land workers, and youth.

Members of the CPS based in South Africa will assist the SACP and the Alliance movement as a whole in ensuring a robust ANC victory in the local government elections on 18 May. We view the success of the ANC-led Alliance in furthering the National Democratic Revolution as being crucial not only to progress in South Africa but ultimately to the progressive development of the Southern African region, including Swaziland.

Long Live Socialism!

Long Live the CPS!

Long Live working class internationalism!

Down with the Mswati regime!

Yes to a Socialist Swaziland!

COMMUNISTS, MAY DAY STATEMENT

A statement from the Communist Party of Swaziland (a banned organisation in Swaziland) to mark Workers’ Day – 1 May 2011.

SOURCE

COMMUNIST PARTY OF SWAZILAND

CPS

MAY DAY 2011

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Message of solidarity to the workers of Swaziland

Comrades, leaders of workers’ federations, affiliate leaderships and shopstewards, leaders of the progressive political and mass movement of the people. Workers, people in the countryside, women, youth and students. The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) brings revolutionary greetings to all of you on this important day of the workers and poor people of the world, May Day.

We are happy to add our voice to this important event - to be part of the struggles of the workers and the poor. The CPS is a new organization in the history of our struggle, though its members are not new to the struggle. The CPS believes that although it is only through concerted struggle by a broad popular front of forces that the Mswati regime will be finally toppled, it is the workers and the poor who will carry forward the demand for an end to class exploitation, and for setting Swaziland on the road to Socialism.

We join with all forces in the struggles for a better Swaziland to advance this goal, and we advance the political interests of the working class. The struggle of the workers and the poor is the reason for our existence as Communists.

We are inspired in this commitment from what the world could not deny. The progress where workers power developed into state power, as happened with from the October revolution of 1917 in Russia and the Cuban Revolution in 1959, to mention just a two instances, is the objective goal of working class power.

This May Day – the first such occasion during which Swaziland has a Communist Party – the CPS calls for the unity of workers to step up trade union-based and working class militancy against the Swazi regime.

We must start to make the country ungovernable in a targeted and strategic manner. We must start to put a vice-like grip on the economy so as to prevent economic collaboration with the regime from outside and so as to isolate Mswati’s rule and that of his puppet government and render them terminal.

We call on trade unions in South Africa and beyond who are in any way linked to economic dealings with the Swazi regime to look at how to block commercial imports to the country. We call for a boycott of business dealings with the Swazi regime and for pressuring all outside economic and business interests with a stake in Swaziland to freeze their dealings with the regime. As long as they continue to do business with Swaziland, they are furthering the oppression of the Swazi people and helping keep Mswati in his exploitative and rapacious lifestyle.

We are all witnesses of the disaster taking place in our country, a disaster that only the progressive unity of the people can correct.

This disaster is not of our creation. The manufacturers of this disaster are not with us. They are in a wedding being celebrated by another royal elite many thousands of miles away. When they come back here they will tell us they have seen great things and want to develop a policy of weddings in the country!

They have labeled our consciousness, action, and service to the poor and marginalized as being inspired by the devil. They say all this because we mobilized to protest against the regime. This protest only lasted a Few days but it exercised the regime and shook it. Think what could happen if it were to run for weeks or months!

This May Day we acknowledge the role of workers in building communities and nations and in serving society. We will have to rebuild our country and reverse the destruction carried out by the regime and the class enemy that have inflicted so much poverty and degradation on our people.

The CPS joins with the workers and poor of Swaziland to work towards building a country that is free from hunger, disease, malnutrition, poverty – a country with a modern and progressive identity, a country of pride, love and comfort, a country of progress and prosperity. The building process starts from the defeat of the class of oppressors.

How do we join the building process? Or how is it organized? We must first of all mobilize. We must make sure all the nation builders (the entire working class) are drawn to the entire process. The entire Working class including the unemployed, students, youth, women and people in the countryside are won over to the side of the workers. This is the force the workers need for this process. They must each know their role in the building process.

The process begins with the fight to destroy the class enemy of the workers and the poor – the Mswati regime and the hegemony of capitalism. They must all know they are fighting for their country, they are fighting for freedom in our land – a condition that will make us set the foundation of a modern society where slavery, oppression, segregation, dominance, and all other forms of oppression will be a crime.

We wish workers everywhere in the world special greetings this May Day. Our mutual practical solidarity is needed now more than ever before, as capitalism and imperialism scramble to revive and tighten their hegemony across the world. Our struggle will only succeed on a strong basis of internationalism and solidarity.

DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM DOW WITH CAPITALISM!

DOWN WITH MSWATI REGIME! LONG LIVE THE LIBERATION OF SWAZILAND!

FORWARD TO THE REPUBLIC OF SWAZILAND FORWAD!

LONGLIVE THE WORKING CLASS INTERNATIONALISM!

LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM!

CALL TO BOYCOTT ROYAL PARTIES

The Communist Party of Swaziland calls for a boycott of the Jadakiss concert being held for the Swazi Royal Family tonight (23 April 2011) and all other royal celebrations.

Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS)

Press Release

22 April 2011

SOURCE

Expose Mswati’s vile waste and greed – boycott his jubilee celebrations!

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) condemns the waste and extravagance of the Mswati monarchy on its attendance of the wedding being celebrated this week by the British royal family. It also completely opposes any use of public money – included that budgeted as pocket money for Mswati – to celebrate the royal jubilee.

The CPS calls for a boycott of all celebrations marking the anniversary of Mswati’s despotic rule. We call on all invited guests and performers to stay away from Swaziland and have nothing to do with Mswati’s celebration of his ruinous rule. We call on the people to send a clear message to Mswati that they will no longer tolerate his squandering of vast amounts of the people’s wealth and resources.

These celebrations, including the trip to the UK by Mswati and an entourage of 50 wives and lackeys, is a direct insult to the Swazi people, 70% of whom live in poverty, and 40% of whose have never had enough food to eat. The people of Swaziland are learning that Mswati, together with his puppet government, despises them and laughs at their misery. Why would he have the nerve to display his opulent waster and greed in the faces of the suffering majority of Swazi people?

Mswati’s arrogant self-indulgence nevertheless exists on borrowed time. He is desperate to force his useless ministers to squeeze whatever wealth they can from the dying economy. Swaziland’s economy is unsustainable. It has lost 60% of revenue from the slashing of African Customs Union income, and its import-export portfolios are withering. The regime is unable to pay for itself and is resorting to cutting wages and reneging on pay owed to public workers, including civil servants, teachers and nurses.

At the same time, Mswati’s ministers are falling over themselves to try to show their obtuse royal leader that they are making headway in the economy. Mswati has put massive pressure on the government to push ahead with completing the pointless international airport at Sikhuphe at a cost of R2.1 billion. We already have a perfectly good airport at Matsapha that can handle our international air traffic – all of which comes via OR Tambo at Johannesburg. Sikhuphe is designed to handle large long-haul aircraft and airbuses of the kind that are unlikely to visit Swaziland unless its tourism becomes bigger than that of South Africa.

Mswati is convinced his new airport is the solution to Swaziland’s economic crisis. He is merely blinded by his own arrogance. There is no demand for an airport of Sikhuphe’s size and passenger capacity (300,000 a year whereas we only ever get about 70,000 passengers using Matsapha airport). This is shown by the inability of the government to market the new airport to secure long haul routes and by its having to offer Sikhuphe for use by low budget small carriers from South Africa.

The hopeless incompetence of the Mswati regime in dealing with Swaziland’s finances and economic development is directly responsible for the terrible plight of our people and for the poverty, disease and degradation they suffer.

The CPS calls on all progressive forces in Swaziland to further expose the greed and mismanagement of the regime. It calls on all our people and on our comrades in solidarity to boycott the regime and Mswati’s insulting jubilee celebrations.

See also

THREAT TO DISRUPT ROYAL CONCERT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/04/threat-to-disrupt-royal-concert.html

COMMUNIST PARTY ‘TAKES STOCK’

The Communist Party of Swaziland issued a statement today (19 April 2011) on ‘taking stock on the recent protests’.

Here is part of the statement.

We understand too that there are a great variety of ways to protest and to bring the regime down – from simple stay-aways and work stoppages, to many other forms of passive resistance. We are working to organise on the ground in all branches of communities to focus resistance to the dictatorship using the many ways we allude to above. The struggle belongs to every Swazi man, woman and child oppressed and exploited by the Mswati tyranny.

We are working for mass and concerted solidarity for diversifying the struggle so that it reaches all areas of Swazi life and all its communities. Our trade unions in particular need strong solidarity and encouragement to continue to exert their demands and to maintain unity among their members in the face of efforts to weaken them.

We must work to create better international responses to our struggle, get SADC and the AU, and their countries individually, to come out with a strong line against the Mswati regime.

We do not want to hear appeals for us to act with restraint. We want clear calls for the regime to be dismantled. We already act with sense and restraint. It is the regime that resorts to violence, including torture, murder, beatings and rape. We must be quite clear about what international response we want and how we want it. Otherwise we will find that the endgame of the Mswati regime is manipulated by outside ulterior interests, including those with commercial links to the regime.

To read the full statement, click here.