PLAN FOR BORDER BLOCKAGE AT OSHOEK

South African trade unions plan a blockade of the border gate with Swaziland at Oshoek on Friday (11 May 2018) in an ongoing campaign for the release of Amos Mbedzi.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) are leading the protest.

Mbedzi, a South African, was sentenced to 85 years and six months in jail (with 25 years to be served) in Swaziland in 2012 after conviction by the Swaziland High Court on five charges including sedition and murder.

He had been arrested following an attempt to blow up a bridge near the Lozitha royal residence in September 2008. Two people with him died from injuries caused when the bomb exploded prematurely.

King Mswati III, who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, had been expected to use the bridge later in the day. 

Judge Bheki Maphalala said Mbedzi, ‘was engaged in violent revolution to overthrow the State’.

Mbedzi was described at the time by the AFP news agency as a part of the Umbane People’s Liberation Army, ‘a secret militant group linked to the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), which sought to undermine elections that year [2008] until Swaziland allowed a multi-party vote’. Political parties are banned from taking part in elections.

The sentence caused outrage among pro-democracy groups who see Mbedzi as a victim of King Mswati.

The People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), a pro-democracy organization banned in Swaziland, called Mbedzi’s sentence, ‘an open expression and declaration by the royal regime of its unwillingness to accommodate diverging views on the country’s political direction and future’.

The Communist Party of Swaziland called the attempt to blow up the bridge, ‘a brave and principled act of struggle against the illegal Mswati regime’. 

The Swaziland Solidarity Network said of the sentence, ‘This is a clear declaration of war to the forces of democracy in Swaziland. When people are left with no option to protect their human rights, they are bound to explore all possible means to realise them.’

See also

RELEASE AMOS MBEDZI CAMPAIGN

https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/release-amos-mbedzi-campaign.html

AMOS MBEDZI FULL JUDGEMENT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/08/amos-mbedzi-full-judgement.html

WILL ZUMA FORCE KING TO CHANGE?

From Peter Kenworthy’s stiffkitten blog

26 May 2011

SOURCE

Will Zuma’s South Africa demand democratisation in Swaziland?

“I believe that king Mswati III is under immense pressure even from his closest buddy, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma,” says Sikelela Dlamini from the Swaziland United Democratic Front, an umbrella organisation of the democratic movement in Swaziland.

The recent spate of pro-democracy demonstrations against the regime in Swaziland, which so far culminated in the mass demonstrations in March and April of this year, shows the increasing willingness of Swazis to face intimidation and police brutality to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the regime.

The reason for this dissatisfaction, says Sikelela Dlamini, is the monarch’s spending on prestige projects and personal luxuries, and the regime’s financial mismanagement and corruption. “Mswati III’s major handicap has to be his continuously lavish lifestyle when the majority of his people languish in untold suffering.”

Jacob Zuma is married to Mswati’s niece, however, and has therefore thus far been unwilling to criticize Swaziland’s absolute monarch Mswati III publicly. But others in South Africa, including Zuma’s son, Edward Zuma and members of his cabinet are more critically outspoken about Swaziland.

“We have spearheaded democratic change all over Africa,” said Edward Zuma in an interview with the South African Sunday Tribune, “and yet our neighbour is the one in need of democratic change. People complain about Mugabe and yet he has a more legitimate country because there is a democratic process. Mugabe is far better than Mswati.”

The South African Trade Union Federation, COSATU has been a staunch supporter of the Swazi democratic movement for years, and recently “condem[ed] the Swaziland government for its naked show of brutality and intensified repression” in a press statement.

And the ANC are seemingly following suit, although more carefully. “We call on the government of Swaziland to work towards the normalisation of the political environment by unbanning opposition political parties, releasing political activists and engaging in a meaningful dialogue with opposition political and trade union leaders to find a collective solution to the socio-economic situation faced by that country,” Ebrahim Ebrahim, the deputy International Relations Minister, said in a statement commenting on the Swazi regime’s violent clamp down on the peaceful April 12 protests.

This is all well and good, but South Africa is Swaziland’s main trading partner, with over 90% of Swaziland’s imports and 60% of its exports coming from trade with South Africa, and could therefore shut Swaziland down in a matter of days if the political will to do so was really there.

SWAZI TRADE UNIONISTS ARRESTED

Swaziland Democracy Campaign

Statement

14 May 2011

Urgent Action: Trade Unionists Arrested in Swaziland: Repression Continues!

The Swaziland Democracy Campaign has just received urgent news that a group of leading trade unionists have been arrested by the security police in the Lubombo Region of Swaziland. The comrades were attending a meeting to discuss the establishment of a regional division of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) the new democratic trade union federation that was launched on May Day this year, and which brings together all the trade unions in Swaziland into a historic single organisation.

Those arrested include the following:

Gugu Malindzisa of the Labour Coordinating Committee and the UNITE project, a comrade Phumele formerly of the Swaziland Federation of Labour, Splasha Musa, Paul Mabila, George Mthethwa, Titus Nhleko, Bongani Siyaya, and a comrade Emanuel all from the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), Bongani Shongwe from the National Public Service and Allied Workers Union (NAPSAWU), and Gcinaphi Pateguana of the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SWADNU).

Let it be noted that the organisations that these comrades represent are perfectly legal and legitimate. What they were hoping to discuss in Lobombo was completely legal and constitutes activity that is universally protected by the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), namely the right to Freedom of Association.

The world should be outraged at this flagrant attempt to stifle the trade union movement in Swaziland. The trade unions have been in the forefront of organising protest action in favour of democracy, and in campaigns to defend the living standards of their largely impoverished membership.

The ILO in particular must immediately protest this action by the Swazi regime as it is in the process of compiling a report on Swaziland for the International Labour Congress taking place in June this year in Geneva. It must condemn this attack on trade union rights and strengthen the sanctions and penalties that it is able to impose on the regime as a result.

We also call upon the governments of the Region and the Continent as a whole to protest this gross violation of civil and worker rights. In each of the countries of the continent, trade union rights are supposed to enshrined in African Union protocols. Turning a blind eye will expose the hypocrisy of all of those governments who claim that they are themselves democratic. For how long can the Swazi regime be allowed to behave in this way, and bring the human rights record of the continent into disrepute.

We also call upon trade unionists and progress forces throughout the world to send messages of support to TUCOSWA (copies to SDC) and pressurise their own governments to do likewise.

If the Government of Swaziland thinks that it can illegally detain , disrupt and punish the democratic and united trade union movement without a reaction in Swaziland and across the world it must think again. By arresting these comrades the Swazi government have once again exposed themselves for what they really are, a self serving corrupt elite that rules through repression.

· Release these trade unionists and all those illegally detained by the regime!

· Isolate the Swazi Government and support the democratic forces in Swaziland!

· Pressurise Governments to side with the democrats not the Dictators

For messages of support and further information contact

Mduduzi C. Gina (SUDF Secretary General) (+268 76119211 comfortmgina@yahoo.com)

Vincent Ncongwane ( vincentncongwane@yahoo.co.uk)

Stephen Faulkner (082 817 5455, steve.faulkner@samwu.org.za)

Ntokozo Mbhele (072 370 0974 ntokozo@publicservices.co.za)

Philani Ndebele (076 942 3565 philani@asc.org.za)

'S AFRICA SPEAK UP ON SWAZI ABUSES'

Cosatu calls on SA to speak firmly on Swazi ‘abuses’

Business Day, Johannesburg, 11 April 2011

SOURCE

THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) yesterday took issue with SA’s foreign policy for allegedly failing to condemn human rights abuses in Swaziland.

"We want to ask why the Southern African Development Community leaders, including our own South African government, are keeping silent about the situation in Swaziland," Zingiswa Losi, Cosatu’s second deputy president, said.

"How does it happen that our government has the guts to act with the world on Libya and has the courage to confront the situation in Zimbabwe with the boldness we see, but do nothing on Swaziland?"

Ms Losi was speaking in Johannesburg at a forum to mark the first anniversary of the Swaziland-SA Campaign for Democracy in Swaziland. The forum, attended by about 100 delegates, was meeting on the eve of a planned three-day mass stayaway in Swaziland tomorrow. Cosatu plans a 3km march to the Oshoek border post in Mpumalanga in solidarity.

Addressing the forum, George Mahlangu of Cosatu’s organising unit urged Swazi youth to "make that country ungovernable" and said: "That young man (King Mswati) is looting the country."

Justice Dlamini, general secretary of the banned People’s United Democratic Movement, called on the king to relinquish his position gracefully before being forced out. "The monarchy and their friends get comfort when they visit SA. We feel very painful when we find them sitting in swinging chairs with you (South Africans)," he said.

Mr Dlamini called on the South African authorities to ban the monarchy’s ministers and their children from getting healthcare and education in SA.

The monarchy has already cracked down on dissidents organising the protests. Mduduzi Gina, secretary-general of Swaziland’s United Democratic Front, was prevented from travelling to the meeting yesterday. In a message read on his behalf, Mr Gina said the monarchy was applying to the high court to prevent the protests.

The youth wing of the African National Congress, the Young Communist League, and Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union have also voiced support for democratic change in Swaziland.