Swaziland teenage pregnancies, gender violence high during coronavirus lockdown

Teenage pregnancies and gender-based violence in Swaziland (eSwatini) have risen during the present coronavirus lockdown, Deputy Prime Minister Themba Masuku reported.

He said out of 400 schools surveyed, 261 teenagers were found to be pregnant.  Of these 44 were in primary school and 217 in secondary and high school. Many schools have been closed as part of a national patrial lockdown to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

He said this at the Council of Swaziland Churches annual general meeting in Manzini.

He also said that during lockdown there had been an increase in the number of gender-based violence (GBV) and sexual violence cases reported. He said the reports were made at a time when his office had started a campaign to end unintended pregnancies. 

He said children, women, men and persons with disability were abused in different forms. He called this a violation of human rights.

He called on churches to use the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act (SODV) to help combat this ‘scourge’.

In October 2020, Prime Minister Ambrose Dlamini blamed the use of alcohol for some of the violence. He spoke following reports of women and children who had been murdered mostly by their lovers. This included a mother and her four-year-old son who were allegedly stabbed and had their throats slit open by a man believed to be her boyfriend.

In September 2020 a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report stated the coronavirus pandemic had led to an increase in sexual and gender-based violence against children. According to official Swazi police figures, during the period of lockdown between 27 March and 19 April, 299 sexual and gender-based violence cases were reported of which 53 were rape and 213 domestic violence cases. The age group 12 to 17 years had been more vulnerable to sexual violence. In April alone, 30 out of 47 reported rape cases were from this group.

 

See also

Swaziland sees increase in sexual violence against children as schools closed by coronavirus https://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2020/09/swaziland-sees-increase-in-sexual.html

Doubts over survey result that suggests attitudes on wife-beating improving in Swaziland https://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2019/10/doubts-over-survey-result-that-suggests.html

Customary law lets husbands rape wives

https://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2016/08/custom-law-lets-husbands-rape-wives.html

NEW JUSTICE MINISTER’S CONTEMPT

Edgar Hillary, the former Swaziland Commissioner of Police who was appointed Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs on Tuesday (21 April 2015) in the wake of a judicial scandal in which the Chief Justice and other judges have been accused of abusing power, himself has a history of contempt for the law and decisions of the court.

Hillary, along with the then (and present) Prime Minster Barnabas Dlamini, was at the centre of events in 2002 that led to Swaziland’s last major judicial crisis. At that time the entire bench of six Court of Appeal judges resigned in protest.

Hillary defied a court order that he be jailed for contempt of court and then challenged any police officer to try to arrest him. 

The Swaziland High Court had found Hillary guilty of defying repeated court orders to allow a group of evicted people to return to their homes at the villages of Macetjeni and KaMkweli. 

Hillary was charged along with Lubombo regional police commander Agrippa Khumalo. 

The South Africa Press Association reported at the time that the saga started in 2000 when Swaziland's King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, appointed a new chief, Prince Maguga, to the area where the villagers lived. Two acting chiefs in the area refused to pay Maguga any allegiance, and the situation devolved into bloody fights between pro- and anti-Maguga factions. Eventually the police were called in to restore order and to force the rebels to leave the villages. 

The rebels were later offered the opportunity to go back, on condition that they recognised the new chief. They refused, and successfully applied for a court order to allow them to return. 

The Court of Appeal upheld the ruling of the High Court against the government and police commissioner. The Court of Appeal also confirmed that the order of immediate committal to prison of the police officials concerned was justified, in view of their persistent and flagrant disregard for the Court judgments.

Amnesty International reported, ‘The Commissioner [Hillary] himself was openly defiant and was reported to have declared that “only God can issue instructions for [his] arrest”’.

Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini said in late November 2002 that government would ignore the Court of Appeal ruling over Hillary because it overturned King Mswati’s power to issue laws by decree, thereby bypassing parliament.

He said on state-controlled radio, ‘The effect of the Court of Appeal’s judgments would be to strip the King of some of his powers, and the government is not prepared to sit idle and allow judges to take from the King’s powers which were granted to him by the Swazi nation.’

He added, ‘The government does not accept the judgment of the Court of Appeal in respect of the actions of the commissioner of police and his officers who acted properly and in accordance with Swazi Law and Custom.’

Six South African judges on loan to Swaziland who made up the kingdom’s highest judicial body, the Court of Appeal, resigned en masse to protest the Swazi Government’s decision to ignore their rulings.

The Council of Swaziland Churches in a statement released at the time said it feared anarchy in the kingdom, and expressed ‘greatest disappointment at the blatant abuse and disregard for the rule of law by the government’.

An unnamed Swazi attorney and Law Society member told the IPS news agency, ‘It would appear that the palace does not understand the role of the courts, that they don’t exist as mere advisory bodies to the King, as parliament and cabinet does, but they make independent rulings based on law. In a monarchy, the King’s decision is the law.’

See also

SWAZI MINISTER OF JUSTICE ARRESTED

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2015/04/swazi-minister-of-justice-arrested.html

CHURCHES WANT INQUIRY INTO KILLINGS

Churches in Swaziland want an independent inquiry into the police killing of the alleged rapist Bhekinkhosi ‘Scarface’ Masina. 

They also want the deaths of two other people, possibly at the hands of the police, to be investigated.

The Council of Swaziland Churches wants the independent inquiry to be wide ranging and involve police, politicians, the church and civil society.

The call was sparked by the police killing of Masina while he was allegedly resisting arrest. Police say they shot him in the thigh and Masina died of his injuries. Later a Swazi newspaper said its reporter had seen Masina’s body and it had a bullet wound to the head. 

The other two cases the Swaziland Churches wants investigated involve Sihle Bhembe and Vamile Gumbi. Bhembe died in a police station cell after police say he repeatedly hit his own head against a wall. Gumbi died after being interrogated at a police station. All deaths occurred over a space of three weeks.

In a statement, the council said it was concerned that the three deaths happened in the custody of the police, or just after they had been taken in for questioning, over the course of three subsequent weeks and it is imperative to ascertain the circumstances leading to the deaths. 

The council also called upon churches to resolutely defend the rights of defenceless and marginalised people in Swaziland.

It also wants the Swazi Government to introduce police training so officers can conduct their duties to international standards and with regard to the human rights of Swazi people.

See also

POLICE ‘SHOT ACCUSED RAPIST IN HEAD’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/police-shot-accused-rapist-in-head.html

POLICE KILL SUSPECT ‘IN COLD BLOOD’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/06/police-shoot-suspect-in-cold-blood.html

NEW DOUBTS OVER POLICE KILLING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/new-doubts-over-police-killing.html

WILL COPS SMASH DEMOCRACY TALKS?

The Council of Swaziland Churches has filed in an urgent application at the High Court to stop Swazi police closing down the three-day democracy convention being held in the kingdom this weekend.

The police successfully halted a previous meeting called by the organisers in March this year.

The Council wants the High Court to instruct the police it must allow the convention, which started yesterday (29 July 2011), to go ahead unmolested.

Specifically, the Council wants the court to issue an order ‘restraining the police from interrupting and interfering with the free movement of delegates and other invited guests and individuals for the purposes of participating in the meeting.’

The Council cites Section 26 of the Swaziland Constitution on freedom of movement in its action.

The convention is to allow civil society groups to discuss how Swaziland, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, can be transformed into a democracy.

The Council and the South African-based NGO Phadimisa Bokamoso BaAfrica are engaged in a process they are calling Talks About Talks.

On 18 March, 2011, during the consultation process with civil society, the Swaziland Police stormed the meeting and demanded to know the agenda.

Police insisted that the meeting was being held unlawfully as no permission had been sought from the Commissioner of Police and the meeting had to be called off.

Khangeziwe Dlamini, General Secretary of the Council, said the Swaziland police have already said it wanted to stop and prevent this weekend’s meeting from proceeding as they did with the previous one.

See also

SWAZI KING SNUBS DEMOCRACY TALKS

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/07/swazi-king-snubs-democracy-talks.html

DEMOCRATIC SWAZILAND CONVENTION

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/07/democratic-swaziland-convention.html

KING IS RICH, BUT NOT SWAZILAND

While Swaziland struggles to alleviate its fiscal crisis with foreign aid because of its World Bank classification as a lower middle-income country, the government has increased the budget for King Mswati III, Africa’s last remaining absolute monarch and one of the richest royals in the world, the IPS news agency reported.

This move came despite figures showing that while the number of people living on less than two dollars a day has dropped by six percent between 2001 and 2010, the welfare of the poorest people, which make up 30 percent of the population, has not improved.

Pat Muir, principal secretary at the Ministry of Education and Training, says, ‘the country’s World Bank classification makes it impossible for us to partner with international organisations that could assist us with some of our services’.

When the government sets out to raise foreign aid, donors always remind Mbabane that Swaziland is not regarded as a country poor enough to ‘deserve’ much of this kind of assistance, notes Muir.

Majozi Sithole, Swazi Finance Minister, decries the skewed distribution of wealth in the kingdom, which contributes to the kingdom being classified as a lower middle-income state. This status is based on an elite representing only 10 percent of the population but controlling 60 percent of the country’s wealth.

Swaziland’s lower middle-income status also presents a problem to civil society organisations as donors’ focus shifted to least developed countries.

According to Emmanuel Ndlangamandla, the director for the Coordinating Assembly for Non-Governmental Organisations (CANGO), foreign aid to Swaziland started to dry up from the 1990s.

‘Since then, NGOs have been downscaling operations because donors are not interested in funding Swaziland because of its lower middle-income status,’ says Ndlangamandla.

What has further compounded the problem, states Khangezile Dlamini, the general secretary for Council of Swaziland Churches (CSC), is the system of governance that breeds corruption and does not allow transparency.

‘Donors tell us that government hosts the king’s birthday celebrations every year, yet it fails to provide for its poor people,’ said Dlamini. Despite the fiscal crisis, government still plans to host the king’s birthday celebrations on 19 April.

She said CSC had to discontinue a programme where the organisation was installing boreholes for poor communities in drought-prone areas. ‘Our donors told us that government should be responsible for providing these services to its people.’

To read the full report, click here.