SWAZILAND IS CRUMBLING STATE

Swaziland’s is a crumbling state that could become another Zimbabwe.

That was one of the warnings made in an article in the international press this week.

As hunger sweeps Swaziland – about 600,000 of the kingdom’s one million population relied on international food aid in the past year to fend off starvation – the HIV rate (nearly 40 percent) remains the highest in the world.

Added to this humanitarian disaster is a political crisis as King Mswati III has declared war against his own people in an attempt to crush a growing dissident movement.

Stuart Clark writing in The Sunday Business Post from the Republic of Ireland reported on Swaziland this week (30 November 2008). According to the newspaper one of the ‘most persistent thorns’ in the side of the king is the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO).

Stephen Donaghy of SCCCO told the newspaper, ‘Swaziland makes a great pretence of being a democracy, but political parties are banned and the king appoints both the prime minister and the cabinet.’

‘He also has the power arbitrarily to dissolve parliament, nominate the people who select the country’s judges, and outlaw organisations that are allegedly supporting terrorism.,

On 15 November 2008, the illegally appointed Prime Minister of Swaziland Barnabas Dlamini branded four political formations as ‘terrorists’. This meant that members and supporters of the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the Swaziland Youth Congress, Umbane and the Swazi Solidarity Network could face up to 25 years in jail.

The police raided the PUDEMO leader Mario Masuku’s house the following day and found nothing, but still took him into custody and charged him with terrorism.

‘The question we’re asking ourselves now is, “Who’s next”’, Donaghy told the newspaper.

Despite the intervention of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, the government has refused to enter talks with the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, which is one of SCCCO’s key members. ‘An option being considered at the moment is a general strike,’ Donaghy said. ‘There were already strikes on September 3 and 4, which brought 15,000 people out on to the streets of the capital, Mbabane, and the second city, Manzini.

‘The organisers made it clear that these were to be peaceful, but unfortunately a small number of hotheads on one of the marches clashed with the security forces.’

According to the Sunday Business Post, the trade unions’ commitment to peaceful protest isn’t shared by the unknown organisation that recently planted a bomb near one of the king’s 13 palaces, or those Swazis who are widely rumoured to be receiving paramilitary training in South Africa. The king’s reaction to all of this was to authorise the army’s purchase, during the summer, of 18,000 handguns, 20,000 grenades and a million bullets.

‘Does the potential exist for Swaziland to become the next Zimbabwe?’ asked a leading dissident who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals. ‘Absolutely. At the moment, Swaziland is surviving on handouts from other countries; 600,000 people are receiving world food aid and you’ve got the government going on record as saying “We do not fear conflict, we know how to control it.” That’s scarily similar to the rhetoric employed by Robert Mugabe who, incidentally, happens to be a friend of the king’s.’

One of the people hoping to stave off violence through democratic change is newly elected Swazi MP Nonhlanhla Dlamini. ‘I had to wait six hours yesterday to meet the king, but when I did, I told him that the government previously had betrayed us, and I intend to pursue new legislation dealing with gender violence,’ she told the newspaper.

‘They always say things are in the pipeline - well, I’ve come in to clear the pipe. I also talked to him about issues of corruption, poverty and food supply and how things are likely to get worse. We’ve had several spells of drought recently causing harvests to fail, so that’s a major consideration.

‘I will also be questioning such budgetary decisions as nine of the king’s wives being given $1 million each to go on a shopping expedition to Dubai, when there are tens of thousands of Swazis who don’t have adequate food, accommodation or health care.” Dlamini is the outgoing director of the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA).

BBC DOCO SPOTLIGHTS SWAZILAND

The ‘feudal regime’ of Swaziland’s King Mswati III comes in for comment in a documentary film from the UK that is presently circulating in the kingdom.

The documentary called Distant Horizons looks at civil rights in Swaziland and how ordinary people don’t know ‘they have the right to have rights’. Political parties are banned in Swaziland and it is difficult for many workers to form effective trade unions.

Distant Horizons looks at the work of the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) as it goes around the kingdom educating ‘very oppressed’ people about the new Swazi Constitution and giving them information about ‘the causes of their suffering’.

Musa Hlophe, coordinator of the SCCCO, tells the documentary that although what they do is not popular with the Swazi authorities, SCCCO is not a subversive organisation. He claims that what SCCCO does is above board. Meanwhile, the phones at the office are tapped

The documentary made by the Northern Ireland region of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) says that Swaziland is descending fast and without ‘dramatic reform’ it will descend further. It visits rural Swaziland where people often live without electricity and running water. The poverty is grinding and ‘hunger is a normal part of life’.

With the HIV rate the highest in the world, death is all around.

At one point in the documentary viewers are told that Swaziland is a small country that nobody cares about. Which is probably a truer statement than the documentary makers realise.

I don’t think the documentary makers are themselves very interested in Swaziland. The main purpose of Distant Horizons is not to look at life in Swaziland as such, but rather to follow around Stephen Donaghy, aged 41, a man from Northern Ireland. Donaghy is a volunteer civic society worker who has been placed with SCCCO by Skillshare International.

The main purpose of the documentary is to see how a man from Northern Ireland, where the programme makers are from and where the documentary was originally shown, copes in a new environment. It is a story about a rich person in a poor person’s world.

Donaghy is open about his desire to help Swaziland move towards democracy and how difficult this can be in a kingdom where people are deferential to people in authority.

We follow him as he tries to drum up media interest in the attempts by police officers to form their own trade union. He says that he gets more interest from journalists outside Swaziland than from the local media.

‘[We have a] better chance of getting coverage with the international press than we have locally. They don’t really cover much of our stuff, especially if it’s too radical.

‘They’re very scared of upsetting people in power. They do it a little bit but they certainly won’t do it too much.

‘They’re like little boys who throw stones and run away laughing, but they won’t stand there and pelt stones until they’ve broken every window in the house.

‘They just do it a little bit and say “aren’t we naughty”, rather than saying there’s a proper issue here and let’s fight our way through it.’

Distant Horizons was made for BBC TV and originally shown in the UK. It is not available to buy, but pirated DVD copies of the documentary are circulating in Swaziland.

It may not be as raw or controversial as Without The King, another documentary that is circulating under-the-counter in Swaziland, but it does offer an insight into what life is like in Swaziland for ordinary people. It’s worth watching if you can get hold of a copy.

See also
SWAZI POLITICAL DOCO AIRS IN UK

SWAZI POLITICAL DOCO AIRS IN UK

Swaziland’s political turmoil was featured in a documentary aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the UK yesterday (Thursday 24 April 2008).

It told a story of police committing murder, child sex abuse – and, of course, HIV AIDS.

All this was seen through the eyes of one consultant from Northern Ireland who is presently working in Swaziland as a civil rights campaigner.

Star of the show is Stephen Donaghy, who works as a ‘volunteer’ for the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) in Manzini.

I haven’t had a chance to see the documentary (but I hope a DVD is winging its way to Swaziland and will soon be available in pirate version all over the kingdom), but the Belfast Telegraph (a newspaper in Northern Ireland) carried a long interview with Donaghy, in which he gives one view of Swaziland that is not often seen, either in the kingdom itself, or in the international media.

The Telegraph reported,

‘First impressions of Swaziland were surprising and not exactly what Stephen had expected.

‘“I spent my first night huddled by an electric fire and with my fleece on, as I'd arrived in June, Swaziland's mid-winter,” he says. “That was the first shock. My second impression was how Westernised it was in this part of the capital, with a large Spar shop nearby selling Kerrygold and Heineken beer. It wasn't mud huts.”

‘His work is highly sensitive in a country ruled by King Mswati III, who has “a special place in the hearts of the people and a lot of power which he doesn't use properly”.

‘We had to speak on a South African phone as Stephen’s telephone calls are monitored, like his emails. “So we use heavy encryption.”’

‘He wanted change, and from day one in his job working for the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO), he got it.

‘A month in, Stephen was involved with the sort of case he would not have encountered at home [in Northern Ireland]

‘“We work on three levels, the highest of which is advocacy of basic human rights," he says.

‘“There was a criminal called Ntokozo Ngozo, who was accused of shooting at police officers. The police then rang his cell phone and said, ‘We don't know where you are but when we find you, we’ll kill you.’

‘“He was naturally scared and rang a journalist on The Times of Swaziland, thinking that if they ran the story, it would save him. But while the presses were rolling, the police shot him. He’d stripped to his waist and come out with his hands up when he heard them coming, but they questioned him, left him to bleed for four hours and he was dead on arrival in hospital.”

‘SCCCO paid for an independent pathologist who established that, contrary to the official story, which claimed the man was armed and had fired at the police, he had been shot at a distance of 35 centimetres. Also, the holes on his clothes didn't match the bullet holes, so evidence had been tampered with.

‘To top it all, there was never an official investigation. Stephen says: “Another aspect of our work is civic education with various groups. In 1973, the king took away all civil political rights, so there was no free speech, no right of assembly. You could be locked up without trial, just on the say-so of the executive.”

‘He adds that people in Swaziland think they'll be in the same situation as Zimbabwe in a few years’ time.’

According to the Telegraph, Donaghy, who featured in BBC Northern Ireland’s 'Distant Horizons' programme, had reached the age of 41, was in a comfortable job as a management consultant with an equally comfortable lifestyle when he decided he needed, as he puts it, ‘to find out that life doesn't stop at the border’ [of Northern Ireland]. So he signed up for two years via Skill Share International.

Donaghy has the perfect background for the work with a law degree from Newcastle on Tyne and a CV charting a career in management, primarily in the public sector.

I have gotten into trouble in the past for commenting on this blog about the way in which foreign media report on Swaziland. (There are people in the US who are still praying for my soul after my Derek Goes to Africa posts.) I know Donaghy is a reader of this blog, so maybe I can invite him to tell us whether he thought the BBC documentary gave a fair picture of Swaziland in general and of his work in particular.

See also
‘SUNDAY’ PROBES POLICE KILLING