IS SWAZI MONARCHY FALLING APART?

30 July 2011

The Economist

SOURCE

Swaziland

A king at bay

Africa’s last absolute monarchy may be falling apart

THE government has run out of cash, and no one seems willing to lend it any without radical reforms which Mswati III, Swaziland’s king, seems loth even to consider. But the pressure is mounting. Civil servants, faced with wage cuts of 10%, are threatening to strike. Schools, deprived of state subsidies, may have to close. In a country with the world’s highest incidence of HIV/AIDS, clinics are running out of antiretroviral drugs for want of funds. Government suppliers, owed millions of dollars in arrears, have begun to demand cash on delivery, which the government cannot produce. The 43-year-old king has even cancelled this year’s celebrations to mark his 25 years on the throne.

This is the worst crisis that little Swaziland, locked into the north-east corner of South Africa, has suffered since independence from Britain in 1968. Most of its revenue comes from a regional customs union dominated by South Africa. But last year, thanks to an economic slowdown, this income, really a disguised subsidy, fell by almost two-thirds. As government spending usually accounts for nearly half of Swaziland’s GDP, this has clobbered the economy. Thousands of businesses went bust as the government slashed spending.

Unemployment rose sharply, with some 40% of working-age people already without jobs. Of Swaziland’s 1.2m people, nearly three-quarters live on less than $2 a day.

Earlier this year the World Bank offered to help bail the country out—on condition of certain reforms. The government agreed to halve its budget deficit with tax rises and austerity measures, including public-sector job losses. As it has met almost none of these conditions, international loans have been withheld. Because it is not a democracy, Swaziland fails to qualify for budget aid from donors such as the European Union. So the king has had to go cap in hand to his rich neighbour, South Africa.

As a Zulu traditionalist and polygamist like the king, President Jacob Zuma might have been willing quietly to oblige. Moreover, he is formally engaged to one of Mswati’s nieces. But the pro-democracy uprising in the Arab world has increased the pressure on Mr Zuma, at home and abroad, to treat despots in his own part of the globe more sternly.

His own political future may even depend on it. In the run-up to next year’s conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), held every five years, when all the party’s leaders come up for re-election, he is anxious to keep on side such powerful critics as the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the ANC Youth League, both of which strongly support Swaziland’s pro-democracy movement.

Swazi opposition leaders, who see the economic crisis as a blessing in disguise, have begged Mr Zuma not to hand their embattled monarch any cash unless he promises sweeping democratic as well as fiscal reforms. At a meeting with the king in mid-July, he is understood to have laid down some minimal conditions, including a modicum of political reforms, in return for the $220m-300m Swaziland is believed to have requested. With his back to the wall, the king is pondering his options.

SWAZI RIGHTS: READ ALL ABOUT THEM

No matter how much the Swaziland Government wants to keep the world in ignorance of the human rights abuses in the kingdom, the truth is getting out.

At the start of the recent Global Week of Action for democracy in Swaziland, two Associated Press reporters were turned away at the border with South Africa. The clear intention of the Swazi regime, headed by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, was to try to stop reporting of the protests reaching the international community.

The Swazi regime failed miserably. Over the past two weeks international media have been full of reports about Swaziland, exposing the harsh regime in the kingdom and the way that the Swazi state tries to stifle legitimate protest.

Here is a summary of some of the more interesting articles. Click on the media name to go to the full articles. Also, on Friday (17 September 2010) I posted a report from CBC in Canada that is worth a listen if you haven’t already done so.

The Economist magazine in a report headed The king is good for the tourists, much less so for his people contrasts the image of the ‘pretty little mountainous kingdom’ that is sold to tourists with the reality of a state where ‘political parties are banned, critics are systematically arrested and beaten up by police and freedom of expression is severely curtailed’.

It says, ‘As wars of liberation raged around it in the 1980s, this former British protectorate gained a reputation as an island of peace in a sea of regional conflict. And that is the way the government wants to keep things, come what may. The prime minister has even threatened to bring back the bastinado, a form of torture where a person’s feet are beaten with a cane or a rod, to deal with pesky dissidents and interfering foreigners. “There is peace,” Mduduzi Gina, head of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, concedes, “but it’s not real peace if every time there is dissent, you have to suppress it. It’s like sitting on top of a boiling pot.”’

‘Over the past few years the oppression has been getting worse. Yet no country seems willing to take up the Swazis’ case. They feel most aggrieved about South Africa’s silence. After all, they gave refuge to the African National Congress during its liberation struggle. Why can’t it return the favour now? Because, it is whispered, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, received money from King Mswati during his campaign to oust former president Thabo Mbeki. Mr Zuma is also still officially engaged to one of the king’s nieces. And South Africa wants Swaziland’s support to get itself elected back onto the UN Security Council next month.’

Business Day, South Africa, questions why the South African government was silent over the violence meted out by Swazi police to South African citizens during the protests in Swaziland.

Loyiso Langeni commented in the newspaper, ‘This is in stark contrast to the swiftness with which SA would react in condemning human rights abuses in regions such as the Middle East, western Sahara and Rwanda.

‘SA recently recalled its highest ranking diplomatic representatives to Israel and Rwanda in protest against human rights abuses there. This is the strongest action a government can take short of cutting all ties with another country.’

Langeni goes on, ‘Yet several attempts by Business Day last week to get a comment from the ministry on the suppression of political parties and human rights abuses in Swaziland were met with silence. This raises the question of whether SA considers the aspirations of the Swazi s for a free and democratic dispensation as not deserving the same attention as those in Palestine and the Morocco-invaded western Sahara region.’

Langeni concludes, ‘SA is vocal about its enviable track record of a being a progressive, human-rights centred nation. Is it not time that SA, as the most powerful and influential country in the region, extends this culture to neighbouring Swaziland?’

The Morning Star, UK, carried an article that has also appeared in a number of other publications by Mike Marqusee, in which he writes, ‘Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.1 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world's last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive.’

Elsewhere, Mario Masuku, of the banned People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) spoke to the Voice of America (VoA). He said the Swazi people’s demand for democratic change and the rule of law will not be silenced by government threats.

He was interviewed after Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini said his government will consider punishing political dissidents by beating their feet with spikes.

Dlamini also warned that foreigners who interfere in the country’s internal politics will face the same punishment.

VoA reports that analysts said that, although a constitution was reintroduced in 2006, the level of power invested in King Mswati III is so significant that the country can be considered an absolute monarchy.

Despite the constitution, the king holds executive, legislative and judicial power.

Critics say the government has successfully stifled political opposition by putting pressure on human rights organizations, trade unions, and civil society groups and banning all political parties.

SWAZI JOURNALISTS CAN’T ADD UP

A row over the murder rate in Swaziland has exposed shortcomings in Swazi journalism – and also in the Swazi Government.

S’gayoyo Magongo, the Minister of Public Service and Information, publicly attacked overseas’ journalists at a press conference on Thursday about the number of murders that are committed in Swaziland.

The internationally respected Economist group of magazines had published statistics in its publication Pocket World in Figures that said Swaziland had the second highest number of murders in the whole world.

The Economist report was picked up by the Times Sunday and this is what brought it to the Minister’s attention. The Economist had reported that there were 13.6 murders per 100,000 head of population in Swaziland.

On Friday (21 September 2007) both the Swazi Observer and the Times of Swaziland reported S’gayoyo ‘slamming’ and ‘rubbishing’ the report. S’gayoyo said that the Economist got it wrong.

S’gayoyo scoffed at a press conference that this would mean that something like 155,856 Swazis would have been murdered in a year, an incredible figure considering that there are only 1.1 million people living in the whole of Swaziland.

The figures would be alarming indeed, if that is what the Economist said. In fact the Economist said there were 13.6 murders per 100,000 people in Swaziland. When you extend that ratio to the whole 1.1 million Swaziland population the total number of murders comes to about 150 a year. This figure is roughly the same number of murders that have been reported by the Royal Swazi Police in its annual reports, demonstrating that the Economist got it about right.

The Times Sunday got the figures wrong. And so did S’gayoyo. He told the press conference that ‘the Government’ had checked the original source of the information (so we must assume that ‘the Government’ – whoever that is – made the same mistake as the Times Sunday journalist).

What they both did was to read 13.6 per 100,000 as 13.6 per cent of 100,000. This enabled them to arrive at the figure of 155,856. The mistake should be obvious. Trying to calculate the murder rate in the whole 1.1 million population as 13.6 per cent of 100,000 simply makes no sense.

So the minister made a basic statistical error. But how come both the Times and the Observer didn’t point out the mistake to him, but instead printed it?

There are two parts to the answer, I think. The first is that S’gayoyo is a minister and journalists in Swaziland don’t, as a habit, correct ministers (even when, as in this case, he was so clearly wrong). The second part to the answer is that the Times and Observer journalists themselves probably didn’t understand the statistic either. You only need to read the business pages of both the daily newspapers to see reports written in such a way that it is clear that the journalists don’t understand figures.

S’gayoyo’s error is embarrassing for him, because he told the press conference that ‘the Government’ had checked the original report on the Internet, so the misinterpretation of the Economist report must be seen as his own responsibility.

He then used the Economist ‘error’ as an excuse to attack the international media for misreporting Swaziland.

The Times reported S’gayoyo saying, ‘On behalf of the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland, the Ministry of Public Services and Information wishes to caution about the ramifications of one-sided, biased and non-factual journalistic practices.'

He went on, ‘Inaccurate, one-sided, negative reports give an unattractive perception of the country and may fan away foreign direct investment and tourism.’

The original mistake was obvious to people outside of Swazi journalism and Swazi government and it was quickly spotted and yesterday (23 September 2007) the Times Sunday fell over itself to correct the mistake.

So to recap: the Times Sunday journalists, the Minister of Public Service and Information and ‘the Government’ all failed their stats exam. And as for the reporting of the Economist’s role in all this, it wasn’t the international journalists who were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘one-sided’ and ‘non-factual’. It was the Times Sunday and Minister S’gayoyo himself.

So, one small lack of understanding of a statistic has exposed failings in Swazi journalism, the Swazi ‘Government’ and the Minister of Public Service and Information. Not bad for one morning’s work.