IS EGYPT SWAZI LOAN OFFER A SCAM?

A cloud of mystery surrounds a group of Egyptian financiers who arrived in Swaziland today (18 October 2011) claiming they can offer King Mswati III a loan of E2.4billion ($US300 million), at no interest and no strings attached , to bail out his kingdom. And the money will be available within a week.

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reports today that the financiers are from a company called FIDICO (Finance, Innovation, Development Investment Company). Representatives of the company have arrived in Swaziland to meet with the king. Once they have convinced him that the deal can be done, the money will flow.

It sounds too good to be true – because it probably is.

The mystery is that when you search for FIDICO or the Finance, Innovation, Development Investment Company on the Internet you can’t find it. Nor, can you find the principal characters in the deal named today by the Observer.

The Observer reports that FIDICO was expected to sign a ‘development agreement with the new government of Comores on Thursday and was urgently expected in Northern and Southern Sudan for the same purposes’.

The Observer adds, ‘FIDICO, according to the company flyer, has created financial engineering concepts and mechanisms, which they successfully used for large-scale development projects in several African countries, at no cost to their governments, and without the need for loans of any kind, nor the incurring of any debt. FIDICO has refined, from experience, the new ecological or natural resource paradigm, as absolutely essential to future sustainable development.’

The newspaper goes on to report that FIDICO says it secured $US280 million funding for agricultural development in Namibia at no cost to the government.

It also tell readers about the African Dream, which it says has been created by the financier behind FIDICO, ‘based on his knowledge gained from years of experience initiating and carrying development projects in association with the people, including the innovators and leaders of Africa’.

And yet all this fine work seems to have gone unreported. Nowhere on the Internet have I been able to find any information that substantiates any of the claims the Observer makes on behalf of FIDICO today.

The representatives from FIDICO are in Swaziland today; I suggest a reporter from the Observer nips round smartly to ask them some pertinent questions.

Otherwise we might be forced to conclude that a bunch of con merchants are trying to take King Mswati for an idiot.

‘KING MUST NEGOTIATE FOR REFORM’

Swaziland’s King Mswati III and the government he hand-picked should negotiate with the Swazi people for political reform – before an uprising starts.

With popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, turning former dictatorships into fledgling democracies, there are stirrings of unrest in Swaziland.

Musa Hlophe, coordinator of the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations, writing in the Times Sunday today (27 February 2011), says, ‘... with events showing that the populations of North Africa and the Middle East are now demanding the same things we [in Swaziland] are demanding: democracy, our government has a serious problem of adjusting to the new realities. My take is that we are all better off if our leaders were to take the lead, like the monarchies of Bahrain and Jordan have done: lead the change processes.’

He writes, ‘They should initiate the necessary reforms, engage the opposition and the larger civil society in shaping a new direction for the country, in political terms.’

Here is an extract from his article. To read it in full, click here.

The pictures that touched my heart

Personally, I believe that events in North Africa and the Middle East, have grave implications for the kingdom of Eswatini.

Given the fact that Swaziland had already turned their backs on the West, adopting, instead, a look-East policy, it therefore follows that with the East crumbling, Swaziland is left in limbo, politically.

We all know why Swaziland decided to look East. They were being troubled by their Western friends who kept nudging them to move towards democratisation. The Swazi government has never cherished the idea of democracy. They hate the very word: democracy, although calling their Tinkhundla system a democratic one, simply because it allows unfettered control over the citizens.

Democracy

Therefore, with events showing that the populations of North Africa and the Middle East are now demanding the same things we are demanding: democracy, our government has a serious problem of adjusting to the new realities. My take is that we are all better off if our leaders were to take the lead, like the monarchies of Bahrain and Jordan have done: lead the change processes.

They should initiate the necessary reforms, engage the opposition and the larger civil society in shaping a new direction for the country, in political terms.

Let us not wait until we are overtaken by the revolution, however remotely possible this may look for now.

If we do nothing and hope to rely on the army to keep us in power, we may live to regret it.

Remember, trying to negotiate in the middle of a revolution is very dangerous because by then, you are either ignored or told that you are coming too late when people are no longer prepared to make concessions. It is better when we anticipate and lead change, we can do it at our own pace and terms. It is interesting to note the difference in strategy that the Libyan government took from all of the others in keeping the Army deliberately weak.

This was so that Gaddafi could not lose power the way that he took it – through a military coup. The people that are murdering Libyans in the streets are not the regular army but mercenaries from across Africa and the world who have no duty or ethics to protect their people only to take orders and wages. A real army knows the difference between protecting a government and protecting a country and its people.

This is why the tank commanders in Egypt were seen removing their headsets and not obeying plainly illegal orders.

International Press reports this week have shown that our government has been trying to buy some seriously powerful weaponry, including helicopter gunships and heavy machine guns.

I wonder who the intended targets are.

RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN SWAZILAND

The recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya have fascinated many within the pro-democracy groups in Swaziland. By the same token, the ruling regime has been rattled. In an undemocratic country like Swaziland, people have good reason to monitor what is happening in the north and to – a large extent – even aspire to have the same courage and motivation as the revolutionaries. Given the mainstream media’s failure to adequately cover these events, Swazi citizens are turning to Facebook to find out the news – and plan their own uprising, Manqoba Nxumalo writes in the latest edition of Free African Media.

Mainstream media in Swaziland has not paid much attention to the uprisings in the north, let alone pointed out the lessons to be learnt, not just by the present regime in the country, but also similar by dictators all over the continent. In fact, it has been conspicuously silent on updating the Swazi nation on what is happening in north Africa.

Nxumalo explores the rise of social media in Swaziland and its influence in galvanising people in Swaziland.

To read the full article, click here.

SWAZILAND: ‘CHANGE IS URGENT’

‘Change is becoming increasingly urgent in Swaziland, an authoritarian absolute monarchy where the economy is in danger of spiralling out of control. But as recent events in Tunisia and Egypt have shown, change can happen quickly’, PETER KENWORTHY interviews Swaziland United Democratic Front Project Coordinator Sikelela Dlamini, for his stiffkitten blog.

For the full article, click here.

ONLY THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED

I wrote last week about the striking similarity between conditions in Swaziland and in Tunisia where people took to the streets to overthrow a dictator.

Then protests moved onto Egypt. Here, ordinary people, especially the youth, bypassed the established opposition parties and took to the streets on their own account – utilising social networking to publicise their cause.

There are lessons there for Swaziland.

As with Tunisia, there are uncanny similarities between the social, economic and political situation in Egypt, prior to the uprising and the experience of Swaziland.

This was brought home to me by an editorial comment in the Observer, a Sunday newspaper in the UK, yesterday (30 January 2011). The newspaper was writing about Egypt, but it could easily have been (and might yet be) writing about Swaziland.

Here is part of what the Observer wrote. I have changed the names ‘Egypt’ to read ‘Swaziland’ and president ‘Hosni Mubarak’ to read ‘King Mswati III’. See what I mean?

Click here to read the original Observer comment.

[King Mswati’s] dictatorship must end now

Days of rage in [Swaziland] signify the end of days for [King Mswati’s] repressive and bankrupt regime. For [25] years, the [king] has held his country down through fear, secret police, emergency laws, American cash subsidies and a lamentable absence of vision and imagination. His crude, Gaullist message: without me, chaos. Now the chaos has come anyway. And [Mswati] must go.

Five days of rage on the streets of [Swaziland] have transformed the way [Swaziland] sees itself. For years, they said it was impossible. The regime was too powerful, the masses too apathetic, the security apparatus too ubiquitous. Like eastern Europeans trapped in the Soviet Union's cold, pre-1991 embrace, they struggled in the dark, without help, without hope. Movements for change, such as [PUDEMO], were brutally suppressed. Courageous dissidents such as [Mario Masuku] were harassed, beaten and imprisoned.

Yet all the time, pressure for reform was rising. Every day, higher prices, economic stagnation, poverty and unemployment, political stasis, official corruption and a stifled, censored public space became less and less tolerable. Every day, impatience with the regime's insulting insouciance bred more enemies. Hatred seeped like poison through the veins of the people. Until, at last, in five days of rage, as if as one, they cried: ‘Enough!’ And now, [Mswati] must go.

Fittingly, [Swaziland’s] youth led the way against the old order, using not guns or bombs but the arsenal of 21st-century information technology: social media, mobiles, texts and emails. The Paris mob of Bastille notoriety became, through peaceful evolution, the flash mob of Tahrir Square. They espoused no leaders. They wrote no plans. In fast-moving, separate but interconnected street offensives, they out-thought, outfoxed and outran the police.

With the once omnipotent security forces looking beatable, [Swazis] of all backgrounds rose to join the fight: students, trade unionists, women, rights activists, Islamists and, crucially, the great workers’ army of [Swaziland’s] employed and unemployed. Here, truly, was people power in all its magnificent might. Here was democracy in the raw. Here was the legitimacy of a [Swaziland] freed of its old fears and suddenly alive to its changing destiny. In five days of rage, they seized control of their country’s future. And so, inevitably, [Mswati] must go.