King
Mswati III of Swaziland has so little faith in the new international airport
that has his name that he does not use it.
Instead,
he travels in his private jet from Matsapha, the airport that closed to make
way for the King Mswati III International Airport (KM111) that was built in a
wilderness about 70 km from any major town.
Matsapha remains
open from 08.00 to 17.00 Monday to Friday to service the King’s needs and also
to be available for any emergencies.
The
Airport closed to commercial airlines in September 2014, when KM111 became
operational.
The information
is contained in a report from the Swaziland Civil Aviation Authority (SWACAA).
According to the Observer on Sunday, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati the
airport also accommodates the Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force (USDF) Air Wing, but,
‘in most cases now services royal movement as Their Majesties and members of
the royal family use it as seen during their departures and arrivals’.
The
newspaper also reported, ‘The only planes that frequently use the airport are
local ones, which according to information gathered, are those from the Flight
Academy based at the airport, the army and those from Simunye, Big-Bend,
Ngonini and Usuthu forests.
Meanwhile,
KM111 (formerly known as Sikhuphe) only has three commercial flights a day
leaving the airport, taking a maximum of 150 passengers a day to Johannesburg,
South Africa.
The
airport, considered a white elephant and vanity project for King Mswati who
rules as an absolute monarch cost an estimated E2.5 billion (US$250 million) to
build.
Who says so? None other than Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini. But even though there are no terrorists Swaziland’s security forces will remain on ‘high alert’ and will leave no stone unturned in ‘smoking out the fugitives if indeed they are in Swaziland’.
And just to be sure Dlamini said the Swaziland Commissioner of Police, Isaac Magagula, had set up a Special Task Team led by the Director of Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Moses Maseko, together with Head of the newly Organised Crime Unit alias Tingculungculu, Josefa Bhembe, to investigate.
Sorry, Mr Prime Minister but you can’t have it both ways. Either there are no terrorists in which case there’s no need for intense security, or there are terrorists and they need to be dealt with.
The Prime Minister (who I notice the Swazi Observer, the paper in effect owned by King Mswati III, still insists on calling ‘doctor’ when he has no such qualification) was responding to a report in the Swazi Newsthat said Asian members of al Qaeda had infiltrated Swaziland and might be planning a terrorist attack on Swaziland’s airport.
Plain old Mr Dlamini told the media this week that following the Swazi News report police conducted investigations. ‘So far, the information that has been found does not confirm the existence in Swaziland of these alleged fugitives.’
He said they have a list of names mentioned in the newspaper article. ‘Police are in contact with their international counterparts to conduct background checks on these names and people and, so far, no positive identification has been made.’
Despite the lack of terrorists this is Swaziland after all and the Prime Minister urged people to spy on their neighbours and to inform the police of anything suspicious they might see.
He also told the media they should only publish information on ‘state security’ once it had been agreed to by the Commissioner of Police.
Following the Prime Minister’s request, the Observer,gave a list of phone numbers for members of the public to call with information about terrorists.
Purely as a public service I reproduce the list below. Of course, should readers of this blog wish to phone up the police for a general chat about human rights in Swaziland who am I to stop them.
The international code for Swaziland is 268.
Assistant Commissioner of Police, Moses V. Maseko who is also Director Criminal Investigation Department at 606 2303
Josefa Bhembe – Senior Superintendent, Head of the Organized Crime Unit at 608 1132
Superintendent Joseph Ndlovu, Intelligence Desk Officer Internal at 607 2210
People can also contact Police Public Relations Officer Senior Supt. Vusi Masuku at 606 2312, or by calling the Emergency Line 999, or the Confidential Line 404 6373.
Be afraid, be very afraid. The Swazi press is whipping up rumours that al Qaeda terrorists are hiding in Swaziland.
It’s not the first time we’ve been fed this nonsense.
This time we are told that 10 ‘Asians’ are living ‘undercover’ in various parts of the kingdom.
According to the Swazi News, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, ‘This should undoubtedly trigger a cause for concern to the nation as the New Year unfolds, as such signs could signal an imminent attack that could most likely to first strike at our security lacking airport.’
The newspaper gives no evidence of who these ‘Asians’ are and why they should want to attack Matsapha Airport beyond saying, ‘that the terrorists may have chose Swaziland for its quietness and enabling environment to work on their targets without hindrance’.
The news media are playing into the hands of the Swaziland political elite that has clamped down on dissent in the kingdom since Barnabas Dlamini was illegally appointed Prime Minister in 2008.
Now, the police will use the ‘terrorist threat’ to further clamp down on legitimate protest in Swaziland.
The Swaziland Police spokesman Vusi Masuku let the cat out of the bag. He told the Swazi News, ‘These allegations are to receive the serious investigation they deserve and cannot be taken lightly. Terrorism is a global enemy, threat to innocent human life and economy.
‘We shall cast our net to the length and breath of this country with the aim of exploring all avenues of our investigation in order to probe and verify the existence of such allegations.
‘We appeal to people with information on the matter to volunteer such to the police through their channels of convenience’.
We’ve been here before. In February 2009, the Swazi Observer,the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III,sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, reported that al Qaeda terrorists may be in Swaziland disguised as secondhand car salesmen. The newspaper reported that ‘sleeper cells’ may already be in place ‘and ready to act’.
Although we might be tempted to laugh off the newspapers’ claims, there is something more sinister going on here. Since October 2008 with the illegal appointment of Barnabas Dlamini as Prime Minister, there has been a clampdown on free speech in Swaziland (there was never much to begin with) and a Suppression of Terrorism Act has been implemented to ban organisations critical of the government and the non-democratic structures in Swaziland.
The actions of the Swazi Government have caused outrage both inside Swaziland and in the international community for being heavy handed and anti-democratic. In response the government has said it needs to do these things in order to save Swazis from terrorism.
As I reported in February 2009, the Swazi people are not alone in being duped about the dangers of al Qaeda. A convenient mythology about the group has grown since the World Trade Center bombings in 2001 as a fear of a phantom enemy has been allowed to grow by politicians desperate to maintain their power.
A documentary on al Qaeda shown by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2004 concluded that al Qaeda ‘is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have “sleeper cells”. It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.’
That works out at about E1,500 for each man, woman and child in Swaziland. When you consider 70 per cent of Swazis earn less than E8 a day that’s a big sacrifice for King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, to ask of his subjects.
Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed prime minister, announced last weekthat despite some donations from overseas’ nations, most of the cost of the airport will have to come from the Swazi taxpayer.
The news comes just as Swaziland is being warnedthat income from the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) will fall by half this year and the kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy.
Dlamini said he was ‘confident’ the airport would be open by June 2010.
Sikhuphe International Airport is a vanity project of King Mswati. It has been forced on the Swazi people even though there is no evidence that Swaziland needs the new airport and no expert study was undertaken into the aviation needs of the kingdom before the king gave the go-ahead for building.
The present airport at Matsapha is underused and if more capacity were needed expansion here would be the most sensible way forward.
Sikhuphe International Airport is being built in one of Swaziland’s many wildernesses in the Lubombo region and a road network needs to be built to connect it to the rest of the kingdom. Meanwhile, Matsapha sits close to the two major towns of Swaziland (Manzini and Mbabane) and is well served by road.
In 2003, the Swazi Government ignored advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about participation in unviable projects, and went ahead anyway with building the airport.
The IMF said pouring money into the airport threatened ‘to crowd out budgetary resources for meeting the country’s urgent social needs and to weaken sentiment among donors’.
This week Swaziland’s Minister of Economic Planning and Development Prince Hlangusemphi said the resumption of construction had proved critics wrong.
‘Some said it would never start, whilst other said it would be a white elephant. They will all be proved wrong.’
But Prince Hlangusemphi is a member of the Swazi Royal Family so what would you expect him to say?
Alas, with Swaziland on the verge of financial meltdown the last thing the kingdom needs is this expensive irrelevance: Minister Hlangusemphi will be forced to eat his words before too long.
Does Swaziland suffer from a collective self-delusion? Or is it only King Mswati III who lives in a world of his own?
I ask following the announcement from the king that a multi-billion emalangeni Swazi City, financed by international money and comprising a 25 000 sq m shopping, entertainment and ‘wellness’ centre ‘to rival the world’; a Science and Technology Park; a hi-technology industrial Site and an expansion of Matsapha Industrial Site are to be built over the next three years, creating 15,000 new jobs.
According to the Swazi Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, the king told crowds during his birthday celebrations at the weekend, “I have been assured by the experts who are working on the projects that they will deliver them within the next three years.
‘I have told them that I have taken their word for it and that the nation expects that the three years will be adhered to.’
I especially like the bit about ‘I have taken their word for it’. What possible evidence is there that any international company would want to set up in Swaziland, where seven in ten people are so poor they earn less than one dollar a day and have no money to buy anything at the new shops or leisure centres. In Swaziland, people are generally under educated (think about the present row over free primary schooling) so they are unlikely to be able to work at any ‘hi tech’ plant.
The Swazi City is a delusion and we should say so now.
The sad truth is that foreign investors by and large don’t want to be in Swaziland. Only last week the Swaziland Investment Promotion Authority (SIPA), an organisation tasked with bringing investment into the kingdom, admitted in its performance report for 2006 to 2008 that it had only managed to attract five foreign investments into the country in three years, with a total of 720 jobs.
The businesses that were set up were not exactly ‘hi tech’. One was involved in producing starch from cassava and another makes plastic bags. Two are involved in manufacturing mining drills and hand held tools and the fifth is yet another Taiwanese textile company.
If that’s the best that Swaziland has been able to achieve in the past three years we shouldn’t expect a sudden flood of top flight international companies at the border any time soon.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had announcements about foreign investors bringing lots of jobs to Swaziland: who remembers all the stories about call centres clamouring to get into Swaziland bringing thousands of jobs with them? Nothing happened and nothing is going to happen.
Just about every time King Mswati goes off on a foreign trip there are reports in the media that he has secured this or that agreement and jobs are on the way. It is a sad fantasy.
This is what the king says Swazi City is going to contain: a shopping mall with more than 250 shops, ‘which offer a variety of fashions from around the world’; four floors of luxurious shopping experience; Royal Villas which will offer up to 6-Star accommodation facilities suitable for all type of guests; a 28-Floor Hotel which will have 350 guest suites, world-class restaurants, three swimming areas and in-door sporting facilities, a health spa and a casino.
Now tell me, can you believe it?
Still in the land of fantasy, the new Sikhuphe International airport will receive its first plane in 2010. This is according to Millennium Project Unit (MPU) manager Lloyd Dlamini, who told a team of ambassadors from the Gulf and Arab States who are in the kingdom to explore avenues of cooperation and development between their countries and Swaziland.
Again, according to the king’s newspaper, Dlamini wants them to help get international airlines to use Sikhuphe International Airport and also to fund some of the project.
For those who had forgotten, Sikhuphe is being built in one of Swaziland’s many wilderness areas in the Lubombo region. Building started at the behest of King Mswati and Sikhuphe was billed as an airport that would be a hub for travellers coming into the continent of Africa. The idea was they’d fly into Sikhuphe and then change planes and fly on to their intended destinations.
I have never seen any analysis that supports this objective. In 2003, the Swazi Government ignored advice from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about participation in unviable projects, and went ahead anyway with building the airport.
Why would anyone want to fly to this new airport when hardly anyone uses Swaziland’s existing airport at Matspaha? Business is so bad at Matsapha that last year the Swazi Express airline went out of business because it couldn’t attract passengers.
But at least Matspha is close to Swaziland’s main urban centres and is relatively easy to get to; Sikhuphe by contrast doesn’t even have an access road.
And let’s not forget that major international airports at Johannesburg and Cape Town are both a short flying time away.
According to the Observer, Minister of Economic Planning and Development Prince Hlangusemphi, said ‘The team of ambassadors have airlines in their countries and these are the countries we are targeting because they have big airlines which also operate in Africa.’
That may be, but if they wanted to fly to Swaziland they could use the existing airport. The truth is they don’t want to and, well, why would they?
