Africa Contact, who were due to hold a protest outside the consul’s house in Copenhagen on Friday, had also previously campaigned to pressure the consul to resign his position over Swaziland’s abysmal human rights record and its political prisoners, although it is not known whether this campaign has had any bearing on Flemming Jørgensen’s decision to resign his post.
This is from Peter Kenworthy’s stiffkitten blog
Send Swaziland’s king and his many wives home from today’s Royal wedding
April 29, 2011 by Peter Kenworthy
“It is a disgrace that the British Monarchy has invited Swaziland’s King Mswati to attend today’s Royal wedding,” says Information Officer in the Danish solidarity organization Africa Contact, Morten Nielsen. “They should send Swaziland’s king and his many wives home.”
Today’s Royal wedding is an event that will be broadcast to billions of viewers around the world, and inviting brutal despots such as Swaziland’s absolute monarch, King Mswati III, and his 13 wives, will be seen as a recognition of their international legitimacy by the Swazi regime.
Mswati’s attendance at today’s wedding comes only a couple of weeks after the brutal clamp-down of peaceful demonstrations in Swaziland for democracy and against Mswati’s absolute rule. All political parties are banned in Swaziland, where the King in effect runs the country as a dictatorial landlord. Two thirds of the population lives for under a dollar a day, many receiving food aid from the UN, while the King and his large royal family live a life of luxury.
Africa Contact, who has worked in Swaziland for over ten years together with the country’s democratic movement, therefore asks British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, “to send Swaziland’s King back to Swaziland with the message that he should not return before political parties have been unbanned, political prisoners have been released, the country has been democratized, and democratic elections have been held.”
This request is neither unreasonable nor is it unrealistic. Sami Khiyami, the Syrian ambassador, has already been ‘disinvited’ because of his country’s appalling human rights record, and protests have been held outside the Saudi embassy in London to protest against Saudi Prince Mohamed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz’s invitation. British NGO ACTSA has also protested outside the luxurious Dorchester Hotel in London, where King Mswati and his entourage of 50-odd people was to have stayed, forcing them to flee to another hotel.
By Peter Kenworthy
“Swaziland has many things in common with what is happening in North Africa. Mass demonstrations have planned for April 12, and are set to continue until there has been a change of system in Swaziland,” Danish NGO Africa Contact’s Morten Nielsen told DR, the national Danish broadcasting cooperation, yesterday (31 March 2011).
Morten Nielsen, who has worked with democratisation in Swaziland for many years, was invited in the studio to discuss why he believes that Swaziland might be the next African country to experience a change of regime as the result of a popular uprising.
“Swaziland is an absolute monarchy”, Nielsen told listeners, “and on paper it is a middle income country like Egypt and South Africa. But 80% of all Swaziland’s assets are owned by a very small group of people. And because it is an absolute monarchy, all power is concentrated in the hands of the king. Swaziland is run as a farm. As the king owns all land, all crops, and all companies in Swaziland, he also in effect owns the people. He decides where they may live, whether or not they can attend school, what work they are allowed to do, etc.”
But Morten Nielsen believes that a new, well-educated generation have been inspired by the popular uprisings in North Africa, as well as hard-pressed by their own increasingly desperate situation, to try and change the system.
“Swaziland has many things in common with what is going on in North Africa,” he says. “Between 40 and 50% of young people are unemployed in Swaziland, and many of them are actually well-educated but cannot find a job. So these well-educated youths are desperate, and at the same time Swaziland is strapped for cash. The government cannot afford to pay pensions for the elderly anymore, they cannot pay the salaries, and the military is running out of food. So in many ways the country is falling apart.”
And even though mass demonstrations are by no means unheard of in Swaziland, though demonstrators are often on the receiving end of police brutality and are given long prison sentences, Morten Nielsen believes that the new generation has learnt a lesson from both the older generations and from the new ways of organising popular uprisings in North Africa.
“I believe that the new generation of Swazis see things differently. They have learnt much from North Africa, amongst other things not to only depend upon a few leaders, but instead have many, to ensure that the police cannot shut them down by arresting a small number of people. This is why the responsibility for the April events is shared amongst thousands of people.”
But the dissatisfaction with the current regime is something that is shared by most Swazis, says Morten Nielsen. “More and more people in Swaziland are standing up and saying ‘we want to get rid of the absolute monarchy and replace it with multi-party democracy.’ Not because this will necessarily solve all the country’s economical problems, but because the present system has clearly failed. This is obvious to all.”
Has Barnabas Dlamini,
This week his government announced that he had been awarded a medal for his contribution to human rights by the World Citizen Awards (WCA).
In a statement the Swazi Government said the medal was being given to the prime minister ‘as a person who has accomplished and made numerous contributions to mankind’. He was also described as a ‘highly respected global figure, whose role in history has been significant.’
This award, the statement went on, ‘is also in recognition of his pre-eminent role in the shaping of the global community and continued influence on the world stage’.
Pretty flattering stuff, but piffle of course. We all know that Dlamini has made no such contribution to ‘mankind’. Indeed, he has done the opposite and it is well documented that he is an enemy of freedom and human rights.
Only this month (September 2010) he called for the use of ‘sipakatane’ (otherwise known as ‘bastinado’, a form of torture that involves flogging the bare soles of a person’s feet) on people who campaigned against his government.
Dlamini, who allows himself to be titled ‘doctor’, although he only has an honorary doctorate from the University of Swaziland, seems to have fallen hook, line and sinker for it.
Since the announcement last weekend numerous people tried to contact WCA to register a protest at the award, but found the email contact it gave on its website did not work.
Attempts to find information about the three ‘prominent’ figures listed on the WCA website as the organisation’s leaders also proved fruitless. None of them appeared anywhere on the Internet, except in reference to their role at WCA.
There could be a pretty innocent explanation for this, but I can’t think of one.
Alarm bells were rung by Africa Contact, Denmark, when it sent emails of protest to people listed as members of the board of WCA and received a reply from one of them stating, ‘I regret to say that you and I - among others - have been victims of a hoax.’
This led Africa Contact to conclude, ‘The hoax is that the award is not given by the alleged board members of the World Citizen Award, but that the recipients of the awards are in effect paying to receive a bogus award.’
Participants and the organisations they represent are invited to a lavish three day bash in the Bahamas, which I suppose is paid for by the participants. There is also a ‘commemorative booklet’ published to mark the event.
The suggestion that Dlamini may be the victim of a hoax prompted Morten Nielsen from Africa Contact to say, ‘It is unbelievable that the Swazi government would fall for such a hoax as they must be well aware of their appalling human rights record. According to the widely recognized Mo Ibrahim Index, that rates countries according to indicators such as human rights records and governance, Swaziland ranks a dismal 45th out of 53 African countries in the category of participation and human rights. Incidentally, this is just above Zimbabwe’.
The Swazi Government has yet to respond to the claim it may have been hoaxed.
This is taken from Peter Kenworthy’s Stiffkitten blogsite (10 August 2010). It is a follow up article to History and Politics in Swaziland.
Morten Nielsen: Democratisation in Swaziland must come from below
The repression and persecution of the democracy movement in Swaziland has increased, says Morten Nielsen from Africa Contact. On the positive side, there has been an attitudinal change in Swaziland that can be seen in the strikes by 10-20.000 women in the textile industry in 2008, as well as in the of the steady progress of the democracy movement.”
These strikes violate all gender and cultural norms in Swaziland”, says Morten Nielsen, “and the democracy movement is gathering strength. The regime is worried”.
Amongst other things, this change in attitude is due to the increasingly repressive nature of the regime and because the Swazi economy is “in free fall”, he claims. This has led to cuts in public services and benefits such as pensions, education and the health system, which in turn has led to “an increasing social anger in Swaziland that can be felt when speaking to Swazis, although people are also scared”.
To read the full article, click here.
