COURT ORDERS HOMES DESTROYED

The High Court in Swaziland has ordered the forced eviction of more residents from their stick-and-mud homes to make way for the building of a technology park, dubbed a ‘vanity project’ for King Mswati III.

The King, who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, wants to build a Royal Science and Innovation Park/ Biotechnology Park at Nokwane.

The High Court in Mbabane ordered the eviction of 20 people from their homes. There were also forced evictions from Nokwane in September 2014 after residents failed to stop a court order.

In the latest move, residents failed to convince the High Court that they had any legal right to be on the land.

Judge Mpendulo Simelane said the ownership of the property was vested in the King in trust for the Swazi Nation and the King had allocated the land to government through the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology for the construction of the Park.

He also ordered the demolition of ‘all and every illegal structure erected’ on this farm.

The clearance is to make way for the building of a Royal Science and Innovation Park/ Biotechnology Park. When the project was first announced in 2010 it was criticised by observers as another ‘vanity project’ for the King. It runs alongside the Sikhuphe International Airport (now renamed King Mswati III Airport) which was officially opened in March 2014 after costing at least E3 billion (US$300 million) to build. 

In 2010, Moses Zungu, the Project Manager for the Royal Science and Innovation Park/ Biotechnology Park, said the first phase of the project, which would involve basic infrastructure such as roads, drainage, landscaping and other works, would cost E850 million (US$85 million). He said the first phase would start in April 2011 – more than three years ago.

No needs analysis for the development has been published, but Zungu said in 2010 the science park was the initiative of the King.

In July 2011 it was revealed that the Swazi Government had taken out a US$20 million loan to part-finance the science park. The loan, in the form of a line of credit, was from the Export-Import Bank of India.

 

More than seven in ten of King Mswati’s 1.3 million subjects live in abject poverty with incomes of less than US$2 per day. The kingdom has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world and earlier this year the Swazi Minister of Health Sibongile Ndlela-Simelane said there was not enough money to pay for drugs to prevent the death of children from diarrhoea in the kingdom.

See also

HOMES DESTROYED FOR KING’S VANITY PROJECT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2014/09/homes-destroyed-for-kings-vanity.html

 

FLAW IN SWAZI KING’S VANITY PROJECT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/flaw-in-swazi-kings-vanity-project.html

NEW VANITY PROJECT FOR SWAZI KING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-vanity-project-for-swazi-king.html

 

SWAZI KING SNATCHES $425m PROJECT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/swazi-king-snatches-425m-project.html

HOMES DESTROYED FOR KING’S VANITY

Homes have been demolished against residents’ wishes to make way for another of King Mswati III’s ‘vanity projects’.

The King wants to build a Royal Science and Innovation Park/ Biotechnology Park at Nokwane.

Residents of ten homesteads tried to get a court order to stop their homes being demolished but were told by the Attorney-General the courts were powerless and only the King himself could stop the destruction.

King Mswati rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The homesteads, which were mostly stick-and-mud houses, were bulldozed on Thursday (25 September 2014). Local media reported that residents were traumatised when about 20 armed police officers forced them out and at least three residents needed hospital treatment. Some people had lived at Nokwane for at least 20 years, the Swazi Observer newspaper reported.

 

The newspaper reported, ‘The [police] officers, who were armed with pistols, rifles and batons moved from one homestead to another as the sheriff informed the residents of the demolitions which were to be effected in a matter of time.’

The clearance was to make way for the building of a Royal Science and Innovation Park/ Biotechnology Park. When the project was first announced in 2010 it was criticised by observers as another ‘vanity project’ for the King. It runs alongside the Sikhuphe International Airport (now renamed King Mswati III Airport) which was officially opened in March 2014 after costing at least E3 billion (US$300 million) to build. No commercial airlines have used the airport, but Swaziland Airlink, a company controlled by the Swazi Government, has been forced to abandon using Matsapha Airport and will move to Sikhuphe in October 2014.

In 2010, Moses Zungu, the Project Manager for the Royal Science and Innovation Park/ Biotechnology Park, said the first phase of the project, which would involve basic infrastructure such as roads, drainage, landscaping and other works, would cost E850 million (US$85 million). He said the first phase would start in April 2011 – more than three years ago.

No needs analysis for the development has been published, but Zungu said in 2010 the science park was the initiative of the King.

In July 2011 it was revealed that the Swazi Government had taken out a US$20 million loan to part-finance the science park. The loan, in the form of a line of credit, was from the Export-Import Bank of India. 

More than seven in ten of King Mswati’s 1.3 million subjects live in abject poverty with incomes of less than US$2 per day. The kingdom has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world and earlier this year the Swazi Minister of Health Sibongile Ndlela-Simelane said there was not enough money to pay for drugs to prevent the death of children from diarrhoea in the kingdom.

See also

FLAW IN SWAZI KING’S VANITY PROJECT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/flaw-in-swazi-kings-vanity-project.html

NEW VANITY PROJECT FOR SWAZI KING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-vanity-project-for-swazi-king.html

 

SWAZI KING SNATCHES $425m PROJECT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/swazi-king-snatches-425m-project.html

STOP KING WASTING LOAN MONEY

The Swaziland Government has revealed that E1 billion of the E2.4 billion loan it will get from South Africa will be used on ‘capital projects’ – but it hasn’t said which ones.

This is worrying because King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, has in the past forced his hand-picked governments to waste millions on his own, still incomplete, vanity projects.

Top of the list is the Sikhuphe International Airport that remains only partially built in a Swazi wasteland, a very long way from any town or city. One informed estimated published by the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati himself, said the total cost of the airport could top US$1 billion before it is finished – if it ever is. The most recent date for completion – the end of July 2011 – passed without fanfare and with Sikhuphe nowhere near finished.

The King has a second vanity project that he has demanded be built – the Royal Science and Technology Park – that is estimated to cost E850 million (US$ 120 million) for the first phase alone. This ‘park’ is supposed to consist of a bio-technological park and an information technology park at Nokwane.

No one bothered to make a needs-assessment for the park (or the airport for that matter), but when the plan was launched in November 2010, project manager Moses Zungu said world class researchers would want to come to work at the site. He even said that the kingdom’s only university, the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), would play a key role in providing expertise at the park.

That’s the same UNISWA that hasn’t been able to open for business this academic year because there is no money.

According to Swazi Finance Minister Majozi Sithole this week, E1 billion of an E2.4 billion loan from South Africa will be spent on ‘capital projects’ – twice the amount to be used on social projects, such as health, education and grants for the elderly.

King Mswati and his governments have a long record of wasting public money on unnecessary projects and spending. Before South Africa hands over the money, we should all be told clearly how it is to be spent. None of it must be used on the King’s vanity projects. They are unnecessary and a complete waste of money.

See also

NEW VANITY PROJECT FOR SWAZI KING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-vanity-project-for-swazi-king.html

$20m LOAN FOR KING’S VANITY PROJECT

As Swaziland’s economy grinds to a halt and destitute people are forced to eat cow dung, the Swazi Government has taken out a US$20 million loan to part-finance another of the King’s white elephants – an information technology park.

The loan, in the form of a line of credit, comes from the Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank).

But, there will be little opportunities for Swazi businesses to profit because 75 percent of the goods and services paid for by the money will have to be sourced from India.

The money is to help set up the Royal Science and Technology Park. When the scheme was announced in November 2010, the total cost of the project was put at E850 million (US$120 million). It was said building would start in April 2012.

Nobody, except King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch (and his hanger-on) believes the park is relevant to the needs of Swaziland.

The Minister of Information Communication and Technology Nelsiwe Shongwe said in November that the project would consist of a bio-technological park and an information technology park at Nokwane.

According to a report at the time in the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, Moses Zungu, the Project Manager, said the science park was the initiative of the king.

Which tells us all we need to know.

Swaziland is being bled dry by the Sikhuphe International Airport project which may end up costing US$1 billion by the time all bills are in. The airport is not needed, and nor is the technology park. But both have the public backing of the king, so (such is the way in Swaziland) both must be built.

Delegates from the International Monetary Fund are due in Swaziland in August to investigate how close the Swazi Government is to implementing its own Fiscal Adjustment Roadmap to save the kingdom’s economy.

I hope the first question the IMF asks is where is the money to come from for the Royal Science and Technology Park?

See also

FLAW IN SWAZI KING’S VANITY PROJECT

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/flaw-in-swazi-kings-vanity-project.html

NEW VANITY PROJECT FOR SWAZI KING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-vanity-project-for-swazi-king.html

SWAZI KING SNATCHES $425m PROJECT

How not to run the Swazi economy: part 106.

King Mswati III, Barnabas Dlamini, the illegally-appointed Prime Minister of Swaziland, and Majozi Sithole, his (increasingly) inept Finance Minister have been shouting from the hilltops and travelling the globe (in luxury style) to implore business people to invest in the kingdom.

What they want is for companies to build things in Swaziland and create jobs, thereby contributing to the economy and getting the kingdom out of the financial mess it is presently in.

Not many take up the offer to supply Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as it is called, and when they do what happens: the Swazi ‘elders’ gang up against them and run them out of town.

That’s what’s happened with the so-called Jozini Big Six Project in Lavumisa, one of the poorest parts of Swaziland. After a year of work, King Mswati has turned round and taken over the project and kept it for himself (sorry, kept it for ‘the Swazi nation’).

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, put is as clear as a bell, ‘The Royal Jozini Big Six property is now the property of His Majesty King Mswati III, the King and Ingwenyama of the Swazi Nation.’

Jozini Big Six is a massive project (so beloved of King Mswati: think Royal Science and Technology Park and Sikhuphe Airport). It was to comprise a marina village, hotel and spa, championship golf course, casino and conference centre, game reserve, craft market, medical centre, airfield and hangars and a staff accommodation village.

No one is sure how much the project was expected to cost, but the figure of E3 billion (425 million US dollars) has been quoted in the Swazi media. It was hoped it would create 3,000 jobs.

It was probably a bit of a fantasy to believe that such a project had any relevance to Swaziland, where seven in ten of the population live in abject poverty, earning less than one US dollar a day. The optimists thought it would attract tourists from outside the country.

There is a lot of mystery about exactly why King Mswati thought he could get away with seizing the project. One of Jozini Leasehold Limited (JLL) directors, Jim Brown, said the closure announcements were ‘patently unlawful, unconstitutional and contrary to the provisions of the lease’. The closure of the project will now be contested in courts, probably in both Swaziland and South Africa.

The arguments about the merits of the closure of the project are rumbling away in Swaziland and probably will never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

But what a clear message this sends to the business world. Don’t invest here. And who now would want to invest in Swaziland? Only last week we were told that an E850 million ‘Royal Science and Technology Park’ was to be built in Swaziland, starting in April 2011. Why would anyone invest in such a project if they knew the king could snatch it away from them at any time?

FLAW IN SWAZI KING’S VANITY PROJECT

I’m pleased to see that there is at least one voice of sanity surrounding the latest of King Mswati III’s vanity project.

The king, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is pressing for a ‘Royal Science and Technology Park’ to be built in the kingdom. As I reported on Monday (22 November 2010) this will cost E850 million (120 million US dollars), but no one can explain why it is needed and who will use it.

Project manager Moses Zungu has been talking it up (as you’d expect) and he says that world class researchers will want to come to work at the site.

He even said that the kingdom’s only university, the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), would play a key role in providing expertise at the park.

But this expertise has been exaggerated. And who says so? Academics at the university itself.

When the plan for the science park was unveiled at a meeting at the university, staff very nearly laughed out loud at the suggestion that UNISWA (Chancellor: King Mswati himself) was anywhere close to being a global ‘centre of excellence’.

At the meeting one unnamed academic (when I say ‘unnamed’ I don’t mean he has no name, but that it is an unwise career move to be publicly speaking out against the university, so he/she must remain anonymous) said the government shouldn’t worry about financing a science park it should ‘fund fully the university’s budget’.

For years now UNISWA has been bumping along the bottom with poor facilities. It is a common sight to see students carrying chairs from one classroom to another because there is not enough furniture at the university for them to use during classes.

The anonymous lecturer told Zungu that a project of the magnitude of the science park ‘needs specially educated people with advanced qualifications whom this university cannot produce’.

At present the university doesn’t offer PhD or other doctoral courses (even though it ‘awarded’ an honorary doctorate to Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister). Most of the teaching staff at UNISWA don’t themselves have PhD qualifications and some don’t even have graduate (masters) degrees.

The lack of expertise in Swaziland didn’t worry Zungu. He said expatriates will be brought into Swaziland to get the science park up and running and then Swazi locals will come in as they got properly qualified.

What he didn’t explain was why top quality researchers from across the globe would want to work in Swaziland, a kingdom ruled by King Mswati, and where all dissent is fiercely suppressed and there is no freedom of speech.

This is not an environment where intellectual inquiry thrives.