IS PUDEMO CHIEF ABOUT TO QUIT?

Mario Masuku, the President of the banned People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), is rumoured to be about to quit – in part because he is fed up with the criticisms he is getting from his comrades.

The Southern Africa Report (SAR) journal, which supports the call for democracy in Swaziland, this week (12 January 2012) reported, ‘Masuku’s pending departure, still under discussion and a closely guarded secret, is apparently due to a combination of failing health and criticism over his overcautious leadership amid mounting demands for a consistent opposition voice in Swaziland as Mswati's administration implodes.’

SAR goes on to report the friction between PUDEMO and the recently-formed Communist Party of Swaziland.

SAR says the progressive movement, ‘is at sixes and sevens over what to do about the left, particularly as a range of centrist formations, among them Swaziland’s churches, attempt to up their influence in the pro-democracy movement ahead of talks with the Mswati government.’

SAR goes on, ‘Anyone who regularly checks [Swaziland Solidarity Network’s] web forum will be familiar with the frequent storms of libellous acrimony, accusation and character assassination centred on these individuals and their supporters, often coming from other PUDEMO members.

‘One consequence of this is consistent lack of clarity and purpose by the movement and a palpable dearth of PUDEMO-led mass action inside Swaziland in galvanising opposition to the Mswati regime. Instead, most of the pro-democracy pressure Mswati faces tends to be sporadic and reactive, rather than dependably proactive, allowing the regime to prolong its hold on power.’

To read the full SAR report, click here.

SOLDIERS ‘SING TO OVERTHROW KING’

Soldiers in Swaziland have held a ‘clandestine meeting’ to discuss their grievances over pay and conditions.

It is reported at the end of the meeting they sang songs calling for the overthrow of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The Southern Africa Report (SAR) journal this week (11 January 2012) reports the meeting took place over the Christmas – New Year period at Matsapha barracks.

SAR says soldiers, ‘held a clandestine meeting to air their mounting grievances over pay and conditions. Anger had been running high among soldiers over the creaming off by senior officers of funds from the Hlalawati army savings and cooperative society. The practice apparently directly benefits those members of the royal family among the military top brass.’

SAR adds, ‘The soldiers complained too about being forced to stump up R650 for uniforms out of their wages under a new tendering agreement overseen by Mswati. There are also food shortages at Matsapha barracks due to savings cuts imposed by the royal-owned enterprise that supplies food to the army. The rebellious soldiers ended their meeting with songs calling for Mswati’s overthrow.’

To read the full SAR report, click here.

KING BEGS PRETORIA OVER BAILOUT

Southern Africa Report

13 October 2011

Swaziland’s absolute ruler Mswati III was back in South Africa this week to try to persuade Pretoria to proceed with the R2,4-billion (USUS$307-million) loan promised to his cash-strapped regime, but minus the terms and conditions on democratic change.

His clampdown on the Swazi pro-democracy movement has been intensifying since the week of exuberant anti-government protests in early September, closely mirroring Mswati’s growing reluctance to entertain even the vaguely worded democratic reforms required by South Africa as its condition for granting the loan.

Mswati has balked at signing the memorandum of understanding attached to the loan. The MoU closely follows the 3 August 2011 statement by South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, reinforcing its prescriptions on fiscal reform (Vol 29 No 21). Its stipulations on democratic change are fluffy by comparison, with no mention of the sorts of proactive steps Mbabane should take to move towards democracy, such as unbanning political parties.

Instead the MoU reiterates Gordhan’s call for “broadening the dialogue process to include all stakeholders” and his description of the role of the Joint Bilateral Commission on Cooperation, which would meet a few times a year to oversee adherence to the loan conditions. Mswati has rejected both requirements.

The MoU remains unsigned. South Africa has consequently not paid the first of the three tranches of the loan, originally envisaged for the end of August.

Pretoria has said that it will not water down the democracy dividend of the loan conditions. It has also signalled that it does not want other states to bail out Swaziland sans conditions on democratic change. Mswati appears to have sought a loan from Qatar (Vol 29 No 22), and in late August his loyal government point man Prime Minister [Barnabas] Sibusiso Dlamini visited the sheikhdom, reportedly to see if it would be an amenable creditor. In this week’s Qatar-South African bilateral in Pretoria, Qatar Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Saif Maggadam Al-Buainain denied any knowledge of the Swazi request.

The fiscal crisis in Swaziland stems in large part from the sudden cut in revenue from the Southern Africa Customs Union (Sacu), which until the end of last year provided 60% of Swazi government revenue, about 11% of GDP. But the crisis is systemically rooted in the proclivities of the ruling autocracy. Rampant state spending sustains the monarchy through direct annual grants to the king worth R230-million (US$29,4-million), added to this year by R300-million (US$38,4-million) in upgrades to the network of royal palaces for the king and his 13 wives.

It also provides bloated salaries and perks for MPs, cabinet ministers and royals deployed in government, and is otherwise directed on lavish construction projects, notably the second international airport with its R2-billion (US$256-million) price-tag. In addition the state supports a 36 000-strong civil service that imposes a public wage bill of 18% of GDP. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has refused to provide Swaziland with the recommendations necessary for it to borrow from the African Development Bank (AfDB) until it starts to comply with spending restraints proportionate to the shortfalls of Sacu revenue.

But Swaziland’s financial meltdown is more about how the country is run than about fiscal technocratic checks and balances. Political parties have been banned in the country since 1973, when the then monarch King Sobhuza II declared himself supreme ruler, and the lack of democratic oversight in government has resulted in a system accountable to little but the whims of royal diktat.

There has been scant pubic information or news reportage in Swaziland on the details of the loan from South Africa, and nothing concerning the conditions on democratic reform urged by Pretoria.

On 9 October the Times of Swaziland, which reports on Swazi affairs with an unwholesome appetite for self-censorship and pro-Mswati spin, announced that South Africa had just declared that it has attached democracy conditions to the loan, and that the “revelation” was made by Pretoria’s representative to the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review on human rights, which dealt with Swaziland on 4 October.

Swazi government ministers have routinely told the press that the MoU concerning the loan is still being finalised. What they do not say is that the king has personally refused to allow the MoU to be signed by his foreign and finance ministers.

Mswati has tasked his prime minister with finding alternative sources of funding, including making what have by now become routine appeals to the European Union to provide budget support. Brussels has made clear that it will not help bail out the government, citing not just the absence of democratic accountability on but also the lack of even rudimentary transparent auditing oversight by Mbabane.

In the meantime the economic meltdown, which is further buffeted by the international financial crisis, is affecting an ever-widening range of sectors, including health, education, transport, the judiciary and, most recently, the country’s vital food processing industry. At the beginning of October Swaziland Fruit Canners announced that it would close at the end of the month, with a loss of 498 jobs The company, which was bought by the Western Cape-based Rhodes Food Group in 2008, announced that it has recently started to run at a loss.

BANK KEEPS SWAZILAND ‘AFLOAT’

Southern Africa Report

29 September 2011

SOURCE

Swaziland: 'Smart' Denial Amid Creeping Paralysis

Though the aftermath of the robust anti-government protests of early September [2011] has deepened government paralysis and created a more volatile situation across the country, Swaziland's government continues to play for time.

The government is keeping itself afloat - barely - by borrowing from the country's central bank, despite entreaties in August from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) not to do so and to repay as soon as possible the outstanding emergency credit line it secured from the bank.

In addition to the pillage of the central bank, the Swazi government has also dipped into the country's emergency fuel fund to pay its public sector wage bill, a situation that is unsustainable beyond October.

The more it borrows from the central bank, the greater the distance the government is putting between itself and its ability to meet the conditions on fiscal continence attached to the R2.4-billion loan it hopes to receive from South Africa. The first part of the loan was supposed to have been paid in August, but the government of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last fully fledged royal despot, has so far resisted signing the Memorandum of Understanding on the loan's conditions, which include democratic reforms and strict adherence to the IMF's recipe for fiscal restraint. These conditions are anathema to Mbabane.

What moves there have been on opening up to change have tended to be clumsily arranged forums for some sections of civil society. Lately, though, even these seem to have dropped by the wayside. The latest effort at engagement was more true to established form - the Smart Partnership National Dialogue, held in mid-September at the Mavuso Trade and Exhibition Centre. Though a regular event on the royal calendar down the years, this year's conference was billed as the leading channel of debate on the country's political and economic troubles.

Mswati described the dialogue as an event "designed for individuals and not organisations", which put paid to any chances that the event would engage Swaziland's increasingly restless civil society. Though the king's organisers balked at inviting opposition parties and organisations to the conference, individual members were ostensibly welcome, but those from the pro-democracy organisations, including the newly formed Swazi Democratic Party, said they would not attend anyway.

In the end it was only the Swaziland Council of Churches' Convention of Civil Society, a pro-government formation boycotted by trade union movement and the People's United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), that looked as if it might turn up to the king's "dialogue" with a list of proposals for democratic change. But it too threw in the towel when it was told that it would not be heard.

Instead the king used the event to lambast the IMF, the media and the political opposition for failing to take a proactively positive stand in solving Swaziland's troubles. He urged the business community to get Swaziland out of its financial mess, among other things by pioneering mineral prospecting. He referred to attacks on the lack of detail on the South African loan, but gave no indication that the loan was still on the cards.

The tiny landlocked kingdom of about a million people is beset by crises on a number of fronts. It is fiscally insolvent due to the sharp decline in Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) revenue since the end of last year, unsound spending on capital projects urged by the monarch, a top-heavy wage bill of 18% of GDP, and helter-skelter corruption. There is a constant leakage of state funds to sustain a rapacious royal family, including the king's 13 wives. The country also faces a developmental meltdown, with the world's highest levels of HIV and TB, 70% poverty and 40% malnutrition.

Heavily insulated from such grim realities, the Smart Partnership conference barely registered the mounting turmoil across the country.

To read the full Southern Africa Report article, click here.

LOAN CONDITIONS TIE UP SWAZI GOVT

Southern Africa Report

15 September 2011

SOURCE

Pretoria's Conditions Tie Mbabane's Hands

The relative restraint shown by the Swazi government during the five days of rolling protests across the country last week demonstrate Mbabane's increasing recognition that survival hinges on how it is seen to be handling the democracy demands of its citizens.

Though many within the Swazi pro-democracy movement initially lambasted South Africa for agreeing to the R2,4-billion (US$351-million) bailout for Africa's last monarchic autocracy, they recognise that the first basket of conditions attached to the loan, dealing with general democratic reforms, has forced the Swazi government to give a freer rein to opposition protests.

Swaziland remains in desperate financial straits that well exceed what the loan from South Africa could cover. Despite profligate spending on capital projects deemed by international finance institutions to be unwarranted, budget payments of some R300-million each year to the royal household, and footing Africa's highest public sector wage bill - of 18% of GDP - the government is unable and unwilling to reverse its fiscal demise. On top of this, the roughly one-million-strong population suffers the world's highest HIV and TB rates and a devastatingly low average life expectancy of just 31 years.

Since news of the loan from South Africa was announced, the government of King Mswati III has sought to restrain its more overt autocratic impulses. For much of the time, last week's protests, which were designated as a "global week of action" and were coordinated by the umbrella formation the Swaziland United Democratic Front (SUDF), had the authorities on the defensive. Though hardly global, the week of actions saw parallel protests in solidarity with Swaziland's democracy movement by groups in the UK, Denmark, Germany and, closer to home, in South Africa.

In Swaziland the events were more confrontational and assertive than at any time before - protesters are more ready to take on the government, ridicule the monarch and criticise traditional institutions that only a few months ago appeared unassailable.

As popular confidence grows, the tinkhundla system of representation within an abstruse system of chieftainships and monarchic control is falling apart. So is the sacrosanct status of the monarch, which has often been used to cow dissent. Mswati was booed and heckled when he attended a football match in Manzini in early August, and during the week of protests he was directly and vociferously lambasted more than at any time during his 25-year reign. This, and the often openly fractious relations between the king and members of the royal family deployed in top state jobs, is increasingly demystifying the royal edifice in the eyes of ordinary Swazis.

None of this can be attributed to a greater tolerance of dissent on the part of all the king's men. Though the king and his advisory council, the Swaziland National Committee, have been meeting behind closed doors to work out how to manage the clamour for democratic change, their efforts have been focused more on damage limitation than on reform.

Whatever leverage South Africa's conditions on lending cash may bring, and no matter how weirdly the brittle royal regime feigns the dexterity of listening to its opponents, the emboldened atmosphere of dissent is clearly rooted in the mounting frustration of Mswati's not-so-loyal subjects.

The government's unsubtle efforts to stage-manage forums of dialogue and political pluralism, offering minimalist versions of the demands of the democracy movement, have been gleefully exposed by the regime's opponents, both inside Swaziland and in exile in South Africa.

It was no surprise, then, that the slogans and chants of the People's United Democratic Movement (Pudemo) and its youth wing, the Swaziland Youth Congress (Swayoco), both banned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, were conspicuous in the demonstrations, which numbered between 500 and 5 000 supporters.

In Mbabane on the first day of action, protestors burnt the textile images of Mswati that predominate on traditional dress, a previously inconceivable act of defiance. During a demonstration in Manzini later in the week about 1 000 protesters surrounded the city's police station to demand information on the fate of Pudemo member Sipho Jele, who died in police custody following a May Day rally last year. Unlike earlier weeks of action, protests were held in Swaziland's smaller localities, reaching people in rural communities, and organisers say that they were able to reach significantly more of the population.

This was all in marked contrast to previous pro-democracy days of action when the police and security forces constantly had the upper hand. Jele himself had been arrested and allegedly murdered in police custody simply for wearing a Pudemo T-shirt. During the last attempt at mass protest, in April this year, the police thwarted anti-government demonstrators by detaining prominent activists, roughing them up and dumping them in remote parts of the country. So pre-emptive were the government's efforts to stamp out the protests that trade unions, Pudemo and other activists were forced to rethink the wisdom of attempting to hold large-scale rallies in Swaziland's small urban spaces, in which a strong show of force by the authorities would inevitably prevail.

Now, the government is evidently feeling the effects of going through the motions of entertaining pluralistic democratic change - the price of receiving desperately-needed cash. This conditionality is not only a feature of the loan agreed with Pretoria; it is also implicit in any prospects of eventually receiving sizeable non-project budget assistance from the European Union. Brussels has long made clear that in its current state the Swazi government does not qualify for financial aid.

At the same time, the other conditions tied to Pretoria's loan replicate and extend those proposed ad nauseam by the International Monetary Fund.

They include instituting massive cuts to the eye-wateringly large public wage bill and trimming down the civil service by 7 000 jobs. The conditions further pit the government against Swaziland's powerful public sector trade unions, which form the bona fide muscle of the pro-democracy movement. As if this were not enough, the conditions also stipulate against continued government spending on things the king, his ministers and MPs are wholly loath to relinquish. These include forking out the last annual instalments for the R2-billion second international airport at Sikhuphe (Swaziland has no national airline) and doing away with the notorious government Circular 1 of last year, which provides for lucrative financial perks for ministers and MPs.

Devoid of a coherent strategy, the government is reduced to running on the spot. On a few occasions during last week's protests the authorities looked as if they would act according to past form. The police tried to clear several rallies with tear gas and rubber bullets; the leaders of Pudemo and Swayoco were forcibly prevented from addressing demonstrators in Mbabane; student union activists were beaten and detained; and the deputy president of South Africa's Cosatu, who was to speak in Siteke, was detained and deported.

But though gaining in severity as the days of protest unfolded, such incidents were uncoordinated and sporadic.

Government rhetoric against its opponents was also less contentious than during past protests. There was no more talk of "evil forces" or the "enemy within" from the king and the prime minister. Instead it was left to Labour Ministry principal secretary Nomathemba Hlophe to grumble that trade unions had breached agreement that they would confine their demands to taxing the royal-owned investment cornucopia Tibiyo TakaNgwane (Vol 29 No 22) and urging a review of the working conditions of textile employees. Instead, he objected, they had turned the protests into political rallies demanding the unbanning of political parties, return of exiles, freeing of political prisoners and an end to the tinkhundla system.

The more permissive attitude of the government to its opponents is combined with much foot dragging on the reforms supposed to be carried out to secure the three tranches of South Africa's loan (see Mswati stalls on signing in this issue).

According to trade union and pro-democracy leaders this indicates that beneath its apparent quiet inertia the government and the king are frenetically in search of alternative cash sources that have so far proved elusive. They are allergic to the reforms entailed by Pretoria's bailout, but believe they must allow the pro-democracy movement to let off enough steam in order to appease their less exacting critics.

- The creeping paralysis within the Swazi government is increasingly creating a space for new political formations intent on seizing the centre ground of the country's political life. Political parties remain formally banned in Swaziland, but as opposition intensifies, new political players are appearing. Just days before the start of the protests, former Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions general secretary Jan Sithole announced the launch in Manzini of the Swazi Democratic Party (Swadepa). This coincided with a hasty birth announcement by the National Congress for Democratic Change (Nacodec). Details of the programmes and membership of the new formations remain scanty.

Wary SUDF organisers of last week's rallies barred the new political parties from addressing the protests. The six-month old Communist Party of Swaziland complained that the ban was extended to include its speaking, despite its strong links with the labour movement.

Government spokesperson Macanjana Motsa later said that if political parties wanted to be unbanned they would have to formally apply to the state. This is the first official hint that the government may consider lifting the ban on political parties. It is unclear whether this applies to the Pudemo, which is not just banned but was declared to be a "terrorist entity" in 2009 by Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini.