POLICE BLOCK BUDGET PROTEST MARCH

Police armed with batons blocked a road in Swaziland to stop a petition rejecting the national budget being delivered to parliament.

Police with guns watched from a distance.

It happened in Lobamba on Thursday (15 March 2018). About 100 members of civil society groups, community organisations and political parties under the banner of the Swaziland Economic Justice Network marched from Somhlolo National Stadium heading to the Parliament gate.

The Times of Swaziland, the only independent newspaper in the kingdom where King Mswati III rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, reported the march was halted because it ‘would disturb Labadzala’. Labadzala is a group of Royal elders.

The newspaper reported, ‘the participants resolved to march and force the police out of their way to deliver the petition.

‘However, immediately when they got into the road towards the traffic circle, the police, who were mostly armed with batons, formed a line across the road while those carrying guns watched from a distance. 

‘The participants tried to divert from the main road and marched across the traffic circle but more police officers joined their colleagues to extend the barrier. Thereafter, the participants sang provocative political songs while dancing and toyi- toying in front of police officers.’

A representative of the Clerk to Parliament came out and received the petition.

The national budget has been controversial for a number of reasons, mainly because it raises Value Added Tax by 1 percent to 15 percent. A plan to impose 15 percent VAT on electricity prices for the first time has been shelved pending a review. 

Freedom of speech and assembly are severely curtailed in Swaziland. Political parties are banned from taking part in elections and King Mswati chooses the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers. Advocates for multiparty democracy have been arrested under the Suppression of Terrorism Act.

 

Meetings on all topics are routinely banned in Swaziland and the kingdom’s police and security forces have been criticised by international observers. In 2013, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) reported that Swaziland was becoming a police and military state. It said things had become so bad that police were unable to accept that peaceful political and social dissent was a vital element of a healthy democratic process, and should not be viewed as a crime.

These complaints were made by OSISA at an African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) meeting in The Gambia in April 2013.

OSISA said, ‘There are also reliable reports of a general militarization of the country through the deployment of the Swazi army, police and correctional services to clamp down on any peaceful protest action by labour or civil society organisations ahead of the country’s undemocratic elections [in 2013].’

As recently as September 2017, police stopped a pro-democracy meeting taking place, saying they had not given organisers permission to meet. It happened during a Global Week of Action for democracy in the kingdom. About 100 people reportedly intended to meet at the Mater Dolorosa School (MDS) in the kingdom’s capital, Mbabane. 

In 2013, after police broke up a meeting to discuss the pending election, the meeting’s joint organisers, the Swaziland United Democratic Front (SUDF) and the Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC) said Swaziland no longer had a national police service, but instead had ‘a private militia with no other purpose but to serve the unjust, dictatorial, unSwazi and ungodly, semi-feudal royal Tinkhundla system of misrule’.

In April 2015, a planned rally to mark the anniversary of the royal decree that turned Swaziland from a democracy to a kingdom ruled by an autocratic monarch was abandoned amid fears that police would attack participants. In February and March, large numbers of police disbanded meetings of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), injuring at least one union leader.

In 2014, police illegally abducted prodemocracy leaders and drove them up to 30 kilometres away, and dumped them to prevent them taking part in a meeting calling for freedom in the kingdom. Police staged roadblocks on all major roads leading to Swaziland’s main commercial city Manzini where protests were to be held. They also physically blocked halls to prevent meetings taking place.  Earlier in the day police had announced on state radio that meetings would not be allowed to take place.

In 2012, four days of public protest were planned by trade unions and other prodemocracy organisations. They were brutally suppressed by police and state forces and had to be abandoned.

See also

SWAZI BUDGET A TALE OF WOES

https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/swazi-budget-tale-of-woes.html

 

MPS SEND BUDGET BACK FOR REVIEW

https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/mps-send-budget-back-for-review.html

HOSTILE REACTION TO VAT INCREASE

https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/hostile-reaction-to-vat-increase.html

SWAZI POLICE NOW ‘A PRIVATE MILITIA’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/swazi-police-now-private-militia.html

SWAZI GOVT BLAMED FOR DROUGHT CRISIS

The Swaziland Government has been blamed for not acting quickly enough nor giving the financial support it promised to avert a ‘national disaster’ as cattle die and people go hungry in drought-hit areas of the kingdom.
 

The government had promised it would devote 10 percent of the national budget to agriculture, but instead only allocated 3.5 percent, according to a report just published.

This was at a time when the budget for King Mswati III, who rules the kingdom as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, increased by 25 percent over the previous year and amounted to E792 million (US$79.2 million), roughly half the E1.5 billion allocated to agriculture.

This extent of the drought was revealed in a study commissioned by the Swaziland Economic Justice Network (SEJUN) on poverty in outlying areas, particular in the Lubombo region. Among some of the areas it visited in the first week of October 2015 were Siphofaneni, Gucuka, Sithobeklweni, Big Bend, Nsoko, Lubulini, Zindwendweni, Somntongo and Maloam. 

The report concluded the situation, ‘now borders on a national disaster and quick and decisive intervention [is] needed’.

On Wednesday (14 October 2015) SEJUN reported, ‘We are, however, disappointed that government has not acted with the requisite speed to try and find short and long term solutions to the problems of draught not just the Lubombo region but the entire country. In our visit we were informed that in one family they had lost close to 43 cattle owing to draught while other families have not planted anything for their own livelihood in over a year.’

SEJUN reported the Swazi Government allocated only E1.5 billion in the 2014/2015 national budget towards agriculture. ‘This is despite that in 2002 she signed the Maputo declaration which states that she would allocate nothing less than 10 percent of the national budget towards agriculture. This year’s budget allocation to agriculture was about 3.5 percent of the national budget.’

SEJUN added Swaziland lagged behind other African countries, ‘in terms of developing agriculture to be the main driver of the Swazi economy, especially as our rural agriculture has not been integrated into mainstream economy. For example, our people in rural areas still use manual labour for agriculture which does not reflect modern ways of engaging in agriculture.’

SEJUN reported, ‘Swaziland is ranked as a lower middle-income country yet income distribution within the country is extremely unequal. The wealthiest 10 percent of the population account for nearly half of total consumption and there is an ever-widening gap between urban and rural development. There are clear signs that poverty and unemployment are on the rise. About 84 percent of the country’s poor people live in rural areas, where per capita income is about four times lower than in urban areas, and food consumption is two times lower. 

‘A large proportion of rural households practice subsistence agriculture. About 66 percent of the population is unable to meet basic food needs, while 43 per cent live in chronic poverty. 

‘When drought hit Swaziland in 2004 and 2005 more than one quarter of the country’s population required emergency food aid.’

To underline the income inequality in Swaziland, in June 2015, the Nation magazine, an independent monthly publication in Swaziland, revealed that the budget for King Mswati and the royal household rose 25 percent in 2015 from E630 million [US$63 million] the previous year to E792 million.

SEJUN said the effects of the drought in Swaziland were, ‘a result of long-term environmental degradation and policy blunders at all levels’.

It said, among others, the following measures were needed:

‘Strengthen, improve early warning systems to prepare local people and build their resilience before the disaster hits;

‘The National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) needs proper financing or enhancement. The Swaziland government need to set aside adequate funding to address impact of climate change without relying much on donor community.’

‘SEJUN added, ‘We therefore propose that as an immediate solution the problems of drought in the Lubombo region the following needed to be done:

‘The Minister of Agriculture as well as Minister of Health must visit the affected areas for a first-hand account of what is happening around these areas. This will assist the Honourable Ministers to develop ideas and suggestions which would serve the remaining livestock and prevent any human loss of lives through practising safety precautions. 

‘This is because the poverty stricken people of these areas tend to eat some of the decaying meat and this is a health hazard and could cause an outbreak of many diseases. Some of the cattle die in the muddy streams only to find that downstream there are people who are using the water for cooking and washing. This is an early warning that very soon we could face problems of loss of human life.

‘Immediate water and food supply to the people. This is necessitated by the fact that it is not just animals that are affected by this drought but ordinary people too who have not planted any crop in the last year owing to the drought. These people were surviving by selling their cattle and right now there is no longer anything they can sell nor eat. Government must immediately assist the our people with food and water.

‘The government must immediately provide hay as a temporary measure for those cattle that have survived the drought. Government also needs to dispatch a veterinary team to inspect if the cattle have not been infected by any diseases and to assist the people in getting their cattle back. 

‘Government, working with the communities, must also assist identify and burn the dead and decomposing cattle in an environmentally safe way.’

See also

KING GETS NEW JET AS PEOPLE STARVE

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2015/08/king-gets-new-jet-as-people-starve.html

 

SWAZIS AMONG HUNGRIEST IN THE WORLD

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2014/11/swazis-among-hungriest-in-world.html

 

HUNGER INCREASES IN SWAZILAND

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2014/10/hunger-increases-in-swaziland.html

GOVT ‘DELIBERATELY STARVING PEOPLE’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/05/govt-deliberately-starving-people.html

CORRUPTION ‘LEADS TO STARVATION’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/09/corruption-leads-to-starvation.html

 

FEAR OF MASS HUNGER IN SWAZILAND

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/12/fear-of-mass-hunger-in-swaziland.html

ERADICATE POVERTY AND HUNGER

Stiffkitten

17 February 2012

SOURCE

Economic justice and democracy are interdependent, says new Swazi campaign

“At the centre of poverty is the question of power,” Musa Andile Nsibande of the Swaziland Economic Justice Network (SEJUN) tells Africa Contact. “When we tell people to stand up for their rights, there is a possibility that the balance of power will shift towards the masses, paving way for a full democratisation process.”

To this end, the recently formed SEJUN launched a new campaign, Eradicate Poverty and Hunger, last Saturday [February 11.] in Lavumisa. The campaign takes a rights-based approach to economic justice in emphasizing the right to adequate food in a country where two-thirds of the population survive on less than a dollar a day – many on food aid from the UN, the need for agrarian reform in a country where the absolute monarch in effect controls all land, and the necessity of empowering ordinary people in order to achieve the campaign goals.

The event was attended by an audience of around 400, as well as a range of organisations including the Coordinating Assembly of NGO’s, the Swaziland Ex-Miners Association, the Swaziland National Union of Students and the Foundation for Socio-Economic Justice, of which SEJUN is a campaign wing.

“The event was a success,” says Musa Andile Nsibande. “The messages were well received by the target audience and there is a good possibility that the campaign could achieve the changes envisaged.”

Several of the speakers at the campaign launch used the 2008 court victory of the Swaziland Ex-Miners Association against the Swazi government, for its failure to adhere to Swaziland’s constitution’s promise of universal free primary school education, as an example of the potential power of Swaziland’s poor. “The success of the ex-miners has invigorated the marginalized’s search for justice,” says Nsibande.

Read more:

Swaziland: uprising in the slip-stream of North Africa