Stiffkitten blog
28 April 2012
Swazi students
denounce solidarity network foul-mouth
“The Swaziland
National Union of Students is amazed and angry at the bile spewed by one
self-imposed exile called Lucky Lukhele. … The
article was a constructive criticism of the broad, mass
democratic movement in Swaziland.
The Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) will write
a letter to the
PUDEMO NEC
to [ask them to] review their relationship with the
Swaziland Solidarity Network
(SSN). … Lucky Lukhele and the chairperson of the Swaziland Solidarity Network
(SSN), Solly, have actually destabilized the mass democratic movement,” the
Swazi student organisation SNUS said in a statement issued by Secretary General
Samkeliso Ginindza today [April 28 2012].
The article was about the predictions of these
self-professed revolutionaries – most of whom are apparently based in South Africa
– and the rhetoric of the democratic movement.
Especially as the predictions, that promise “a hundred
thousand people on the streets” and a subsequent “revolution” turn out to be
pretty far from the truth. King Mswati unfortunately still wields the executive
power in Swaziland, regardless of the more levelheaded and realistic attempts
to bring democracy to Swaziland by many brave and focused members of the
democratic movement. I therefore thought a little constructive criticism was in
order.
Funnily enough, freelance journalist
Louise
Redvers made pretty much the
same point in the Mail & Guardian on April 20,
apparently without being attacked. “Some people are starting to question
whether Swaziland’s democracy movement has not become too much of a willing
victim, happier to cry foul than to take part,” she wrote.
I, on the other hand, was instantly attacked by the
Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) and the anonymously led Swazi April 12
Uprising Facebook campaign. Lucky Lukhele of the SSN
referred to my article as being “ludicrously unfounded” and
“bullshit,” and my organisation, Africa Contact, who has worked in partnership
with the democratic movement in Swaziland for over ten years, was called a
“pitiful excuse for a solidarity partner.”
The Swazi April 12 Uprising also
called the article “bullshit,” and referred to it as being
“outrageously far from the truth”, “an outrageous distortion,” and myself as
being a “con-thing.” They then went on to rhetorically ask, “where is the
documentation of the fact that Swazis were beaten, abducted and in some cases
raped by the state’s armed forces [on April 12 2011 and] how much has this
con-man done to highlight the fact that our most vocal elements, the youth, had
their leaders arrested on that date under false ‘explosive charges’?”
Unfortunately, they hadn’t done their homework. In fact I
wrote five articles that were published on my blog, Africa Contact’s
website,
Newstime Africa and in other news media that documented the
brutality of the regime on April 12 2011, as well as several follow-up articles
(and I have written many articles – over 100, in fact, containing over 75.000
words –
about Swaziland and its democratic movement).
In the articles about April 12 2011, I wrote, amongst
other things, that “Swaziland’s police and security forces have detained, and
probably manhandled, several members of the Swazi democratic movement and several
members of the international press even before today’s announced uprising in
Swaziland, inspired by similar events in North Africa, has begun,” “The police
in Swaziland continue to arrest, detain and generally try and scare people from
joining the announced mass demonstrations in Swaziland today,” “Swazi police
are trying to crush the Egypt and Tunisia-like uprising in Swaziland by
teargassing and firing rubber bullets at demonstrators,” and “Swazi security
forces are trying to shut down the uprising with water cannons, tear gas and
random beatings and arrests.”
I also helped instigate a
campaign for
the release of Maxwell Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni, the two student activists who
were charged with possession of explosives. And I wrote a
chapter for a
book called
“African Awakening: the emerging revolutions” about the April 12 2011 uprising
that was published by Pambazuka Press. Here, ironically, I quoted Sikelela
Dlamini, employed by the
Swaziland United Democratic Front at the time (and falsely
accused by other agitators of having been fired from the organisation for
having pinched money from their coffers), who remonstrates with the Swazi April
12 Facebook campaign by making exactly the point I was making in my article.
“While Swaziland remains predominantly rural with limited
Internet connectivity, the hype around an uprising managed to filter throughout
the country,” said Sikelela Dlamini. “It generated unrealistic excitement and
anticipation on the part of a general citizenry, who became spectators while
the bulk of those who generated the Facebook hype also resided outside the
country and could not coordinate activities on the ground to actuate their
cyber aspirations.”
And perhaps Sikelela Dlamini has hit the hammer on the
nail here. Perhaps the problem is that the people within the SSN and the Swazi
April 12 Uprising want to remote-control, so to speak, the masses in Swaziland
to dance to their revolutionary tune from their offices in South Africa – a
tune that calls for a violent uprising in Swaziland.
Just listen to the
statement from the Swazi April 12 Uprising campaign in
reply to my article: “The April 12 Uprising is first and foremost the
aspiration of the most radical elements within the country’s democratic
movement … these elements will always be two steps ahead of the masses … and being
ahead of the masses they take the role of masterminds and strategists who
propose a way forward and demand that the masses revolt.” And listen to Lucky
Lukhele from the SSN in his
response to my article today: “The state understands no
other language but the force of violence.”
The problem for the SSN and the Swazi April 12 Uprising
is that neither the masses nor the democratic movement at large seems to be
buying it, as the press statement from SNUS and lack of support for their
Marxist revolution in Swaziland clearly shows. Not the self-righteous and
unrealistic revolutionary rhetoric that in effect insists on the exclusion of
the masses from the planning of what ought to be a mass-based struggle, nor the
claims that they are not ‘crying wolf’ when they continue to claim that the
revolution will come ‘today.’
Even people on the SSN
online forum don’t buy it. “As a matter of fact, people do constantly ‘cry wolf’ in Swaziland,”
wrote former Cosatu employee Dominic Tweedie on the forum, in a reply to the tirade from Lucky Lukhele.
