SWAZI UNCLES AND CHILD SEX ABUSE

In the week that the Swazi Government was put on notice that it would face sanctions unless it clamped down on child sex trafficking in Swaziland here’s news that children face sexual abuse from their uncles.

A meeting to mark the Day of the African Child at Makhosini High School on Monday (15 June 2009) was told that children ‘had nowhere to run to because the people bestowed with their trust, had betrayed them. They said most of their uncles had turned rapists instead of heroes, and they did not get the love they deserved.’

The Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent newspaper, said that according to the children, their uncles took full advantage of their situation and subjected them to sexual abuse. Children at the meeting also said schoolteachers who used them as sex toys.

On Wednesday (17 June 2009), I reported that the US State Department had put Swaziland on notice of sanctions because it did not take seriously the problem of women and children who are sold for sex.

The problem of uncles who rape is only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to child sexual abuse in Swaziland.

As I reported in March 2009, Swazi men believe it is all right to rape children if their wives withhold sex from them. In Swaziland it is estimated that one in three girls suffer sexual abuse, but it is thought that fewer than half of sexual assaults and other abusive crimes are reported to the authorities.

US EXPOSES SWAZI CHILD SEX TRADE

Women and children in Swaziland are bought and sold for sex, domestic servitude and forced labour, and the Swazi Government is doing nothing about it, according to an international report just published.

The cities of Mbabane and Manzini are the centres of trafficking of girls, particularly orphans, for sex.

Swazi boys are trafficked for forced labour in commercial agriculture and market vending. Some Swazi women are forced into prostitution in South Africa and Mozambique after voluntarily travelling to these countries in search of work.

The report from the US State Department also says Chinese organized crime units get victims in Swaziland and traffic them to Johannesburg, South Africa, where they ‘distribute’ victims locally or send them on to be exploited overseas.

Mozambican boys travel to Swaziland for work washing cars, herding livestock, and portering; some of these boys subsequently become victims of trafficking.

According to the US State Department, ‘The government of Swaziland does not comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.

‘The government believes that trafficking probably does occur, but does not know the extent of the problem.

‘Its limited resources were directed towards other issues because the government does not judge trafficking to be an “important” problem, a judgment which significantly limited the government’s current efforts to eliminate human trafficking, or to plan anti-trafficking activities or initiatives for the future.’

The report goes on, ‘The government made no effort to investigate or prosecute trafficking offenses during the year. While Swaziland has no law specifically prohibiting trafficking, existing statutes prohibiting acts such as kidnapping, forced and compulsory labor, confiscation of passports, aiding and abetting “prohibited immigrants” to enter the country, brothel keeping, procurement for prostitution, sex or solicitation of sex with an underage girl, and employing children under the age of 15 could be used to prosecute trafficking offenses, but were not.’

The report adds, ‘There were no government programs which provided services specifically to victims of trafficking, and the government continued to depend on NGOs to provide shelter, referral, counseling, and other care for victims.’

The US has now placed Swaziland on a ‘watchlist’ and the kingdom might face sanctions unless its record improves.

To read the full report click here.

SWAZI POLICE ‘PERVERTED MORALITY’

The following is a statement from the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) following news that a Times of Swaziland writer and former Swazi Government Cabinet Minister Mfomfo Nkhambule was taken in by police and told that the articles he was writing for the newspaper could incite people to revolt against King Mswati III.

The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations notes with extreme concern the twisted logic and perverted morality of our police service. It can send three officers to threaten and intimidate a writer yet it takes no action on members of its own force that have been colluding in the rape and prostitution of underage girls.

Community police acknowledged knowing about these so called teenage brothels where underage sex and child prostitution was common. They further admitted to using the girls to get information on petty criminals. This is the sort of scandal that would rock any other government to its foundations and lead to resignations or sackings.

The officers that knew about these crimes and criminals and did nothing about them must be found and must be dismissed. Our daughters’ moral, emotional and sexual development is not a suitable tool for the detection of crime.

Of course this lackadaisical behaviour by the police in terms of serious crime is not found when it comes to them attempting to please their political masters and once again try to tear up our Human Rights.

The Coalition is particularly concerned at the nature of the threats levelled at Mfomfo Nkhambule for writing his Monday articles in the Swazi Times. We are unsurprised at the police officers’ continuing lack of awareness of the rights afforded to us all under the Constitution. It is part of a pattern of human rights abuses that the current police leadership seems unwilling to do anything about.

The police invoking unspecified pre-independence legislation (we assume they mean the Sedition Act) shows the depth of their ignorance of the Law. Under section 268, the Constitution (the ultimate law of the land) repeals all previous acts insofar as they are inconsistent with it.

Nothing that Mfomfo has written can seriously be said to destabilise or threaten the State, it might embarrass some people who are making an extremely good living on the back of their loyalty to their stomachs, but that is not a National Security issue. It is no role of the police to protect the blushes of labadzala from legitimate enquiry.

This illegal, unconstitutional and unprofessional bullying must stop. The Coalition has also been visited by security police and its staff have come under pressure to limit what we do and what we advocate on. This pressure will, of course, be ignored. Our freedoms are most easily extinguished when we do it ourselves.

Freedom of Expression includes the right to question not only the actions of the government and the traditional authorities but the motives behind those actions. It is only the weak, and the defenders of the indefensible who cannot respond to debate but instead send in the police to intimidate the messenger. We find it difficult to believe that these officers were acting on their own initiative and so the Coalition would like to know where the orders to interrogate and threaten Babe Nkambule really came from. No doubt those that issued the order will remain as all bullies do, hidden and cowardly, happy for their henchmen to carry the blame for their lack of moral or political courage.

The Coalition sees these two incidents as part of a deep and underlying malaise in policing in Swaziland. The priorities seem to be all wrong. The Coalition has repeatedly called for the RSP to be trained on policing under a Bill of Rights and we repeat that call now. The majesty of the law and the rule of law is being called into question by these actions. These actions are doing more harm to the image of Swaziland than any number of so called detractors can do. It brings shame on our country when the police take to themselves the right to intimidate our writers, human rights defenders and others while leaving our daughters easy prey to perverts. This is in spite of the country enacting the Constitution with its Bill of Rights as well as ratifying many international human rights treaties. We must stand up for our rights to free expression, assembly and association etc. The Police have no place in the editor’s room. A politicised police force has no place in a democracy. In fact, a politicised police force threatens the very fabric of our democracy.

END OF STATEMENT

(For background information on the issue of community police and child prostitutes, click here and here.)