SWAZI PEOPLE AS OPPRESSED AS EVER

The year 2013 ended as it had started with the Swaziland state oppressing any kind of dissent. Observers of the Swazi scene were not at all surprised in December when armed police and security forces stopped a memorial service for the recently deceased Nelson Mandela from taking part in Manzini, Swaziland’s main business city. Prodemocracy supporters had called the prayer to celebrate the life of Mandela the freedom fighter and to draw attention to the need for democratic reforms in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

 

Also, in December 2013, the United States recognised that workers in Swaziland were being oppressed by the state and the country’s State Department instigated an investigation into the situation in the kingdom. If found wanting, Swaziland could lose valuable trade concessions with the US.

An independent survey into Swaziland published this month showed that two thirds of Swazi people questioned wanted democracy. This call for freedom was ignored by King Mswati who continued to try to sell his idea of ‘Monarchical Democracy’ which allows him to retain all important powers in the kingdom.

Meanwhile, the King has still not released the full results of the national election held in his kingdom in September 2013.

These are some of the highlights of life in Swaziland in December 2013 brought together in a volume of compilations from the Swazi Media Commentary blogsite and published free-of-charge on the scribd website.
 

Swazi Media Commentary has no physical base and is completely independent of any political faction and receives no income from any individual or organisation. People who contribute ideas or write for it do so as volunteers and receive no payment.

Swazi Media Commentary is published online – updated most days – bringing information, comment and analysis in support of democracy in the kingdom.

Swaziland Striving for Freedom Vol 12 December 2013

LATEST DIGEST ON FREEDOM IN SWAZILAND

The Swazi people went to the polls last month to select 55 members of the House of Assembly, but more than a week after the vote the kingdom’s Elections and Boundaries Commission has failed to publish the full results, or the final voter turnout. This has added further controversy in an already discredited political system. A campaign to boycott the election because political parties are banned from taking part and the parliament that is elected has no power because King Mswati III rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch may have been successful, but we are unable to tell because the results have been withheld.

Swazi Media Commentary reported and analysed the election and presents a digest of the happenings in September 2013 in the latest of its monthly compilations, Swaziland: Striving for Freedom: Vol 9 which is available on scribd dot com. Apart from the elections, September saw the annual Global Week of Action for Democracy in Swaziland. As usual, police and state security forces clamped down on any public discussion of the need for democracy in the kingdom. A panel of trade union experts, formed to discuss workers’ conditions in Swaziland, was forced to disband after police arrested and deported many of its participants, including the former South African cabinet minister Jay Naidoo.

While all this was happening King Mswati said he had a vision (it is assumed from ‘God’) who told him that the system of governance in Swaziland should henceforth be called a ‘monarchical democracy’. This caused great excitement among the media in Swaziland, which claimed a new dawn in democracy. It took the international news agency Reuters to get the king to admit that his new democracy was just a different name for that which already existed.

It was also announced that the 45-year-old king was to take an 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant as his new bride (believed to be wife number 14, but nobody is quite sure). International media pointed out the teenager had a ‘past’ and had previously ‘dated’ two of the king’s sons and dubbed her ‘naughty Sindi’. Media in Swaziland, which see the marriage as a fairy story, ignored this inconvenience.

Swazi Media Commentary has no physical base and is completely independent of any political faction and receives no income from any individual or organisation. People who contribute ideas or write for it do so as volunteers and receive no payment.

Swazi Media Commentary is published online – updated most days – bringing information, comment and analysis in support of democracy in the kingdom.

LATEST UPDATE ON FREEDOM STRUGGLE

Swaziland: Striving For Freedom, Vol 3. March 2013

In this edition of Swaziland: Striving For Freedom, Swazi Media Commentary reveals that spending on defence equipment in Swaziland is set to rise by 50 times in the coming year. This was part of ‘defence’ spending that will take up 10 percent of the entire budget for the kingdom. Nobody at the Swazi Government would go on record to explain why this was needed, except to say the spending was necessary for ‘security’ and to ‘keep the peace’.

The vast spending on defence reminded Swaziland watchers that the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, had in the recent past tried to buy arms worth millions of US from the United Kingdom, but that country’s government blocked the move, believing the weapons might be turned on the king’s subjects should they continue their protests for democracy.

Elsewhere this month, the government has been found out selling maize, donated by Japan as humanitarian food aid, on the open market. The money has been stashed in a special account at the Central Bank of Swaziland. The Swazi Government claims this action is legal, but Japan has made no public statement. We haven’t heard the last of this yet.

Elections are coming in Swaziland this year and King Mswati’s subjects are waiting for him to tell them when it will be. Only then, can electioneering begin. A campaign to boycott the election because political parties are banned from taking part is gathering momentum. This month a European Union delegation visited the kingdom and also told the king the ban on political parties should be lifted.

Police and state security forces broke up another prayer meeting (the second time in two months): this one was to mark the anniversary of the formation of the national labour federation, TUCOSWA. King Mswati’s courts banned TUCOSWA after it declared itself to be against the forthcoming election.

Swaziland: Striving For Freedom, which is available to download free-of-charge at scribd dot com. is the third volume of information, commentary and analysis on human rights taken from articles first published on the Swazi Media Commentary blogsite in March 2013. Each month throughout this year a digest of articles will be published bringing together in one place material that is rarely found elsewhere. 

Swazi Media Commentary has no physical base and is completely independent of any political faction and receives no income from any individual or organisation. People who contribute ideas or write for it do so as volunteers and receive no payment.

Swaziland Striving for Freedom Vol 3 Mar 2013

NEW COMPILATION ON FREEDOM FIGHT

Swaziland: Striving for Freedom, as seen through the pages of Swazi Media Commentary, Vol. 1, January 2013.

The US State Department reporting on human rights in Swaziland in 2011 said, ‘The three main human rights abuses were police use of excessive force, including use of torture and beatings; a breakdown of the judiciary system and judicial independence; and discrimination and abuse of women and children.

‘Other significant human rights problems included extrajudicial killings by security forces; arbitrary arrests and lengthy pretrial detention; arbitrary interference with privacy and home; restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly, and association; prohibitions on political activity and harassment of political activists; trafficking in persons; societal discrimination against members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community; harassment of labor leaders; restrictions on worker rights; child labor; and mob violence.’

Clearly, there is lot of work for democracy activists to do. But, there is a growing campaign inside Swaziland for democracy and this is getting noticed on an international scale. As each month passes it becomes more difficult for the king and his ‘traditionalist’ supporters in the kingdom to maintain the fiction that Swaziland is free.

Social media will play a large part in getting the message for freedom out. One of these is Swazi Media Commentary which was launched in 2007 and is one of the longest running blog or social media sites supporting the campaign for democracy in Swaziland.

Swaziland: Striving For Freedom (available on scribd dot com) is the first volume of information, commentary and analysis on human rights taken from articles first published on the Swazi Media Commentary blogsite in 2013. Each month throughout the coming year a digest of articles will be published bringing together in one place material that is rarely found elsewhere.

In this first volume you can read about how the Swazi state wants to prosecute for treason those campaigners who advocate a boycott of the non-democratic national election (the death penalty is available for those convicted); how traditionalists want to continue forcing children into marriages (something that is called paedophilia in civilised countries) and how, because King Mswati has ruined the kingdom’s economy, one in ten of his subjects will go hungry this year.

Also included are reports on attacks by the state on women who wish to wear mini-skirts (they face jail time under a law made in 1889); how a pregnant woman was sent to prison because her mother thought she needed to be punished, although she had committed no crime, and how police routinely use torture.

This month there is also an extensive look at press standards in Swaziland and how newspapers deliberately lie to their readers in pursuit of profits.

Swaziland: Striving for Freedom. Vol 1: January 2013 by Swazi Media