NOW THEY COME FOR THE PASTORS

First it was the journalists and now it’s the pastors.

Nobody in Swaziland is allowed to say a word against the king and if they do they get hauled before the traditional authorities to ‘explain themselves’.

The latest to feel the wrath of authority are pastors at the Swaziland Conference of Churches (SCC) who have been called before the ‘traditional authorities’ at Ludzidzini Royal Residence by acting Ludzidzini Governor (traditional prime minister) Timothy Velabo (TV) Mtsetfwa.

Members of the SCC executive had to explain why one of their pastors, Justice Dlamini dared to tell a congregation of 300 Christians that the Incwala ceremony was evil and witchcraft was practiced there.

The Incwala ceremony, which takes place each December is one of those national rituals (the Umhlanga Reed Dance is another) which traditional authorities claims unites the Swazi nation as they seek blessings from ancestors. It is also a time to renew the kingship of the nation which in practice means young men pay homage to King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

The SCC executive members were told to explain what the purpose of Dlamini’s comments was and why they allowed him to talk about the Incwala during the prayer service. When they were released they were warned they could be called back for a further grilling.

Mtsetfwa has previously said that he took Dlamini’s comments seriously and his ‘loose tongue’ was a serious cause for concern.

I don’t know what Dlamini’s game was, he is, I think many readers would agree, more than a little eccentric at the best of times, but that doesn’t stop him having the right to speak as he pleases.

The SEC members are not the only ones to be hauled in to be given a grilling by the state and traditional authorities. Mfomfo Nkhambule, an outspoken critic of the ruling regime was also taken to task for articles he wrote in the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper.

He was hauled in by Swaziland’s state police and threatened with torture if he continued to criticise the king. He was later dropped from his traditional regiment, threatened with banishment from his homeland, and his family was threatened because he refused to be silenced.

SWAZILAND KING AND THE INTERNET

People in Swaziland are able to express themselves more freely because of the Internet.

Even though the media are generally restricted in the kingdom the Internet is not, so people are able to portray their feelings this way.

These are some of the conclusions reached in a video just released about the Bar-Camp conference held in Swaziland in June 2009. Bar-Camp was an opportunity for technology practitioners in Swaziland to share and learn in an open environment.

As well as giving the background to how the Internet is being used in Swaziland, the video makes much of the fact that Swaziland is ruled by King Mswati III, the last absolute monarch in sub-Saharan Africa, who has a personal wealth of 200 million US dollars and owns all of Swaziland’s mineral wealth. Meanwhile, the video reports, most of his subjects earn less than $1.25 a day.

Despite the relative freedom of the Internet there is a claim made in the video that some comments posted on the web had to be taken down on the orders of the king. Unfortunately, this point is not followed up so it is not clear what is being referred to.

I know that in the past the Times of Swaziland group, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, used to allow readers to comment on its stories, but this service was cancelled after there were many criticisms of the king and others in the Swazi ruling elite. I don’t know if the king had direct involvement in this cancellation.

As someone who regularly writes criticising the king, I can say that I have no knowledge of anyone trying to interfere with the publication of Swazi Media Commentary: at least, not in the sense of trying to get the site taken down. And since I no longer live in Swaziland there is no way that the authorities can exert personal pressure on me to shut me up.

So, the makers of the video are correct, the Internet can be a useful tool in allowing people to express themselves about Swaziland, but it is not perfect.

The video called Swaziland: the King and the Web is published by PBS Frontline, of the US.

Source.

SWAZIS FORCED TO DANCE FOR KING

Despite what King Mswati III and ‘traditionalist leaders’ in Swaziland want us to believe, many of the tens of thousands of maidens who will dance bare-breasted in front of the king at the annual Umhlanga Reed Dance this week will not do so willingly.

News has leaked out that ‘security forces’ will be out to ensure that girls and young women turn up for the king.

It seems the maidens prefer to give the king a miss in favour of attending other events such as the Swaziland International Trade Fair which takes place at the same time as the Reed Dance.

The maidens leave their village homes telling their chiefs that they are off to see the king, but they never arrive.

We are constantly told by traditionalists that girls and women think it is a great honour to attend the Umhlanga Reed Dance to parade before King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

But clearly this is not the case. The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reported yesterday (26 August 2009) that so many maidens go missing that a squad has been put to together to spy on them to make sure they attend.

Imbali yemaSwati leader Nothando Nhlengethwa told the Observer that the maidens go off to cut the reeds but then do not make it to the dance.

Nhlengethwa said, ‘security forces will be out in their numbers’ to check up on the maidens. Each chiefdom has been told to supply a list of the names of those who leave the villages to attend. This list will then be checked ‘on a daily basis .... to ensure that the members did in fact arrive at the reed dance and are participating fully.’

SWAZILAND'S FAIR-WEATHER FRIEND

Anyone looking at the Swazi news media over the past week or so could not have missed the news that one of Swaziland’s ‘greatest friends’ has left the kingdom.

I refer to the Taiwanese Ambassador to Swaziland Leonard ‘Mashesha’ Chao who bade farewell at a ‘highly emotional’ luncheon, according to the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

In the UK where I come from ‘highly emotional’ is a code for drunk as skunks but I don’t believe the Observer meant it that way.

Instead, we were told that Chao received a standing ovation from guests and that Barnabas Dlamini, the illegally-appointed prime minister of Swaziland, was in attendance; although the Observer didn’t say the ‘illegally-appointed’ bit.

In a separate article, the Observer said Chao ‘expressed his profound pain at saying goodbye to Swaziland’. He then gave 100 bags (30 kg) of rice to Good Shepherd hospital and 10 bags to Kwaluseni care point.

The Taiwanese always get good media coverage in Swaziland and let’s face it they put in the effort. They really want to be friends with Swaziland. So they spend a lot of time and money making it so.

Swazi journalists have been feted and as a result articles appear all over the newspapers. In September 2007 the Times Sunday had a full page ‘post card’ from the newspaper’s editor who was being hosted in Taiwan. Unsurprisingly, he wrote he was having a marvellous time. Mbongeni Mbingo said, ‘I was overwhelmed by the reception I received from the hosts, from the foreign office to everyone at the amazing hotels I have been booked into.’

I had a flavour of this myself when I wrote a blog critical of Taiwan. Before you could say Chicken Chow Mein my office was full of fellows from the embassy smoozing away wanting to take me out to dinner and meet the ambassador etc. Don’t worry, I’ve been a journalist for 30 years and I know there’s no such thing as a free meal: I didn’t go.

The truth is Taiwan isn’t a true friend of Swaziland: the relationship is based on political expediency. Taiwan wants to join the United Nations and Swaziland has a vote that could be used to support it. Because the People’s Republic of China (‘mainland’ China) doesn’t want Taiwan in the UN, few countries support Taiwan. Those, like Swaziland, that do, get ‘friendship’, usually in the form of development aid or nice hotel trips for newspaper editors.

The Taiwanese have had notable successes persuading Swazi journalists they should support Taiwan because it is fighting an undemocratic neighbour (People’s Republic of China). The irony that Swaziland is not itself a democracy is lost on the Swazi journalists.

Taiwan in not a true friend of Swaziland; once countries no longer offer their support to it then it’s goodbye to friendship.

That’s what happened to Malawi in March 2008 when it decided to support the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan immediately punished Malawi for this by withdrawing its aid from the country, regardless of how much suffering this would cause.

Instead, Taiwan transferred what should have gone to Malawi and gave it to Swaziland.

As I said in 2008, Swaziland should choose its friends wisely. Taiwan is not a ‘friend’. Taiwan is using Swaziland for all it can get. Should Swaziland decide to follow Malawi’s example and support the People’s Republic of China that will be the end of the friendship.

So, let’s be honest and recognise that all the money and goods and services that Taiwan is supplying to Swaziland at the moment are not gifts among friends.

Put simply, they are bribes to buy Swaziland’s support.

HOW THE WORLD SEES SWAZILAND

It is an unfortunate coincidence of timing that the Weekend Observer newspaper in Swaziland published an article this past weekend called How the world sees our Kingdom.

As befitting the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, it concentrated on all the good things that journalists are, it claims, saying about Swaziland.

The article appeared on the very day that news houses all over the world, but not in Swaziland, reported on how five of King Mswati’s wives (he is said to have 13 but nobody knows for sure since this is information that his Swazi subjects are not allowed to have) are on a worldwide shopping spree costing at least six million US dollars.

The Weekend Observer interviewed Bongani Dlamini, Marketing Manager of the Swaziland Tourism Authority, who talked about how his organisation brings travel writers from all over the world to visit the kingdom. He said the journalists are brought to Swaziland ‘to experience, against the numerous negative hearsays, what the country has to offer’.

He said once in Swaziland, ‘the journalists are allowed to use their journalistic judgements on the nature of stories to publish, in line with the editorial policies of the media houses they work for. The journalists would most likely take news angles that would be of interest to their target readership, and are not influenced by the interests of their hosts.’

Journalists writing what they want to about Swaziland? Not a luxury that the state affords to its own journalists working in the kingdom. If a Swazi media house tells the truth about the king’s wives, it will be closed down by the king.

In its article the Weekend Observer reproduced some of the good things it said that international newspapers have published after their freebie travel trips to Swaziland.

But, again, no surprise here, the Weekend Observer is far from honest. Here’s one example: it quotes the Independent from London, UK, ‘Swaziland may be tiny and landlocked, but - like the Tardis - everything looks bigger from the inside’.

As ‘praise’ goes that’s not very high: indeed Swaziland is a tiny kingdom, but Swaziland has no control over that. What the Weekend Observer failed to tell its readers was what else the Independent had to say about Swaziland.

As I revealed in February 2009,the Independent’s travel writer Mike Unwin went on to say this,

‘Certainly the current monarchy could do with its defenders. While democracy has taken root across the rest of southern Africa, political parties remain outlawed in Swaziland. Indeed, a new constitution approved in 2005 enshrined the king’s powers to appoint the prime minister, the cabinet and judiciary. It is claimed that seven out of 10 people live below the poverty line.

‘Meanwhile Mswati has not been the agent of social change that some had hoped for, continuing to snap up wives from among his subjects (13 and counting), and displaying an appetite for cars and palaces that suggests he does not share his late father's ascetic tendencies.

‘Small wonder then that the extravagant 40/40 celebrations held last September to celebrate the nation's simultaneous 40th anniversary of independence and the king's 40th birthday did not go down well in more progressive quarters.

‘Rumblings about the royal wives’ shopping trip to Dubai and a new fleet of Mercedes cars bought for the occasion culminated in protest marches through the capital. Some saw the spectacular pageantry, in which thousands of royal subjects donned ceremonial leopard skins and turaco feathers to hail their monarch, as mere orchestrated jubilation: the manipulation of culture for political gain.’

Now, that’s really how the world sees our kingdom.