8 March 2012
The Women Who Have To Live With Abuse
As International Women's Day is marked across the world -- in some parts there is little reason for females to celebrate. Alex Crawford reports from Swaziland where abuse is widespread.
Click here to see a report from Sky News
http://news.sky.com/home/video/16184571
See also
DEPUTY PM LIES ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/03/deputy-pm-lies-on-womens-rights.html
Stiffkitten
3 March 2012
Maxwell: I was tortured
“I was tied to a bench with my face looking upwards and they suffocated me with the black plastic bag with a huge police officer on my stomach. They [Swazi police] asked me where the guns were and who was going to come to Swaziland to overthrow the king. They did that over and over again till I collapsed. They told me that they will kill me for causing trouble in the country and organizing the April 12 uprising,” Swazi student leader Maxwell Dlamini tells Africa Contact in a statement about his arrest, remand and court case - the Stiffkitten blogsite, reports.
Maxwell was arrested, tortured and charged with possession of explosives in connection with the Arab Spring-inspired “April 12 uprising” in Swaziland in 2011. There has been a campaign for his full and unconditional release ever since, organised by the British National Union of Students, British NGO ACTSA and Danish NGO Africa Contact, who together with the Swazi democratic movement have insisted that Maxwell was innocent.
Having been released on the largest bail in Swazi history four weeks ago, Maxwell can now finally tell the story of his horrendous ordeal in his own words.
Maxwell’s story
”My first arrest was on the 10th of April 2011,” Maxwell tells Africa Contact. “I was returning from South Africa, driving a car when just near the border I met a roadblock. They were conducting a routine search. Then all of a sudden a police officer hit me on the face and I fell down. They drove me to Mbabane regional headquarters where I was shoved into a conference centre full of police officers. They insulted me, undressed me, humiliated and degraded me.”
“Then the head of the team, assistant commissioner Zephaniah Mgabhi, told me to give him the bombs and guns that I was carrying from South Africa. I told them that I was carrying no such thing. I was assaulted and suffocated with a black plastic back till I was very week and I couldn’t breath. After two hours they took me to a police van and drove me to an isolated police station. I was thrown into a cell with no lights or toilet. They gave me neither food nor water.”
“On the 12 of April, I was delivered to another team of Special Forces who took me to my house to search for bombs, explosives and guns. They ransacked the house but did not find anything. The regional commander strictly warned me against joining any protest in the future and told me to resign from SNUS [Swaziland National Union of Students, of which Maxwell is President]. Then I was released and dumped in a far away forest.”
“Thursday the 14th of April 2011, I decided to join the struggling masses of our people who were confronting [absolute monarch king] Mswati’s regime in Manzini. Here twenty police officers arrested me. They drove straight to Matsapha police station. I was taken into an interrogation room. One police officer by the name of Clement Sihlongonyane told me that he would deal with me once and for all. They tied me to a bench facing upward and again they suffocated me with a plastic bag. I was told that I will not finish my degree at the university and that they will kill me or send me to jail.”
“Later, they brought Musa [Ngubeni, Maxwell’s friend, fellow student leader and co-accused] and we were told that we have to sign the confession statement that we were carrying explosives but we refused. The following day they took us to the magistrates court where we were formally charged with allegedly being in possession of explosives.”
The Arab Spring spreads southwards
Maxwell is just one of many Swazi democracy campaigners who have been beaten up, tortured, framed, and detained for months on end, as the Swazi regime has become increasingly desperate in its attempt to cling on to power.
To read the full post from Stiffkitten, click here.
South Africa is sneaking E2.4 billion (US$320 million) to Swaziland to help it shore up its ailing economy so that the undemocratic kingdom does not have to instigate political reforms, a Swazi campaigning group claimed.
Swaziland asked South Africa for a E2.4 billion loan last August (2011), but the deal stalled because Pretoria wanted financial and political reforms as conditions. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, put the block on the loan because he would not hold talks about unbanning political parties in his kingdom.
Now, the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) says the loan money is being channelled into Swaziland disguised as cash from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). This way Swaziland gets the money without reforms by King Mswati.
Swaziland is due to get about E7.1 billion in 2012/13 from SACU. This is up from the E2.9 billion Swaziland got in the financial year just ended. SACU receipts are based on the amount of trade done in Southern Africa. But SCCCO says E7.1 billion is more than Swaziland should get based on trade expected over the next 12 months.
The Mail and Guardian newspaper in South Africa reported Archbishop, Meshack Mabuza, chair of SCCCO, saying his group suspected there had been deliberate over-estimation so that extra funds could be released to Swaziland without questions being asked.
‘We believe these estimates are over-inflated in order to give the R2.4 billion to Swaziland without any political or fiscal conditions,’ the Mail and Guardian reported him saying.
‘We just don’t see how with the current economic climate being so weak that regional imports are going to grow so rapidly,’ he added.
Mabuza said, ‘It just seems very suspicious that Swaziland should be getting so much more this year.’
Budget estimates for Swaziland over the next three years forecast a E200 million surplus for 2012/13 followed by deficits of E1.9 billion in 2013/14 and E1.7 billion in 2014/15 – suggesting that the amount of money Swaziland receives from SACU in 2012/13 will not be repeated in the following years.
South Africa’s Treasury spokesperson Bulelwa Boqwana told the Mail and Guardian the SCCCO’s claim was ‘factually incorrect’ and added the payment had been approved by a Council of Ministers [trade and finance] from the five Sacu member countries.
See also
SWAZILAND’S SACU CASH MYSTERY
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2012/03/swazilands-sacu-cash-mystery.html
Swaziland’s Deputy Prime Minister Themba Masuku lied in New York this week when he said that the Swazi Government recognised women as equal citizens and was committed to the promotion and protection of their rights.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Masuku told the 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women that Swaziland was party to several critical human rights instruments, all of which promote gender equality and respect for the rights of women.
Who does he think he is kidding? Only last year (2011) Swaziland was severely criticised at the United Nations Periodic Review of Human Rights meeting for its woeful treatment of women.
Here’s an extract from a report Amnesty International made to the review.
Discrimination against women
The Constitution guarantees women the right to equal treatment with men, a right that “shall include equal opportunities in political, economic and social activities” (Section 28 (1)).
However other provisions of the Constitution appear to fall short of international human rights standards. For example, Section 15(1) that prohibits discrimination on various grounds does not include marital status.
Women’s right to equality in the cultural sphere is also inadequately protected by the provision guaranteeing that “a woman shall not be compelled to undergo or uphold any custom to which she is in conscience opposed”(Section 28(3)). This formulation places an undue burden on the individual woman, whereas international human rights law stipulates that it is the responsibility of the state to prohibit and condemn all forms of harmful practices which negatively affect women. Furthermore, girls and young women are not sufficiently protected under the law from forced or early marriages.
As a consequence of the slow pace of law reform, women remain unprotected by the law and continue to face forms of discrimination permitted by domestic law. The delays cannot be blamed on a lack of resources since the government has been provided with various forms of practical support for this process as it pertains to women’s rights by the EU and UN agencies.
While a number of new bills had had been tabled in Parliament, in May 2010 the Supreme Court ordered that an unconstitutional provision of the 1968 Deeds Registry Act must be amended by Parliament within a year. The provision (Section 16(3)) prohibited most women married under civil law from legally registering immovable property in their own name. By early 2011 the law was still on the statute books unchanged.
Statutory and case law in Swaziland reduce most married women to the status of legal minors. Women married under civil law provisions (the 1964 Marriages Act) are subject to the ‘marital power’ of their husbands. They cannot independently administer property, sign contracts or conduct legal proceedings.
The only exception involves an ante-nuptial contract, and few women seem to be aware of this option.
Women in Swaziland may alternatively marry under customary law under the country’s dual legal system. For them the husband’s ‘marital power’ extends even further and its limits are unclear. The Marriages Act also discriminates between boys and girls, providing a lower minimum age of marriage for girls (16) than boys (18). Under customary law, marriage is permissible for girls as young as 13.
Until the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence draft law is passed, women experiencing gender based violence have few remedies available to them under the law. Under common law, rape is defined narrowly and marital rape is not criminalized in either statute or common law.
The Girls and Women’s Protection Act of 1920 specifically excludes marital rape from its range of offences.
Swaziland is predicted to have a budget deficit of nearly E2 billion next year, even though this year a surplus of E200 million is forecast.
The deficit raises doubts about how much Swaziland can rely on Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) receipts.
In his budget speech last month (February 2012) Majozi Sithole, the Swazi Finance Minister, announced that there was expected to be a surplus in the budget of E200,904,000. This, he said, was because there would be a bumper harvest from the SACU receipts and Swaziland would collect about E7.1 billion in 2012/13. This is up from the E2.9 billion Swaziland got from SACU in the financial year just ended.
The SACU money for 2012/13 accounts for about 60 percent of all Swaziland’s income for the year.
The announcement raised a few eyebrows, because the SACU receipts Swaziland gets are dependent on the amount of trade being done in the Southern Africa region, especially through South Africa. But trade has been sluggish, not buoyant, and predictions are that things will not improve substantially in the foreseeable future.
Sithole believes that the SACU money will bail out the country this year and ensure that public servants will get paid and that other government bills will be met. But in his speech he warned that Swaziland should not rely on SACU receipts in future years.
Swaziland is nearly broke and can’t pay its bills. Since August 2011, it has been trying to get a E2.4 billion loan from South Africa, but King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, put the block on that once Pretoria demanded political reforms as a condition.
Last November the Swazi Government went scuttling to private financiers for a loan to pay public service salaries. Then suddenly the SACU money was announced and the government breathed a sigh of relief.
There are now doubts about whether the E7.1 billion from SACU is really money from the customs union or whether South Africa is using it to launder its own money to bail out Swaziland.
Suspicions were raised further this week when the full details of Swaziland’s budget estimates appeared on the Internet. The budget shows that although there is a forecast of E200 million surplus in 2012/13 there are further predictions of DEFICITS of E1.9 billion in 2013/14 and E1.7 billion in 2014/15 – suggesting that the money Swaziland receives from SACU in 2012/13 will not be repeated in the following years.
