Swazi Media Commentary

Monday, 5 November 2012

CALL FOR LAW TO BAN HATE SPEECH

One of Swaziland’s most vocal pro-democracy groups has called for a new law to ban hate speech against homosexuals.

The call by the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) follows a debate in the Swazi House of Assembly in which MP Aaron Sotsha Dladla called for gays and lesbians to be outlawed in the kingdom.

Dladla said a new law should be put in place to deal with ‘this mushrooming anti-social’ behaviour of gays and lesbians. He went on to make a number of disparaging comments about homosexuals.

The Swazi Observer reported him saying, ‘We must first pass a law that will ban this practice before it takes root. Anyone found breaking that law should be dealt with severely.’

The SSN responded in a statement by calling MPs and members of Swaziland’s ruling elite ‘ghastly hypocritical’ because, it said, some of them were themselves closet homosexuals. It also claimed a prominent member of the Swazi Royal Family was a lesbian.

Gays and lesbians are routinely victimised in Swaziland. In November 2011, Chief Mgwagwa Gamedze, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, said Swaziland would not give human rights to gay people, because they did not exist in the kingdom.

He was responding to criticism of Swaziland by a United Nations (UN) working group on human rights that said the kingdom should enact equality laws for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people.

A group called HOOP (House of Our Pride), a support group for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Inter-sex (LGBTI) people, reported to the UN, ‘It is a common scene for LGBTI to be verbally insulted by by-passers in public places. [There is] defamatory name calling and people yelling out to see a LGBTI person’s reproductive part are some of the issues facing LGBTI in Swaziland.’

‘Faith houses have been known to discriminate against LGBTI, advocating for the alienation of LGBTI in the family and society, while maintaining that these LGBTI are possessed by demons.’

HOOP also said LGBTI people were often discriminated against at work and there had been well known cases of this.

In one of the first reports of its kind detailing sexual orientation discrimination in Swaziland, HOOP revealed, ‘LGBTI are hugely discriminated against in the community, as they are not recognized at community meetings and their points are often not minuted at these meetings nor are they allowed to take part in community services.’

Police often ridiculed LGBTI people if they reported they had been victims of violent crime. ‘A good example of such practices is in the on-going case of a well-known LGBTI in Swaziland, Patricia Dludlu, who is currently in incarceration for a different offence but is constantly ridiculed by the media and police because of her sexuality.’

NO LEGAL HELP FOR STUDENT ACTIVISTS

No legal representation for Swazi student leaders in court case

Siffkitten blog / Peter Kenworthy November 4, 2012

SOURCE

“Once again the student activists, Maxwell Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni appeared before Magistrate Gumedze without any legal representation,” Foundation for Socio-Economic Justice (FSEJ) wrote in a press statement on Friday.

Maxwell Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni were both abducted and tortured by Swazi security forces during the so-called April 12 Uprising in April 2011, and were later charged with possession of explosives. They were released on bail in February, amongst other things as a result of the international Free Maxwell Dlamini campaign calling for his release.

“Without granting them a postponement to allow them time get legal representation, Magistrate Gumedze opted to continue with the case by calling the state witness to give evidence,” the FSEJ press statement continued.

“He [Magistrate Gumedze] instructed the two to take notes on behalf of their lawyer so they share them with him after the session. He also mentioned that should their lawyer fail to appear on the 16th of November 2012, the two must be prepared to cross examine the state witness themselves.”

Saturday, 3 November 2012

WHY PM DLAMINI SHOULD QUIT NOW

The statement from Swaziland Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini that he does not want another term in office deserves to be met with belly laughs.

Dlamini told an audience in Manzini, ‘I am not determined to serve another term in office.’ According to the Times of Swaziland, he added he would ‘not campaign in next year’s elections.’

Observers of Swaziland and Dlamini’s record saw through the hollowness of his statement immediately. First up, he never took part in an election in 2008 when he was appointed to office by King Mswati III, in defiance of the kingdom’s constitution. It states the PM must come from the House of Assembly, but Dlamini was not elected to anything.

So he never ran for election last time and it is ludicrous for him to imply that he would put himself before the voters at the 2013 election.

The second reason his statement has been met with derision is that it implies that people want him to carry on. Nothing is further from the truth. Only last month (October 2012) the Swazi House of Assembly passed a vote of no-confidence in him and his government.

According to the constitution, King Mswati, who is sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, was obliged to sack him. Once again the king defied the constitution and Dlamini remained in office.

The House vote of no-confidence was not isolated. In August 2012 the Sibaya, a rather quaint excuse for democracy in Swaziland where ordinary people gather at a cattle byre to air their views on matters of importance to them, told Dlamini and his government to quit. The people said they were corrupt and destroying the kingdom.

Dlamini, who was previously PM for seven and a half years until 2003, has a long history as an enemy of freedom, who ignores the law when it suits him.

But, he also has also shown himself to be incompetent, untrustworthy and vain.

His incompetence can been seen all over Swaziland, where seven in ten people live in the grip of abject poverty, earning less than US$2 a day. Three in ten people are so malnourished they are moving from hunger to starvation and the kingdom has the worst record for the number people with HIV in the whole world. On top of that, TB and measles are at epidemic proportions in Swaziland.

But, instead of putting forward policies to help the Swazi people, Dlamini has spent much of his time in office feathering his own nest. A blatantland-scam, where he and government colleagues bought for themselves land belonging to the Swazi people, only failed to go to court because King Mswati personally ordered it should not.

Dlamini has also personal share-holding in companies, including Swazi Empowerment (Pty) Limited (SEL), which in turn has shares in the MTN cellphone company. This means he has a personal vested interest in many business decisions his government takes.

Dlamini is untrustworthy. The most blatant example was in April 2011 when he called a press conference and lied to the media that he had secured a ‘letter of comfort’ from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This letter would demonstrate to world finance organisations, such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, that Swaziland’s economy was sound and the kingdom could be trusted with loans. The news was greeted as a triumph and published all over the world. But, the letter did not exist. It was a fabrication.

Instead, one year later in April 2012 the IMF announced it was withdrawing support from Dlamini’s government and its ‘fiscal adjustment roadmap’ plan to save the economy. The IMF said ‘Government has yet to propose a credible reform programme that could be supported by a new IMF Staff-Monitored Programme.’

Dlamini was also exposed as a fraud in October 2010 when he allowed his government to alter an official report for the United Nations that stated that Swaziland was behind in its efforts to meet Millennium Goals on alleviating poverty. The doctored report was changed so instead of saying the Swaziland Government was ‘not likely’ to meet the target of ‘eradication of extreme poverty and hunger’ it read that it could ‘potentially’ meet the target.

As well as being incompetent and untrustworthy, Dlamini is also vain. In October 2010 he accepted a ‘World Citizen Award’. Even though before the award ceremony took place the world’s media exposed the organisers as conmen and the award as fake, Dlamini nonetheless flew first-class with an entourage from Swaziland to the Bahamas, to accept the award. Even when he was told to his face that he had been conned, he refused to acknowledge it, humiliating both himself and Swaziland on the world stage.

So, Dlamini does not want another term in office. Frankly, the Swazi people do not want to see him in office for one day more. The Prime Minister should show some integrity for once and stand down now.

Friday, 2 November 2012

KING’S EMPTY BOASTS ON PROSPERITY

King Mswati is at it again, offering empty boasts that he has attracted foreign business people to invest in his kingdom on a large scale, with thousands of jobs on offer for his impoverished subjects.

The king, who is becoming a serial fantasist, returned to his kingdom this week from a trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Taiwan claiming that he hadsecured Taiwanese investment to build a pharmaceutical plant, a food processing plant, a bottled water plant, a cosmetics plant and a granite and marble venture – which, according to a report in the Times of Swaziland newspaper, were expected to create more than 3 000 jobs.

The Times also reported that the king had secured investment of E100 million to pay for the project. That figure should have rang alarm bells with the media in Swaziland because E100 million is about US$10 million -- and you’d need to get a lot of bang for your bucks to build the five projects the king spoke about on that money.

It seems every time the king goes on a trip to the Middle East or Taiwan he comes back with tall tales of his achievements with businesspeople. The Swazi media, who surely would tell readers that he was wearing a fine set of clothes even when he was clearly buck-naked, faithfully report what he says.

But, it takes no more than five minutes searching through the news archives to demonstrate that King Mswati simply tells lies.

Here are some of the projects the king has promised in the past that have not materialised.

In October 2009, he came back from Qatar claiming he had secured US$4.8 billion to develop a ‘world-class’ facility that would store at least a three-month supply of fuel for Swaziland. Nothing happened.

In the same month he said there was about US$200 million available for a facelift for the Swazi capital city Mbabane. It would have a ‘fully fledged state-of-the-art 21st Century Civic Centre befitting a country’s capital city’. It would have the tallest building in the capital which would be able to host a number of activities such as national games, business meetings, music and arts festivals. Building was due to start in 2010 and take three years. Nothing happened.

For years the king has been banging on about the Sikhuphe international airport, but it is still under construction in the Swaziland wilderness. This was supposed to open in 2010 with major airlines fighting to land their planes. It has not opened. In October 2009, the king announced ‘one of the world’s leading airlines’, the UAE-based Etihad Airways, would use the airport. No deal yet.

And, then there was ‘Swazi City’ with its 250 shops with four floors of luxurious shopping experience; Royal Villas which would offer up to six-star accommodation facilities suitable for all type of guests; a 28-floor hotel with 350 guest suites, world-class restaurants, three swimming areas and in-door sporting facilities, a health spa and a casino.

The king announced this plan in April 2009. He said the multi-million emalangeni cost (nobody seemed able to give a definite price) would be met by international finance. He said it would be completed in three years and bring 15,000 new jobs. It wasn’t and it didn’t.

In February 2010, King Mswati received a standing ovation at the opening of parliament when he announced that his government would spend about US$150 million over the next three years on houses for the nation. It didn’t happen.

The king’s fantasies date back at least 15 years when he was supposed to have teamed up with another fantasist, the pop singer Michael Jackson, to bring a ‘Netherland-style’ theme park to Swaziland. Media reports in 1998 said King Mswati personally met with Jackson at Disneyland in the US to get him on board. No Netherland has been built.

It surely speaks volumes about how much people in Swaziland fear the king, who is sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, and who has a state-apparatus ready at his disposal to crush any dissent, however mild and no matter how justified, that no one will stand up and say, King Mswati has no clothes.

Thursday, 1 November 2012

GOVT IN COURT TO ATTACK UNION GROUP

TUCOSWA case to be heard on 15 November 2012

(Statement Centre for Human Rights and Development, 1 November 2011)

The case involving the deregistration of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) will be heard on 15 November 2012, the Industrial Court pronounced this morning. In this case the Swaziland government is seeking an order declaring the registration of TUCOSWA unlawful.

The organization is represented by human rights lawyer Mr. Thulani Maseko who pleaded with the court to hear the matter urgently since it pertains to the fundamental rights of workers. Mr. Maseko argued that it is at the best interest of workers, employers and government that the matter be heard and finalized soon. He cited section 4 of the Industrial Relations Act 2000(as amended) which lays out the purposes of the Act amongst which is the promotion of harmonious relations and freedom of association and expression in labour relations.

The Swaziland government challenges the registration of the organization on the basis that the Industrial Relations Act does not include organizations such as federations. This is despite the Act having several provisions with the word federation. For example, section 2 of the Act defines a federation as a body registered in terms of the Act which is comprised of employers and or a combination of employers’ associations, trade unions or staff associations.

Furthermore, section 2 defines the terms office and officer in the context of federations. When the court sits on the 15th, the TUCOSWA will be arguing that it was properly registered as the Act includes the registration of federations.

On another note it transpired during the hearing that the parliament Swaziland is in the process of amending the Industrial Relations Act to expressly include the registration of workers’ federations. This will however mean that if judgment is issued against TUCOSWA then the union will have to reapply to register under the new Act in which case the government has an option to allow or deny the registration.

TUCOSWA was able to successfully merge the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) and the Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL) to bargain collectively for workers’ rights in Swaziland. The deregistration of TUCOSWA was necessitated by the vibrancy of the organization and the huge support it had both local and international.

The case comes at a time when many Swazis are calling for the unbanning of political parties and their participation in the upcoming 2013 national elections. The government has continued to silence dissenting voices and disregard the Constitution. Last month members of parliament passed a vote of no confidence on cabinet ministers which was later withdrawn due to defiance by the ministers.

+268 2504 0913

ALERTS@DignityFirst is a periodic update on global issues touching on human rights, good governance and democratisation, issued by the Centre for Human Rights and Development operating out of Swaziland (www.dignityfirst.org). Recipients are urged to circulate information and share with colleagues in their networks.

** Putting Human Dignity First!**

Search This Blog