DISASTER AT SIKHUPHE AIRPORT

The Swaziland Government has agreed to throw another E350 million (50 million US dollars) at the discredited Sikhuphe Airport project.

It turns out that the government’s management of the project has been so poor that it is cheaper to continue building it (because of clauses in contracts with builders and other companies) than to abandon the project.

Sikhuphe, otherwise known as King Mswati III’s vanity project, has already far exceeded its budget and on one estimate could cost one billion US dollars by the time it is finished. It has already missed numerous deadlines for completion and opening.

The building of Sikhuphe was started without any ‘needs assessment’ having been undertaken, nor any clear idea of what it would be used for.

Now, one of Swaziland’s leading pro-democracy activists has pointed out other flaws in the Sikhuphe project.

Musa Hlophe, coordinator of the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO), writing today (28 November 2010) in his regular column in the Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in the kingdom, asks what would happen if an aircraft with (say) 400 passengers on board crashed at the airport?

He writes, ‘Assuming that we expanded our country’s ambulance fleet to 200 and each one was able to get to Sikhupe within one hour, how could our hospitals manage with hundreds of extra patients in one day? The closest hospital will be Good Shepherd at Siteki which is not exactly state of the art and the nearest major hospitals are in Manzini and Mbabane. They are already all on their knees, struggling to cope with our current crises of TB, HIV&AIDS.

‘Do our hospitals have a plan to cope with maybe 400 foreign people all needing bed spaces urgently? Do we have enough doctors and nurses trained in accident and emergency and most importantly do we have the necessary medicines, equipment and blood for this level of disaster? In a country that cannot even supply its own citizens with the proper drugs to prevent a child dying from rabies because of the bite of one dog - I doubt it. I doubt they could cope with fifty people never mind four hundred.

‘Sikhuphe’s business model to attract major foreign passenger carriers is already flawed because of the competition from four other regional airports within half a day’s drive - Kruger National in Mbombela (Nelspruit), Maputo in Mozambique, King Shaka in Durban and, of course, OR Tambo in Johannesburg. But what really stands out for me, as someone who has worked for businesses for a long time, is what little proper risk analysis has gone on here. Can you imagine an airline that wanted to carry rich western investors and tourists that would risk the lives of hundreds of its passengers? Can you imagine them ignoring the lack of medical systems, equipment, personnel or facilities to cope with even a relatively minor crash that required treatment of only a quarter of their passengers and staff?

‘If we adapt our medical systems to meet this need, will we take resources away from our families who are living with and dying from HIV&AIDS? So I ask a question that does not seem to have been considered in public before. How will the disaster plan for Sikhupe affect the provision of health care for the rest of us? Will the health budget be diverted from the families of our sick and dying to allow for the imagined needs of strangers who will only stay a few hours in our country? Has Minister Xaba and his team even considered it - have they thought it through? What do they say to the foreign investors?’

Hlophe also questions whether the airport was really hit by a tornado earlier this year (2010) or whether this was just made up people at the airport to cover up the fact that they were behind schedule with the building.

He writes, ‘I see that the cabinet and parliament have authorised even more money to be paid to complete the airport in the same week when Finance Minister Sithole has been decrying the lack of proper control of government finances and the continuing corruption by civil servants that he is powerless to sack. Sikhupe has run massively over budget and over time.

‘It was so bad that in March the people at the airport had to make up a story about a tornado hitting the building and putting back construction by many months. Who has ever heard of a tornado that damages only one building but leaves the rest of the neighbouring countryside completely unharmed? I have heard rumours that the actual runway is so poorly constructed that it is not even flat enough to land planes safely.

‘I also hear that the internal equipment that has been specified is so expensive to maintain that many US airports will not use it. How can we pour money down the drain like this? The small number of planes that fly to and from Matsapha are already only half full, if that airport was operating at full capacity then maybe there would be an argument for Sikhuphe - until then there simply is not. I hope that the forensic audit that the cabinet proposes looks at the issues of tendering, the business plan, the corruption, the quality of the work already done and sets out recommendations to the future.

‘Most of all I hope that the auditors make the common sense recommendation that no more money should be spent on this white elephant at this time of deep financial crisis. I cannot see any realistic scenarios where it will recoup its costs. No business person I know of thinks that it will ever attract regular business other than some cargo planes and most of us see it as a continuing barrier to development and not a creator of wealth.’

PROTEST SWAZI LAW REFORM DELAY

Women’s organisations in Swaziland are fighting to reform laws that treat women as second class citizens in the kingdom ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

According to a report from Amnesty International, just released, the Swazi Government has failed to change these laws, despite repeatedly promising to do so.

This means that women in Swaziland are not protected by law and face discrimination that is permitted by law.

The report called Too Little, Too Late states that women and girls have no legal protection from rape by their husbands and there are no laws criminalising domestic violence, forced marriages or early marriages.

Most married women are denied equal status as legal adults and cannot administer property, sign contracts or conduct legal proceedings without their husband’s consent. Denied the right to own land, many widows are forced from their homes.

Amnesty says that in a breakthrough in the fight for equality, Swaziland agreed in 2004 to be bound by the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – the key international treaty on women’s human rights.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Swaziland was enacted in the following year. For the first time, national law guaranteed to women the right to equal treatment with men and some protection from being ‘compelled to undergo or uphold any custom to which [they are] in conscience opposed’.

However, the laws that govern the daily lives of Swazi men and women have not been brought into line with CEDAW or the Constitution and leave Swaziland ‘in flagrant violation of its international commitments to women’s rights’.

More than half a decade after ratifying CEDAW and adopting a new Constitution, official steps to reform the laws affecting women’s rights have achieved very little.

The Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence bill was only introduced in Parliament for full debate on 28 October 2010. This is despite the active lobbying by women’s rights activists and other interested parties, including Amnesty International, since 2005.

Civil society organizations have attended meetings to discuss other draft bills but the law reform process appears to have stalled.

In March 2009, the then Minister of Justice, in a meeting with Amnesty International, referred to an ambitious legislative programme to protect and promote women’s rights and stated that several other bills would be tabled in parliament by the end of that year. As of November 2010 this had still not happened.

The delay in the law reform process cannot be blamed on lack of resources. The European Commission, the Commonwealth Secretariat and UN agencies have all supported the reform process by providing legislative drafters, research assistance and funding. The rapid passing of antitrafficking legislation in 2009, under external pressure from the United States, highlights what can be achieved with sufficient political will.

Amnesty is calling on people to protest to the Swaziland Government. For details of where to send protests click here and go to page 8.

TRUTH ABOUT SWAZI KING’S GREED

Swaziland’s politicians are behaving as if the kingdom is on the brink of war and want to make sure their own bunkers are full of personal wealth before it starts.

That’s the verdict of one of the most active apologists for the Swazi elite, Musa Ndlangamandla, who is editor-in-chief of the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

Ndlangamandla, writing in his own newspaper, criticises the ‘orgy of looting, gobbling and self-enrichment by politicians in recent times’.

He writes, ‘When a country prepares for war – I am told – people hurriedly harvest the fields for storage in underground bunkers away from reach of enemy fire, money is withdrawn hastily to be stashed in ‘safe’ places, land is grabbed (the Mbabane style) by politicians for their own good and there is a general atmosphere of self-enrichment at the expense of taxpayers and the poor.’

He goes on to say that some people tell him that ‘some of our leaders are behaving as if they have another country to which they will go when Swaziland is in total ruin’.

I’m sure that many people would agree with Ndlangamandla about the politicians, but he misses one vital person in his analysis of why Swaziland is close to ruin: King Mswati himself.

In his article Ndlangamandla talks about the politicians ‘amassing prime land in exclusive suburbs in the capital at half the market price.

‘The dust has hardly settled on yet another act of looting where the politicians awarded themselves hefty perks that will see some of them take home over E1 million in golden handshakes when their controversy-laden term expires.’

He says Swaziland ‘is crying out for astute and exemplary leadership from government’.

Ndlangamandla says, ‘Moreover, we need to convince the poor – by action and deed – that we are all in the trenches with them by avoiding grandiose lifestyles in the face of abject poverty in most parts of the country. Our politicians should also lead by example and accept substantial slashes not only of their allowances, but also their overall perks.’

This is a tale of corruption and greed, but why should we be surprised that government ministers and MPs behave in this way when the King of Swaziland is the greediest of them all.

Why doesn’t Ndlangamandla ask how King Mswati managed to amass a huge personal fortune, estimated by Forbes to be 200 million dollars?

Can he not tell us how many personal bank accounts the king has outside of Swaziland?

King Mswati is the beneficiary of two funds created by his father Sobhuza II in trust for the Swazi nation. During his reign, he has absolute discretion over use of the income.

Why does the king live such a lavish ‘grandiose’ lifestyle with at least 13 palaces when 70 percent of his one million subjects lives in abject poverty earning less than one dollar (E10) a day?

And it is not just the King: his ‘Royal Family’ is estimated to cost the Swazi taxpayer E300,000 each and every day.

King Mswati is the one who is acting as if his kingdom is on the brink of war. His police, army and ‘security forces’ are being primed for a fight against ‘terrorists’ (that is, anyone who speaks out against the king and his regime) and once civil unrest starts, as it surely will, he will suppress it with brutal violence.

If Ndlangamandla wants to warn the people of Swaziland about the impending doom he should be honest and tell the truth about the king.

SINISTER FORCES AND JOZINI PROJECT

Meanwhile back at the Jozini Big Six project ...

Acres of newspaper space is being given over to the comings and goings in Lavumisa, where King Mswati III, Swaziland’s ruler and sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, has seized (sorry, cancelled the contract on) the E3 billion (425 million US dollars) project for a massive tourism development in one of the kingdom’s poorest regions.

As is typical of the Swazi media most of the coverage has been in the minute detail – word for word what the original contract said, and so on. What is mostly absent is any analysis of why the king seemingly stole the project and what this will mean for the future of foreign investment in Swaziland.

But there was one good article of analysis this week – in the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper.

Needless to say, the article wasn’t written by a journalist, but by an anonymous ‘guest writer.’

It was an examination of how nothing had changed in Swaziland since the new constitution of 2005 And a small part was devoted to Jozini.

The writer wondered what influence the labadzala, whom I would define as the ‘faceless’ elders in Swaziland who seem to control everything for their own benefit and without recourse to law and definitely not the constitution.

Here is what he / she said about Jozini, ‘This is where once again we see that the authorities of this land are acting in a high handed and seemingly arbitrary manner. This is one of the biggest Foreign Direct Investment schemes that the country has attracted in many, many years and has the potential to be a long term earner in high spending tourist revenues. Most tourists only stay in Swaziland for one or two days and rarely leave the Mbabane—Ezulwini—Manzini corridor. It was also a pilot model of proper investment where the investors were given a 99 year land lease, and they developed strong social and economic ties with the Lavumisa community, providing employment and development in the most forgotten and deprived area of our country.

‘This project had the potential to increase and diversify the tourist product for the whole of the nation. The investors have now been told they have breached the terms of the lease and must leave. They have not been properly served with legal papers, they have not been properly told what the breach is and the government got the Attorney General himself to serve the papers.

‘Jim Brown, the Director of Jozini, believes he will win in court—I wish him good luck with that one. In each case that government fought in the last session of the Supreme Court government won. Just like it always did before the new constitution. But Brown, just like the South African farmers in Zimbabwe will have recourse to the South African Courts and will be able to get a judgment against the South African and Swazi governments for not protecting investments.

‘I also would like to know who is going to benefit from this project being killed off? It is definitely not the investors and it is not the people of the area. So do the labadzala have a partner lined up? They say they do not, but I would not be surprised if someone from the Middle East does not offer to capitalise the project in return for complete control.

The country will not see a cent and the people of Lavumisa will return to their previous condition of abject and continuing poverty.

‘The Jozini debacle has the potential to really bring our country to its knees. It actually reminds me of one project in which Sappi Usutu tried to empower its workers through their union. It was outsourcing one of its operations to Sapwu Branch at Sappi, but because the Union involved one Jan Sithole, labadzala would not hear any of that. I told them then that they were sending a wrong message to the foreign investor, both here and abroad. What foreign investor would seriously think of investing here if there are no legal rights or redresses open to it?’

To read the full article click here.