SWAZILAND KING A LOUSY JOURNALIST

I see King Mswati III of Swaziland has turned journalist – almost.

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper he in effect owns, reproduced an article he is said to have written for an international magazine called FIRST.

The king’s journalism lives up (or do I mean down?) to the standards of the Observer – it has scant regard for the truth and could better be described as propaganda.

King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, writes about the wonders of Swaziland. He begins as he means to go on, in a fantasyland of his own.

‘The Kingdom of Swaziland continues to use its resources and capabilities to expand investment opportunities for both foreign and local business, as part of our national strategy for socio-economic growth.’

Wrong. In fact the complete opposite is the case. It was only last month (November 2009) that the Observer itself reported consultant Peter Carr who said Swaziland was not deemed as a good place for investors to set up business because of its small market, its people are too poor and Swaziland’s limited international reputation as a destination for foreign direct investment.

The King goes on to write about Swaziland’s National Development Strategy – Vision 2022, which he says will ‘improve the standard of living for all our people through access to quality services, wealth creation and employment opportunities’.

Wrong again. Hasn’t he been listening to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which for years has been warning the governments, he appoints, that the public service wage bill is far too high and it and public services generally must be slashed? How does that square with improved standards of living, quality services and wealth creation?

Then he comes up with this classic, ‘As a peace loving nation, the Kingdom of Swaziland strongly believes in promoting dialogue to address national issues and challenges. It is for that reason that our country is known all over the world to be the oasis of peace.’

I won’t even start to pull that one apart – read just about every post on this blog to see the lies in his statement.

There’s a lot more of this ‘journalism’ in his article, but I won’t waste your time taking each and every paragraph apart.

Someone needs to tell King Mswati, his newspaper the Swazi Observer and FIRST, that just by saying something is true doesn’t make it so. A little more scepticism on the part of Swaziland’s journalists wouldn’t come amiss.

FANTASY WATCH: ECONOMIC REALITY

It’s Fantasy Watch time again. Last month (October 2009) King Mswati III went on a tour of the Middle East with his cap in hand trying to get ‘business captains’ in the oil state of Qatar to help Swaziland find up to E35 billion (4.8 billion US dollars) to develop a ‘world class’ facility that will store at least a three-month supply of fuel for Swaziland.

Remember that?

Then, in the same month, the Swazi media reported about a grand plan to spend E1.5bn (about 200 million US dollars) on a ‘facelift’ for the Swazi capital city Mbabane.

The money for this was to come from international investors.

Which investors and from where?

Nowhere of course. It’s a fantasy, and here’s why: Swaziland is not deemed as a good place for investors to set up business because of its small market, its people are too poor and Swaziland’s limited international reputation as a destination for foreign direct investment.

That’s the view of a consultant Peter Carr, who says because of these problems Swaziland has not had sufficient appeal to investors as a good place to set up business.

He told this to a meeting in Manzini, Swaziland’s business centre, this week. The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by the king, reported it but did not make the connection between this home truth and King Mswati’s fantasies.

In another part of the financial forest, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) reports that foreign direct investment going into Swaziland has fallen drastically, from about E529.3 million (67 million US dollars) between 1990 and 2000 to about E52.14 million (6.6 million US dollars) between 2003 and 2007.

The WTO reports that the cost of doing business is high: Swaziland currently ranks 115 (out of 183 countries) in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2009 index.