Another member of the Swazi ruling elite has said journalists face death if they continue to criticise the kingdom’s leadership.
Prince Mahlaba, a member, Liqoqo, a shady group that advises King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, said some sections of the media were trying to undermine the kingdom’s system of governance.
According to the Times of Swaziland,the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, Prince Mahlaba, told a meeting of the Smart Partnership that he thought there were ‘clandestine manoeuvres in the media that sought to undermine the country’s leadership and system of governance and said that for prolonged periods of time he has been silent, hoping that people would come to their senses and stop the wrong they were doing.’
The Times quoted Prince Mahlaba saying, ‘It’s a fact that journalists earn their living by writing lies and if they do not write the lies then their source of livelihood is threatened and this is fact and beyond debate.’
He added, ‘I want to warn the media to bury things that have the potential of undermining the country, rather than publish all and everything even when such reports are harmful to the country’s international image.
‘Journalists who write bad things about the country will die.’
Prince Mahlaba is not the only member of Swaziland’s ruling elite to threaten journalists with death.
In June 2008, Jim Gama, the ‘traditional prime minister’ of Swaziland (who has more real influence in the kingdom than Barnabas Dlamini, the man King Mswati illegally appointed as the official prime minister)said that a journalist who had written a report critical of King Mswati should face serious punishment, including death.
Swaziland’s most prominent gay rights advocate is back in the news.
The Times Sunday reports that Mangosuthu Simanga Dlamini, the president of Gays and Lesbians Association of Swaziland (Galeswa) was present by invitation at the state opening of parliament earlier this month (February 2009).
Both Mangosuthu and the newspaper are silent on who it was who invited him to the opening officiated by King Mswati III.
Mangosuthu came to notice in Swaziland in 1997 when on national television he publiclydeclared that he was a homosexual.
His statement was seen as such a threat to the stability of Swaziland that Barnabas Dlamini, the then Prime Minister, (and also the present illegally-appointed Prime Minister of Swaziland) called homosexuality ‘abnormality and sickness’ and declared that the government would not accept homosexuals unless society did so first.
A former Prime Minister Prince Bhekimpi, who is also a chief, said, ‘Homosexuality is regarded as Satanic in Swaziland. Therefore, I am forced to evict all gays and lesbians in my area.’
King Mswati III, speaking at a national prayer meeting on the one occasion when he mentioned same-sex relations, said gay people were possessed of Satanic notions.
Mangosuthu, who was 21 years old at the time, responded by challenging Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini to a televised debate on homosexuality. Barnabas being a bully and a coward chickened out and refused to appear.
After declaring his homosexuality, Mangosuthu was sacked from his job at a security firm and was believed to have moved to South Africa, where, unlike in Swaziland, equality of gays and lesbians is enshrined in the country’s constitution. The Times Sunday (15 February 2009) reported that Mangosuthu was now back in the country and instrumental in developmental projects in the Lubombo region – his home area.
Gays and lesbians continue to be oppressed in Swaziland and from time to time the Swazi media collude in this oppression. I have written before here and here about the way the newspapers use hate speech to demonise homosexuals and how journalists peddle their ignorance on the subject.
Swaziland’s so-called leaders continue to harass homosexuals. Only this month Sigwe MP Sivumelwano Nxumalo, told a church meetingthat Christians must fight tooth and nail to ensure that country is protected against ungodly practices like gay marriages. Nxumalo is so dripping in hatred that ‘he further urged all Swazi folk to fight against all non-Christian religions’.
Despite this open hostility, gays and lesbians continue to meet and to advocate for their rights. Galeswa relaunched in 2006 with the aim of encouraging more people to openly declare their sexuality.
A spokesperson for the organisation said, ‘As gay people, we want everyone to understand that gays are not made, but are born.’ Galeswa said even though the Swaziland Constitution did not guarantee gays and lesbians equality, at the same time people cannot be arrested for living gay lives.
In 2005, Swaziland’s first gay club opened in Mbabane. It was described by one attorney as offering ‘limitless’ opportunities for blackmail, financial and political.
The nation’s foremost traditional leader, Jim Gama, the ‘traditional’ prime minister, was said to be ‘apoplectic’ when alerted by the Swazi media about the gay bar. One Swazi newspaper said the bar would lead to a ‘Gays invasion!’
We shouldn’t be surprised by this attitude to homosexuality in Swaziland, this is after all a kingdom where Swazis subjugate their women, flog their children and wave their Bibles in the face of anyone who is different from them and where the absence of freedom of expression helps to keep people in ignorance.
But Swaziland’s gays and lesbians, although repressed, are resilient – to find out how, click here.
Swazi dissident Mfomfo Nkhambule is in further trouble for writing newspaper articles that criticise King Mswati III and Swaziland’s ruling elite.
Jim Gama, the ‘traditional’ prime minister of Swaziland told Nkhambule to stop poking his nose into affairs that don’t concern him.
In Swaziland many people believe the ‘traditional’ prime minister has more power than the ‘real’ PM, because he is the custodian of all things traditional in the kingdom. In Swaziland whenever there is a dispute between custom and the law, custom generally wins.
Because of this Gama has to be listened to.
Nkhambule was hauled in by police and threatened with 20 years jail time if he continued to criticise the king in his comment articles that appear each Monday in the Times of Swaziland.
It has been said that Nkhambule faced tortureif he didn’t do as the police said.
Gama told the Timesit was clear to all and sundry that Nkhambule, ‘absolutely had no respect for the king’.
‘I would only advise him to demonstrate utmost respect for the king in his writings,’ Gama said. ‘The king is the father of the nation hence he deserves to be accorded respect by every citizen at all times.’
The Times reported, ‘Gama warned the nation not to dare cheer on Nkhambule when demonstrating huge disrespect towards His Majesty.’
Gama’s statement comes at a time when Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini warned journalists they would be charged with sedition if they criticised the speech King Mswati made last week at the opening of parliament.
People in Swaziland have been banned from talking about King Mswati IIIand the war he has declared against his own people.
Jim Gama, who is known as the ‘traditional’ Prime Minister and has more influence over Swaziland than the real PM, has issued an edict to say that the king’s subjects must not refer to the king’s speech ever again.
The speech in question was made last month when King Mswati III illegally appointed Barnabas Dlamini as Prime Minister of Swaziland. Introducing Dlamini to his subjects, the king told Dlamini to get the terrorists and all who support them.
True to his king’s command, Dlamini has enacted the Suppression of Terrorism Act 2008 and last week branded four political formations as ‘terrorist’. The day after his announcement Mario Masuku, President of one of the organisations, the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) was arrested in a charge of making public statements in support of terrorism.
According to the Swazi News today (22 November 2008) Gama has banned people from talking about the king’s speech. Gama argued that the king ‘was in an emotional state when the remarks were made’.
There is no indication what will happen if people are caught discussing the king.
Gama may be too late. Already rumours have been sweeping Swaziland about the king. It seems to be generally accepted that the speech the king made was ‘emotional’, but it is less clear why he was so emotional. There have been suggestions that he has been drinking heavily.
In media release earlier this week, SWAYOCO, the Swaziland Youth Congress, went a lot further. It stated, ‘Of late, our palace insiders inform us, Mswati rarely has both the time and capacity to think properly. During the day, he is both flirting and giggling with barely nubile girls or is “consulting” with his evidently senile henchman, Barnabas. And for a better part of the night he is often, very typically, ogling and salivating at the nudity of girls in Big Brother Africa at midnight. A king plagued by midlife crisis!’
