We should not welcome the report that a plot is afoot to revive the Imbokodvo National Movement (INM) political party.
This is not a move towards democracy in Swaziland: in the past the INM was a front for the Swazi monarchy.
The Times of Swazilandreported yesterday (31 December 2010) that ‘a prince, a member of the King’s Advisory Council and an employee of the King’s Office’ were ‘behind a plot’ to revive the party. The Times says all three ‘work very closely with royalty’.
According to the Times, the plotters say King Mswati III,sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, supports the revival of the party.
The INM was formedby the king’s father King Sobhuza IIand his advisory council, the Swaziland National Council (liqoqo), to contest Swaziland’s election in 1964, which was held prior to the kingdom’s independence from Great Britain in 1968.
The INM’s platformfocused on assistance to peasants, labelled the other parties as ‘foreign’, divisive and hostile to Swazi ‘tradition’ and sought to keep traditional land tenure unchanged while vesting mineral rights, like land, in the hands of the monarchy.
The INM had considerable resources at its disposal, including the support of King Sobhuza and the power of the chiefs who were able to force their subjects to vote for the party. The INM also had the support of capitalist interests and was able to persuade the voters that the interests of the King and the survival of the nation were one and the same.
The INM’s victory was overwhelming and it won all eight seats that were available for election, gathering 85.47 percent of the vote.
King Sobhuza banned all political parties in Swaziland following the election of 1973 when his subjects dared to elect some members of parliament who were from opposition parties. That ban has been in force ever since.
The Times in its report says that the plotters are trying torecruitmembers of the public for the revival of the party ‘as soon as possible’ and several meetings were held last month (December 2010) with some people earmarked to be the ‘front of the party’.
The Times did not name the plotters, but promised more revelations to come.
I don’t know what more it has to tell us, but we should remember that however much democrats might want to see political parties in the kingdom this move to reform the INM is a diversion.
We don’t want ‘plotters’ for the king reforming political parties. As a first step toward democracy we want all political parties unbanned, a free media and freedom of association. That way we can start a proper debate on the way forward for Swaziland.
In his attempt to seem like a world statesman, King Mswati IIIof Swaziland has exposed himself as a hypocrite.
King Mswati told a COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa)Heads of State and Government Summit that to avoid the possibility of encouraging coups, leaders should encourage dialogue to ensure peace and stability.
The Swazi Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, quoted him saying, ‘As a peace loving nation, the Kingdom of eSwatini [Swaziland] believes in dialogue as an important tool for addressing national and international issues.’
And that’s where he exposed himself as a hypocrite. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that at present Swaziland is in danger of tearing itself apart because the king and the security forces he controls have unleashed terror on progressives who are trying to argue for multiparty democracy.
And only in July this year (2010)King Mswati categorically ruled out dialogue with those who want to change the system in Swaziland.
He told the so-called Smart Partnershipthat the question of reviewing the political structures in Swaziland was a closed book that would not be opened.
So there you have it. King Mswati says one thing when he stands in front of an international audience, but does the complete opposite when it comes to ensuring his own rule at home goes unchallenged.
He also showed his hypocrisy when he told the same meeting it should denounce and condemn all people who illegally usurp political power through coup de tats and violence, saying they are enemies of peace.
Of course not all coups are violent, as King Mswati’s father King Sobhuza IIdemonstrated, when in 1973 after free elections led to a result he did not like, he abandoned the constitution and ruled by Royal Decree. Much of the power Sobhuza stole from the people remains in the hands of the Swazi monarchy today.
King Mswati got one thing right in his speech. He said that coups affected the lives of innocent people, hinder and provision of social services because resources were channelled towards financing the coups and their leaders instead of development.
He couldn’t have described the situation in Swaziland better if he tried.
Monday [12 April 2010] saw the 37th anniversary of the declaration of the infamous 1973 decree by King Sobhuza II.
It marked the sad day that he and his advisers panicked in the face of the reality that they were not universally loved or feared.
What was the cause of this panic?
Widespread uprisings on the streets?
A well-supported Marxist revolution?
A band of mercenaries, armed to the teeth, threatening our coal and diamond reserves?
Nope, not really. What had happened, as all students of history will know, was that at least one Swazi in eight had the audacity to use a democratic right and elected three members of the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress to the second Swazi Parliament.
This meant the King’s Imbokodvo Party had its 100 per cent majority slashed to only 87.5 per cent.
There was nothing this opposition party could do to stop laws being passed. All it could do was to voice concern, show alternatives and respectfully but futilely, express dissent.
It seems that even the futile expression of a difference of opinion was enough to shut down completely the country’s democratic institutions. One source writing this week claimed that the 1973 decree came about because the country was becoming difficult to govern.
I think that was a deliberate error.
What the country was becoming was difficult to rule.
Swaziland 37 years after the king's decree of 12 April 1973
“Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter”: so says an African proverb. Very few countries in this epoch have borne witness to a more crude distortion of their national history than Swaziland. Central to this are the events which lead up to the late king’s unilateral decision to disregard a national constitution and assume the role of a supreme ruler on the 12th of April 1973.
While a thorough rebuttal of the official story peddled to the Swazi masses may be the subject of an entire book, there are few facts whose mere mention exposes the propaganda version for the absurd lie that it is. The most important being the fact that Swaziland was never officially a colony of Great Britain, although it might have been administered as one. Swaziland was a British protectorate. The distinction between the two is crucial to understanding the nature of the relationship that the Swazi tribal authorities had with the colonial government. The Swazi tribal authorities, being the ones who had literally begged to be a part of the British colonial system, have always been an important instrument for ruling the native population. It is therefore not surprising that Great Britain, a constitutional monarchy, saw nothing ironic with handing power to what was clearly an executive monarchy which had ascended to power thanks to its collusion with forces some of which were, at the time, engaged in the most dehumanising policies against indigenous Africans.
It is also not surprising that when the king decided to rescind the independence constitution unlawfully, crushing all form of dissent, he had the practical backing of the former colonial power. Despite the Royal cabinet, a new flag, national anthem and other trappings of an independent state, Swaziland’s socio-economic relationship post independence remained largely unchanged. It was the same politics of exploitation. Political parties and all forms of political expression were banned. Failure to heed to the king’s decree was severely punishable by a sixty day detention without trial. All in all, such tactics were always a mirror image of the manner in which the South Africa Apartheid government, then a close ally and political advisor of the new Swazi government, used to crush opponents of Apartheid.
Taking advantage of a population which was largely uneducated and politically naive, Sobhuza reigned supreme after the initial opposition to his decree had been defeated. The rapid economic development of that time, fuelled largely by the British through the Commonwealth Development Corporation coupled with the exclusive relationship which the Sobhuza regime enjoyed within J. B. Vorster’s “Outward looking policy”, which sought to neutralise opposition to Apartheid by creating friendships with neighbouring African states, led to the creation of a new national Bourgeois which was comfortable with maintaining the status quo regardless of its very illegitimate nature. It was a period of superficial prosperity which belied the troubling times which were yet to come.
The Swaziland of today is one that fits the definition of the term “Banana republic”. It has the lowest economic growth rate in the kingdom, the worst human rights record-after Zimbabwe, and the only statistics that it lays claim of being “the highest” in are in the rates of poverty and HIV infections. All these can be directly traced to the dehumanising proclamation of 1973 which held that Swazis ought not to consider themselves a part of the human family by seeking the respect of their inalienable human rights. They were to be nothing but slaves, or as the Ndebele language describes them: Amahole, second class citizens who at best can hope to be nothing but mere bootlickers to the royal family, which of late has had the audacity to proclaim that it is their divine right to rule over the lesser beings within the country who should never eat of the same dish, Umgcwembe, as those who are “Closer to God”. The economic disparities indicate this line of thinking clearly. The percentage of the budget that is allocated Royal expenditure is increasing at such an alarming rate that in future it might well be the sum total of government expenses. Social expenditure such as public health and education is way below that required.
Yet despite these very gloomy facts, one can take solace from the fact that the opposition, despite being banned and brutally suppressed, is showing no indication of disappearing. Political parties, although banned, continue to grow and the growth in numbers is most visible amongst the most militant ones. Even some vocal supports of the monarchy have shown an indication that they would support moves towards limiting its powers or simply doing away with them. There are, however, some challenges to this resistance. The small size of the country and its pollution has rendered it unknown to the international word. Despite this, efforts to internationalise the struggle for the liberation of the country have borne fruits of late and it is only a matter of time before it dominates the politics of the region.
Before this can occur, however, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) needs to take a proactive stance towards Swaziland’s human rights abuses. There are very few states within the region that did not have to struggle for the democratic freedoms that they currently enjoy. Indeed some of them had to pay heavily in order to do so. It is quite hypocritical of these countries to expect Swaziland to have to go through a destabilising war, which it will take decades to recover from. The moral stance that was taken by the African Union in forcing Zimbabwe to create a unity government should not be seen as being an attempt to please the West by bowing down to its pressure. It is clearly a precedent which the regional leaders need to follow, not only with regard to Swaziland but as a general rule.
Issued by the Swaziland Solidarity Network [SSN] South Africa Chapter
