SWAZI PM ‘FACES NO-CONFIDENCE VOTE’

Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, faces a vote of no confidence in parliament.

Swazi MPs are fed up with his handling of the land corruption scandal and want him and all his Cabinet ministers to be sacked.

The no-confidence vote on the Cabinet could come at the same time MPs vote on the future of Lindiwe Dlamini, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, who allowed the Prime Minister; his deputy, the millionaire Themba Masuku; four members of the Swazi Royal Family and at least nine cabinet ministers (past and present); an array of Mbabane City Council officials and others to purchase government land illegally at discounts of up to 50 percent.

Although MPs are keen to get rid of Lindiwe Dlamini, they believe the entire Cabinet and the Prime Minister should also be sacked.

According to the Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, today (16 January 2011), ‘The MPs felt the housing minister did not unilaterally take the decision to award the land illegally to the ministers but cabinet as a whole, was responsible. On his return from Libya, the Prime Minister admitted that cabinet took decisions as a team.’

One MP, close to the revolt, told the newspaper that a report into the land swindle is due to be presented to Parliament soon. ‘The report to be presented to us by the Parliamentary Select Committee probing the matter will show us the direction we should take but we won’t just pass a vote of no confidence on Lindiwe alone. We want the whole cabinet to go home en masse.’

Swazi MPs are angry about a range of bad decisions the Cabinet has collectively made recently. These include the purchase of land from Essa Holmes for E31 million in violation of government procedure and the impromptu closure of the Royal Jozini Big Six development project.

One MP told the Times Sunday, ‘In a period of two years, they have committed three serious mistakes. This is the worst cabinet ever and it has to go home as fast as possible.’

Cabinet has 20 ministers. Never before in the history of Swaziland has a vote of no confidence in Cabinet been passed.

If the MPs did succeed in passing the no-confidence motion, it would not necessarily mean that the Cabinet would stand down. King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, who appointed the PM and cabinet, would make the final decision.

SWAZI PM UNDER THE COSH

Prince Guduza, Speaker of the Swaziland House of Assembly, has rebuked Barnabas Dlamini, the Prime Minister, for ‘interference of the highest order’, after the PM met MPs one-by-one to try to influence them about a land sale scandal he is embroiled in.

Prince Guduza, called such meetings ‘improper’.

Dlamini, who was illegally appointed Prime minister in 2008 by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is at the centre of a corruption scandal over illegally purchasing government land at a vastly reduced price. Accused with him are millionaire Themba Masuku, the Deputy Prime Minister; four members of the Swazi Royal Family and at least nine cabinet ministers (past and present).

The Swazi Parliament decided to set up a seven-member select committee to investigate the matter. On Wednesday (12 January 2011), I reported Dlamini had called MPs in to see him ‘one-by-one’ to try to get them on his side.

Now, it has emerged that MPs told Speaker Guduza of the meetings.

Guduza reacted with vigour, telling Parliament that as a matter of principle, interactions or utterances by anyone about a matter being investigated by Parliament was tantamount to interference of the highest order.

The Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, reported that Guduza likened this to a person who engages a jury on a matter that is before court. This, he said, was unacceptable.

The Speaker said by talking to the MPs the PM compromised the independence of the legislature.

‘It is improper to discuss a matter that might involve you with the people who will handle it, especially if you might be a potential witness.’

Although Guduza did not mention Barnabas Dlamini by name it is clear that he was the intended target.

The Times reported that Guduza said he was not happy about allegations that the meetings involving the PM and MPs were to discuss, among other things, the government land allocations.

This is not the first time that the Speaker of Parliament has had to rebuke Prime Minister Dlamini. In February 2010 he had to slap down Dlamini after the PM said he was the head of Parliament and therefore not answerable to it.

ARE SWAZI PM’S DAYS NUMBERED?

Does Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister fear for his job?

I ask as news leaks out that Dlamini is meeting his Members of Parliament ‘one by one’.

As a Brit, I remember the last time something like this happened was in 1990 when Margaret Thatcher was UK Prime Minister. She called her Cabinet members in one by one to ask them whether she had their support. When most said NO, she was out on her ear before you could say ‘I swear my loyalty to the PM’.

Dlamini refuses to be drawn on the purpose of the meetings. He says that he is always having meetings. ‘Every hour’, the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned and edited by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, was told.

The paper speculated that he is seeking support for his increasingly shaky position over the land scandal that involves Dlamini, along with his deputy, four members of the Swazi Royal Family and at least nine cabinet ministers (past and present).

The paper says cabinet ministers ‘allocated themselves government plots at discounts’.

A parliamentary select committee is supposed to be investigating the deal, although when it was set up in early December 2010 it was reportedly told to give its verdict within three weeks and we are still waiting.

The Observer says, ‘MPs interviewed [by the newspaper] on condition of anonymity have disclosed that central to their meeting with the premier was the land issue.’

It goes on, ‘They also disclosed that at first they were showered with accolades about their performances in their different constituencies before touching on the land issue. The premier further denied discussing the issue with members of the select committee, which was set out to investigate the cabinet land scandal.’

Some of the MPs said they were afraid Dlamini was interfering with the work of the select committee and trying to get MPs on his side in the event of a parliamentary vote after the select committee reports.

The PM denies this.

Dlamini has been under increasing pressure in the past months. Last month (December 2010), Thulani Thwala, the editor of the Swazi Observer, called on Dlamini, his deputy and the finance minister, to resign over their mishandling of the economy.

October 2010 was a particularly bad month for Dlamini. He humiliated himself and Swaziland when he denied that the man who gave him a ‘humanitarian’ award was an internationally-renowned con man.

Also, Dlamini received international attention with a plan to censor all news reporting from Swaziland by foreign journalists.

Again that month, he arranged for himself and his colleagues to be given massive payoffs at the Swazi people’s expense when the present parliament ends in 2013. This was despite the knowledge that Swaziland was on the brink of financial collapse and at least 7,000 civil servants would have to lose their jobs to help stabilise the economy that he and his colleagues ruined.

Also, Dlamini and colleagues doctored an official report to the United Nations to make it look as if they were winning the fight against poverty in Swaziland, when the exact opposite was the case.

In September 2010, Dlamini announced to the world that he wanted to see tortured foreigners who dared to criticise the human rights record of his government.

Dlamini has never had much of a reputation in the world outside Swaziland. After his previous spell as Prime Minister from 1996 to 2003, a report on human rights violations in Swaziland published by the Human Rights organisation Amnesty International that ran to more than fifty thousand words detailed the abuses against Swazis committed under Dlamini’s term in office.

Famously, when he was in office he constantly disregarded the law. This led eventually to the resignation of all six judges in the Swaziland Court of Appeal.

We know that King Mswati is getting increasingly worried about whether he can trust the people around him. With his PM embroiled in a corruption scandal that stinks to high heaven and his lack of competence to do his job exposed and his judgement to be a public representative of Swaziland on the global stage at an all time low, we shouldn’t be surprised if the king tells Dlamini to fall on his sword.

DEPUTY PM BOASTS OF HIS MILLION

Swaziland’s Deputy Prime Minister Themba Masuku, who is at the centre of a corruption probe over land sales, has boasted that he is a millionaire.

Masuku, who believes he should be appointed the next Deputy General Secretary of the United Nations, said he had worked hard to get his money and he was ‘clean’.

The boastful Masuku told a group of Christians that he was motivated by his own childhood poverty to become rich.

I’m sure that will be music to the ears of the seven in ten people in Swaziland who live in abject poverty, earning less than one US dollar a day.

And also to the poor Swazi people he reportedly stole land from in a controversial deal that also involved Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, four members of the Swazi Royal Family and at least nine cabinet ministers (past and present).

He may be proud of his wealth, but he has a long way to go to catch up with King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, who has a personal net worth, estimated by Forbes in 2009 to be about E1.4 billion (US$200 million).

Masuku was quick to tell the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, that being a millionaire did not mean he had E1 million (about US$150,000) in cash, as his assets made up most of it.

The Times reported, ‘Masuku said the millions were in the form of a farm which he bought while still employed in the private sector. The farm is in Malkerns.

‘“It should be noted that I finished paying it off when I was employed by government,” Masuku told the Times. He also revealed that he had property at Eveni.

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reported, ‘he did not elaborate on how he attained the millionaire status save to put emphasis on the fact that he worked above board’.

The Times reported, ‘He said it was possible to be a millionaire as long as people changed their mindsets towards living.’

If wealth were evenly distributed in Swaziland, everyone would be a millionaire, according to resident United Nations (UN) coordinator Musinga Timothy Bandora, who claimed this in October 2008.

What he realised was that Swaziland isn’t a poor kingdom when you measure its total wealth: the problem is that the wealth is being siphoned off by a few people – with King Mswati and the Royal Family top of the tree.

What’s left, and it isn’t much, goes to the people.