HAS MAMBA BEEN LEFT OUT TO DRY?

Lutfo Dlamini, Swaziland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, has distanced himself from his senior civil servant who spoke out against Col Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, one of King Mswati’s close allies.

And, Clifford Mamba, Principal Secretary at the Ministry, who is at the centre of the storm, is keeping his head down and refusing to speak to the media.

Meanwhile, the Swazi Government is in no hurry to come to Mamba’s aid. Government mouthpiece Macanjana Motsa and her assistant Sabelo Dlamini told inquiring reporters to talk to Mamba.

Lutfo Dlamini ‘repeatedly’ refused to comment on Mamba’s position when contacted by the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper.’

According to the newspaper, Dlamini said ‘they were going to investigate the authenticity of the leaked document’, but told the newspaper it should speak only with Mamba.

But, Mamba repeatedly refused to answer his phone or respond to a text message, the Times reported.

The row hit Swaziland last Friday (31 December 2010) after I reported that Wikileaks had published a secret cable sent by Maurice Parker, the then US Ambassador to Swaziland. Parker reported that Mamba had criticised Gaddafi’s time as Chair of the African Union (AU). Mamba reportedly said Gaddafi had ‘put the AU secretariat into chaos, by-passing all protocol and the institutional framework’ during his time in charge. Gaddafi was Chair of the AU for one year until January 2010.

King Mswati has been an ally of Libya for some years and has been trying to get business and development aid for Swaziland. At least one of King Mswati’s sons, Prince Sicalo, is undergoing military training in Libya. Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, visited the prince while he was in Libya in October 2010.

In 2009, Col Gadaffi sent the king six camels as a token of his friendship.

SWAZILAND LIES ON PRESS FREEDOM

Swaziland’s new official government spokesperson Macanjana Motsa must think we are blind.

She has hit out at a new international report from Reporters Without Borders (RWB) that places Swaziland in 147^th place in the world when it comes to freedom of the press.

In a statement Motsa rubbished the report and said, ‘press freedom is guaranteed by the constitution of the Kingdom of Swaziland. The Swazi public and the international community is well aware that local media is not repressed in this country’.

Has she been drinking? She certainly hasn’t been paying attention. Her defence of press freedom in Swaziland comes in the same week that the illegally-appointed Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini told journalists that if they criticise King Mswati III’s recent speech to parliament they will face sedition charges.

Over the past few weeks former Swazi Government cabinet member Mfomfo Nkhambule has been hauled before police, threatened with jail and been told he will be disowned by his traditional regiment if he continues to write articles in the Times of Swaziland newspaper that criticise the King and the anti-democratic ruling elite in the kingdom.

Only last month (January 2009) trade unions and other civic organizations petitioned the Swazi Prime Minister demanding that every citizen of Swaziland should be allowed equal access to the three state media organisations: the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services (SBIS), Swazi TV and the Swazi Observer newspaper.

The petition called upon government to ensure that these media houses’ independence was guaranteed. It also demanded ‘equal access to public institutions such as halls, stadiums and tinkhundla centres which are currently the formal meeting place for people without any hindrances’.

Motsa joins a long list of Swazi Government denialists. Whenever there is a report critical of Swaziland, the government blames the messenger and lies about the message.

Bizarrely, Motsa attacked the credibility of RWB because it had once used the UNESCO logo without permission.

Motsa and the Swazi Government know this is a smokescreen. RWB is not alone among international media watchers in criticising Swaziland’s lack of press freedom.

The most recent annual So This Is Democracy? report from the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) http://www.misa.org highlighted many cases of press repression, including the case of the Times of Swaziland publishing house that was threatened with closure by King Mswati III because he objected to a report it had written on how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believed that the king’s lavish lifestyle was deterring overseas’ investors from supporting Swaziland.

MISA concluded that the Swazi Government continues to harass journalists. ‘This was evident when the Swazi House of Assembly set up a Select Committee to investigate Mbongeni Mbingo, the editor of the Times Sunday, following a commentary piece he wrote in his newspaper criticising the House Speaker for not allowing a debate to take place on possible amendments to the kingdom’s Constitution. The House of Assembly said the editor was in contempt of Parliament.’

The International Press Institute (IPI) in its annual World Press Freedom Review, published in May 2008 reported how Njabulo Mabuza, the then Minister for Health and Social Welfare, ‘simply banned the media from entering Swaziland’s biggest hospital, after various publications published exposés alleging that a pattern of staff negligence and drug shortages resulted in the death of a young girl. Similar accusations had been published in the past, prompting Mabuza, a week earlier, to issue a government memo to the hospital administration, instructing the same to deny media access to the hospital premises without his permission.’

I could go on ... and on (Click here to read more on press freedom in Swaziland).

This was Macanjana Motsa’s first media release since she was appointed Government Press Secretary. It is not an auspicious start and her credibility for honesty is in tatters. She needs to be careful, I am reminded of her predecessor in the job Percy Simelane; when he tried to defend a report critical of Swaziland’s poor governance, he so outraged parliamentarians they branded him a ‘herdboy’.