SWAZI KING SNATCHES $425m PROJECT

How not to run the Swazi economy: part 106.

King Mswati III, Barnabas Dlamini, the illegally-appointed Prime Minister of Swaziland, and Majozi Sithole, his (increasingly) inept Finance Minister have been shouting from the hilltops and travelling the globe (in luxury style) to implore business people to invest in the kingdom.

What they want is for companies to build things in Swaziland and create jobs, thereby contributing to the economy and getting the kingdom out of the financial mess it is presently in.

Not many take up the offer to supply Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as it is called, and when they do what happens: the Swazi ‘elders’ gang up against them and run them out of town.

That’s what’s happened with the so-called Jozini Big Six Project in Lavumisa, one of the poorest parts of Swaziland. After a year of work, King Mswati has turned round and taken over the project and kept it for himself (sorry, kept it for ‘the Swazi nation’).

The Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, put is as clear as a bell, ‘The Royal Jozini Big Six property is now the property of His Majesty King Mswati III, the King and Ingwenyama of the Swazi Nation.’

Jozini Big Six is a massive project (so beloved of King Mswati: think Royal Science and Technology Park and Sikhuphe Airport). It was to comprise a marina village, hotel and spa, championship golf course, casino and conference centre, game reserve, craft market, medical centre, airfield and hangars and a staff accommodation village.

No one is sure how much the project was expected to cost, but the figure of E3 billion (425 million US dollars) has been quoted in the Swazi media. It was hoped it would create 3,000 jobs.

It was probably a bit of a fantasy to believe that such a project had any relevance to Swaziland, where seven in ten of the population live in abject poverty, earning less than one US dollar a day. The optimists thought it would attract tourists from outside the country.

There is a lot of mystery about exactly why King Mswati thought he could get away with seizing the project. One of Jozini Leasehold Limited (JLL) directors, Jim Brown, said the closure announcements were ‘patently unlawful, unconstitutional and contrary to the provisions of the lease’. The closure of the project will now be contested in courts, probably in both Swaziland and South Africa.

The arguments about the merits of the closure of the project are rumbling away in Swaziland and probably will never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

But what a clear message this sends to the business world. Don’t invest here. And who now would want to invest in Swaziland? Only last week we were told that an E850 million ‘Royal Science and Technology Park’ was to be built in Swaziland, starting in April 2011. Why would anyone invest in such a project if they knew the king could snatch it away from them at any time?

FLAW IN SWAZI KING’S VANITY PROJECT

I’m pleased to see that there is at least one voice of sanity surrounding the latest of King Mswati III’s vanity project.

The king, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is pressing for a ‘Royal Science and Technology Park’ to be built in the kingdom. As I reported on Monday (22 November 2010) this will cost E850 million (120 million US dollars), but no one can explain why it is needed and who will use it.

Project manager Moses Zungu has been talking it up (as you’d expect) and he says that world class researchers will want to come to work at the site.

He even said that the kingdom’s only university, the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), would play a key role in providing expertise at the park.

But this expertise has been exaggerated. And who says so? Academics at the university itself.

When the plan for the science park was unveiled at a meeting at the university, staff very nearly laughed out loud at the suggestion that UNISWA (Chancellor: King Mswati himself) was anywhere close to being a global ‘centre of excellence’.

At the meeting one unnamed academic (when I say ‘unnamed’ I don’t mean he has no name, but that it is an unwise career move to be publicly speaking out against the university, so he/she must remain anonymous) said the government shouldn’t worry about financing a science park it should ‘fund fully the university’s budget’.

For years now UNISWA has been bumping along the bottom with poor facilities. It is a common sight to see students carrying chairs from one classroom to another because there is not enough furniture at the university for them to use during classes.

The anonymous lecturer told Zungu that a project of the magnitude of the science park ‘needs specially educated people with advanced qualifications whom this university cannot produce’.

At present the university doesn’t offer PhD or other doctoral courses (even though it ‘awarded’ an honorary doctorate to Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister). Most of the teaching staff at UNISWA don’t themselves have PhD qualifications and some don’t even have graduate (masters) degrees.

The lack of expertise in Swaziland didn’t worry Zungu. He said expatriates will be brought into Swaziland to get the science park up and running and then Swazi locals will come in as they got properly qualified.

What he didn’t explain was why top quality researchers from across the globe would want to work in Swaziland, a kingdom ruled by King Mswati, and where all dissent is fiercely suppressed and there is no freedom of speech.

This is not an environment where intellectual inquiry thrives.

NEW VANITY PROJECT FOR SWAZI KING

In the same week we hear that the Swaziland Government wants to throw another E350 million (50 million US dollars) of taxpayers’ money at the Sikhuphe International Airport comes news that construction of the ‘Royal Science and Technology Park’ will begin in April 2011- with the first phase costing E850 million.

And what do the airport and the science park have in common? They are both Royal vanity projects that the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, doesn’t need and can’t afford.

The Minister of Information Communication and Technology Nelsiwe Shongwe said the project would consist of a bio-technological park and an information technology park at Nokwane.

According to a report in the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, Moses Zungu, the Project Manager, said the science park was the initiative of the king.

That tells us everything. Sikhuphe Airport, which presently is unfinished because government money ran out, was also a vanity project (sorry, ‘initiative’) of King Mswati. He’s not an absolute monarch for nothing: if he wants a project, he gets a project. Or at least a project gets started.

Zungu told professors and lecturers at the University of Swaziland (Chancellor: King Mswati) that the science park ‘was a process whose fruits would take time to be witnessed’.

Or put another way: we don’t know who wants to use the science park, or where the money is going to come from to build it, but we’re going ahead with it anyway.

Zungu said an investment of E850 million would be spent on the first phase, which would involve basic infrastructure such as roads, drainage, landscaping and other works, while architectural designs for the project were being processed. That phase starts in April 2011.

It looks like this is another round of my Fantasy Watch game. Write that date down and let’s come back in April and see how Mr Zungu is getting on.