HONOUR FOR SWAZI RIGHTS LAWYER

A second Swaziland human rights activist has won an international award.

Thuli Makama, a lawyer, has been working for the rights of people in Swaziland not to be shot if they are seen to be breaking the law.

In particular, Makama has been working with poachers who are being shot at (and at least 20 have been killed or maimed) by game rangers, who have the approval of King Mswati III.

Makama, who is head of the Swazi environmental group Yonge Nawe, has won a prestigious award called the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work.

In September 2008 I reported on a campaign for justice for Swazi man Musa Gamedz who was hunted down and executed in broad daylight because he was suspected of poaching on Big Game Parks.

A documentary by Journeyman Pictures Journeyman Pictures called Killing the Poachers revealed that King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, had given a royal warrant that allowed a chief ranger to shoot and if necessary kill people suspected of poaching. Under the Royal Warrant, the killer would not be prosecuted as long as he could show that the poacher was armed and drew a weapon first.

The award for Makama has attracted international attention to the lack of human rights in Swaziland. She told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), suspected poachers should be arrested and ‘taken through the due process of law’.

‘There are many illegal acts that should not mean you are tried, sentenced and executed at the scene.’

Makama is the second Swazi human rights activist to receive an international award in recent weeks. Last month (March 2010), Mario Masuku, president of the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), received the Swaziland Democracy Watch (SWADEWA) Democracy Prize 2010, from a group in Denmark.

HIV AIDS IN SWAZILAND – THE REALITY

Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.

According to official figures published this week 42 percent of pregnant woman are HIV positive. Other surveys put the number of those infected as closer to one in five of the entire population of one million. If this prevalence rate was applied to the United States, then more than 56 million Americans would be infected.

Deaths from AIDs-related illness have devastated Swaziland. AIDS kills half of the children dying under the age of five. Swazi citizens born in 1993 could expect to live 60 years; today Swaziland has the lowest life expectancy in the world at just 31.3 years.

A report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this month (February 2009) estimated that a quarter of Swaziland's workforce is absent from work because of HIV AIDS. The IMF attributed job absenteeism to people suffering from HIV AIDS as well as those staying home to care for people sick with the disease. According to UNAIDS, about 26 percent of Swaziland's sexually active population are infected.

Figures are hard to confirm in Swaziland because the country is rural and accurate records are not kept, but it is estimated there are 130 000 orphans and vulnerable children in Swaziland and this figure is expected to rise to 200 000 by 2010.

Maybe as many as one in four children under the age of 18 are orphans and there are about 3,000 households in the kingdom headed by children, because their parents have died of AIDs-related illness.

As elderly care­givers die, the oldest children take over without a support network.

Swazi women and girls shoulder the burden of the disease and are the most vulnerable to infection. A shocking 49 percent of women aged between 25 and 29 are thought to be HIV-positive, reflecting the low status of women.

HIV has taken hold in Swaziland in part because people are desperately poor and unable to feed themselves adequately. This leaves them open to infection and when they become HIV-positive anti retro viral drugs cannot work on malnourished bodies.

Poverty is endemic to Swaziland. About seven in ten people earn less than one dollar a day and about 650,000 people rely on food aid from international donors to survive. The United Nations Development Programme reports about four in ten people are moving from hunger towards starvation. AIDS has severely affected the Swaziland’s food security by decimating the ranks of agricultural workers, especially adult male heads of small subsistence farms.

Official statistics show that 22 percent of the population in Swaziland is undernourished; nearly 15 percent of children under five are underweight; and more than 16 percent of children born in Swaziland die before their fifth birthday. About four in ten children are so malnourished that their growth is permanently stunted.

HIV education doesn’t seem to be working. A survey in 2007 found that 99 percent of survey participants said they knew about the disease, but nearly half admitted having multiple sex partners and having sex without condoms. Meanwhile, four in five Swazi men refuse to be tested for the HIV virus.

LIFE UNDER AN ILLEGAL PREMIER

Speculation is rife about what Swaziland’s new Prime Minister will do now that he is taking up office.

Barnabas Dlamini was PM in Swaziland from 1996 to 2003 and his tenure in office was one of terror, the abuse of the human rights of Swazis and a disregard for the rule of law.

Thulani Thwala, the editor of the Swazi News, has been remembering what life was like in Swaziland the last time Dlamini was PM.

Writing in the Swazi News on Saturday (18 October 2008), Thwala said that last time Dlamini ‘let loose his cops then, to beat the hell out of marchers in Manzini and later claimed they banged their heads against the walls.

‘This is the very same man who defied court orders reinstating back two evicted chiefs from KaMkhweli and Macetjeni and later declared himself a lightning arrester. Listen to that nonsense where a bully elevates himself to some imaginary levels. I will not behave like some idiots who have come out to declare that [Dlamini] is the right person for the job. Most of the praise singers are suspect.’

Thwala speculates on what we might expect from Dlamini this time in office.

‘[Dlamini] would do anything to please the king and it gets worse when he gets such an open ended mandate to ‘DEAL’ with people. The last time he was PM he ‘DEALT’ with people without such a public mandate and it can only get ugly this time.

‘From where I am sitting the country is back to where it belongs- the dustbin of history. The king appealed to us to support [Dlamini] but I did not hear him appealing for same from the bully. I know in life we have to give people the benefit of doubt but with [Dlamini] I refuse. Some habits die hard!

Thwala said, ‘From where I am sitting it would be imperative for workers, unions and progressives to forget about meetings because they will be crushed by [Dlamini] who has the mandate to do things as he pleases.

‘Throttling people is [Dlamini’s] favourite game and defying court orders is his life and blood. The country is back to old times and it’s not funny. I am yet to hear what our foreign envoys would say about this because they were amongst the worried lot when he ran the show in his last term as PM.’

See also

BARNABAS DLAMINI