Swaziland showed a significant decline in democracy over the past year (2010) and there was very little resistance to it from the democratic world.
The kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, is among a group of 25 nations where there was a decline in political rights and civil liberties, according to Freedom House, a watchdog group, based in the United States.
‘Our adversaries are not just engaging in widespread repression, they are doing so with unprecedented aggressiveness and self-confidence,’ said David J. Kramer, executive director of the group. ‘And the democratic community is not rising to the challenge.’
Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House, said, ‘Authoritarian regimes will have a much freer hand to silence their domestic critics if there is no resistance from the outside world.’
He was commenting at the launch of Freedom House’s annual report. Freedom House is expected to release a detailed report on human rights in Swaziland sometime during the next three months.
This is taken from Peter Kenworthy’s Stiffkitten blogsite, 7 August 2010.
Swaziland, the last autocratic monarchy in Africa, is a country in an almost constant state of crisis. The repeated human rights violations and harassment of the Swazi democracy movement by the Swazi regime, the huge inequalities between a small Swazi elite and the poor majority, and an Aids prevalence rate of over 40% should make newspapers and governments around the world react. In recent months the house of the Swaziland United Democratic Front National Organising Secretary has been bombed, maybe by the Swazi police; the President of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions has has his house searched by no less than 12 police officers; the leader of the largest opposition party, PUDEMO, Mario Masuku has been charged with acts of terrorism for speaking his mind and is more or less constantly harassed by police; student leader Pius Vilakati has gone missing after having been attempted abducted by police; and human rights activist and PUDEMO member Sipho Jele died in police custody, probably at the hands of the police.
But these stories are rarely if ever covered by the foreign media or condemned by world leaders or governments and the historic background to Swaziland's present situation is more or less unknown.
This article will therefore give a brief historical overview of Swaziland and comment on the situation.
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 reportedon a campaign for justice for Swazi man Musa Gamedz who was hunted down and executedin 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.
Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.
According to official figures published this week42 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 thata 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.
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.
Introducing a multi-party democracy into Swaziland may be the best way to save the kingdom from disaster.
This is according to the Commonwealth Expert Team that observed Swaziland’s elections in September 2008.
In its report just published the CET highlighted the concern expressed within Swaziland about how the new Swazi constitution was not protecting human rights.
The CET reports that the Government of Swaziland is party to a number of international agreements on human rights ‘It is widely accepted internationally that democracy includes the right of individuals to associate with and support the political party of their choice,’ the CET states.
‘Yet in practice this right currently does not exist.’
It goes on, ‘Swaziland has stark economic and social problems. According to statistics two thirds of Swazis live in chronic poverty and a majority of the population depend on food aid. Cultural norms undermine women’s rights. The country has the highest rate of HIV prevalence in the world, 10 percent of the population are orphans and the life expectancy is now 31 years for the newly born. We were also informed by a number of sources that corruption is on the increase.
‘Swaziland has deeply established cultural traditions which place considerable emphasis on the rights of the individual. However, the country may be fast approaching a crossroads, as in the light of the socio-economic problems, its citizens may decide to seek ways to improve their lives through the introduction of a multi-party system which gives them powers to collectively question and change the status quo.’
The CET has got it right. The problems within Swaziland stem from its undemocratic nature. A tiny elite control the kingdom and the vast majority have no say in how their lives are controlled.
When anyone (such as the CET) objectively studies the situation in Swaziland the problems are clear and so are the solutions.
