I got this email following the publication of my post yesterday (4 November 2010) ‘Truth Breaks out in Swaziland’. I shan’t delete the original post as Resting requests because, whether he likes it or not, the website exists and it is of legitimate public interest.
I would ask that you remove this article. The owner of this website is phishing. This is its own legal implications especially in [I’ve deleted the location - ed] where the site is hosted. As a seasoned journalist referencing such material can only compromise your integrity as a factual reporter.
Has someone had a rush of blood to the head at the Swaziland Tourism Authority?
Suddenly truth has broken out at the body tasked with encouraging people to visit the kingdom.
The STA website is telling it like it is in the land, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
Go to the ‘About Swaziland’ pageand you will learn, ‘During Mswati III’s rule, the Swazi regime has become increasingly intolerant of, and violent towards, the ever-expanding democratic movement. The leadership and members of the main political party (all political parties are banned and illegal) advocating democracy and a respect for human rights, the People’s Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), have been singled out for harassment and mistreatment, but anyone voicing an opinion that is in opposition to the present, undemocratic regime is targeted by police.’
Visitors will also learn
69% of the Swaziland’s population survive on less than US 1$ dollar a day
Over 40% of the population require food aid
Swaziland in one of the financially most unequal countries in the world, even more so than Zimbabwe
Swaziland’s military expenditure is the 19th highest per capita in the world
Political prisoners and detainees are more or less routinely tortured by police and security forces, and unfair trials and long delays in the justice system are commonplace
Freedom of expression in Swaziland is seriously compromised, not least by the 2008 Suppression of Terrorism Act, and by the government labelling of all political oppositional forces as “terrorists”
And there is much more besides. I particularly liked the page on gifts for King Mswati.
It’s good to see the truth being told by an organisation sponsored by the Swazi Government.
Reality check: someone (not me, honest guv’nor) has hacked into the website. If it’s so easy to do, let’s go to the government website next.
It is an unfortunate coincidence of timing that the Weekend Observer newspaper in Swaziland published an article this past weekend called How the world sees our Kingdom.
As befitting the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, it concentrated on all the good things that journalists are, it claims, saying about Swaziland.
The article appeared on the very day that news houses all over the world, but not in Swaziland, reported on how five of King Mswati’s wives (he is said to have 13 but nobody knows for sure since this is information that his Swazi subjects are not allowed to have) are on a worldwide shopping spreecosting at least six million US dollars.
The Weekend Observer interviewed Bongani Dlamini, Marketing Manager of the Swaziland Tourism Authority, who talked about how his organisation brings travel writers from all over the world to visit the kingdom. He said the journalists are brought to Swaziland ‘to experience, against the numerous negative hearsays, what the country has to offer’.
He said once in Swaziland, ‘the journalists are allowed to use their journalistic judgements on the nature of stories to publish, in line with the editorial policies of the media houses they work for. The journalists would most likely take news angles that would be of interest to their target readership, and are not influenced by the interests of their hosts.’
Journalists writing what they want to about Swaziland? Not a luxury that the state affords to its own journalists working in the kingdom. If a Swazi media house tells the truth about the king’s wives, it will be closed down by the king.
In its article the Weekend Observer reproduced some of the good things it said that international newspapers have published after their freebie travel trips to Swaziland.
But, again, no surprise here, the Weekend Observer is far from honest. Here’s one example: it quotes the Independentfrom London, UK, ‘Swaziland may be tiny and landlocked, but - like the Tardis - everything looks bigger from the inside’.
As ‘praise’ goes that’s not very high: indeed Swaziland is a tiny kingdom, but Swaziland has no control over that. What the Weekend Observer failed to tell its readers was what else the Independent had to say about Swaziland.
‘Certainly the current monarchy could do with its defenders. While democracy has taken root across the rest of southern Africa, political parties remain outlawed in Swaziland. Indeed, a new constitution approved in 2005 enshrined the king’s powers to appoint the prime minister, the cabinet and judiciary. It is claimed that seven out of 10 people live below the poverty line.
‘Meanwhile Mswati has not been the agent of social change that some had hoped for, continuing to snap up wives from among his subjects (13 and counting), and displaying an appetite for cars and palaces that suggests he does not share his late father's ascetic tendencies.
‘Small wonder then that the extravagant 40/40 celebrations held last September to celebrate the nation's simultaneous 40th anniversary of independence and the king's 40th birthday did not go down well in more progressive quarters.
‘Rumblings about the royal wives’ shopping trip to Dubai and a new fleet of Mercedes cars bought for the occasion culminated in protest marches through the capital. Some saw the spectacular pageantry, in which thousands of royal subjects donned ceremonial leopard skins and turaco feathers to hail their monarch, as mere orchestrated jubilation: the manipulation of culture for political gain.’
Now, that’s really how the world sees our kingdom.
