SWAZI HUNGER AS CASH RUNS OUT

Swazis may face widespread hunger following an admission from the Swazi Government that it does not have the money to subsidise farming this year.

In particular Swaziland staple food - maize - will be badly affected.

Minister of Agriculture Clement Dlamini said there ‘was no money in place’ to subsidise the cost to farmers of seeds, fertiliser and other necessities.

He said without the subsidies it was impossible to ensure food security.

In the recent past about 600,000 people of Swaziland’s one million population have received food aid from international agencies.

Dlamini now hopes that the NGO World Vision will be able to come up with a plan to help. World Vision has been investigating how countries such as Zambia and Malawi organise their own farming and Dlamini hopes it can recommend to the Swazi Government how to move forward.

(Incidentally, in Malawi last year it was reported people were denied farm subsidies if they hadn’t voted in the national elections. I hope something similar is not on the Swazi agenda.)

Dlamini admission that money is not in place is puzzling because the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation has previously announced aid to the Swazi Government to provide assistance to Swaziland farmers. This was announced as part of a Swazi Government strategy on farming.

But Dlamini is now saying that no strategy exists and he must rely on the good works of World Vision to get Swaziland out of this mess.

Did Dlamini forget about the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation? Or does he hope the rest of us will? Maybe the UN funds have disappeared.

Who knows? I certainly don’t, but I do know that Dlamini and his fellow government ministers are letting the people of Swaziland down badly. As the ordinary Swazi family face hunger and possible starvation Swaziland’s Government ministers and MPs pocket their pay rises and bury their heads in the sand.

WILL SWAZI LESBIAN GET FAIR TRIAL?

Concern is growing that the lesbian woman charged with murdering her partner in Swaziland will not get a fair trial.

Thuli Rudd was arrested after the body of Pitseng Vilakati was found in a churchyard in December 2009.

Rudd later appeared in court and pleaded guilty to a charge of murder. She was said to have been covered in bruises when she appeared, raising suspicions that she had been beaten by police.

The couple had made news in Swaziland when they announced they were to marry in what was believed to be the first lesbian marriage in the kingdom.

The media, the churches and ordinary people vilified the couple because of their sexuality.

The case has attracted international attention in human rights circles.

Monica Mbaru of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in Africa says that Thuli is being tried and convicted by the media and the public before the investigation has been completed and that a strong possibility of this being a hate crime by homophobic persons may be ignored in the haste to prove Thuli guilty and further feed into the already high levels of homophobia.

Fikile Vilakazi of the Coalition of African Lesbians, a pan African network of over 20 member organizations of lesbian women and transgender people in 13 countries across Africa, appealed to all fair-minded and freedom loving people in Swaziland to continue to resist and challenge all forms of discrimination, including that based on homophobia in this country.

Dawn Cavanagh, an activist on the Board of the Coalition of African Lesbians, applauded all those who wrote and called in to the media throughout the publicity around the relationship between the two women and their later engagement.

She called for sustained courage in speaking out for the rights of all, including those in same sex relations, to choose with whom to have intimate relationships.

Fikile Vilakazi strongly condemned the sustained and vitriolic verbal attacks on the persons of Thuli Rudd and Pitseng Vilakati. She stated that this constituted emotional abuse and a violation of their rights and the rights of all LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people in Swaziland.

LGBT activists in Swaziland have consistently declared that same sex relations are a reality in Swaziland, as they are worldwide. The movement to open up society and to enable those who are attracted to members of the same sex is strong and vibrant. It is a fact that same sex relations have been in African societies for centuries.

The Coalition of African Lesbians and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission strongly condemned the murder of Pitseng Vilakati and all other acts of violence against women in Swaziland.

It calls on the state to ensure a prompt, full and thorough investigation to bring the murderer or murderers to book. ‘We call on the state in its prosecution of Thuli Rudd to exercise fairness and to ensure that the homophobia that exist, even within the criminal justice system, and the violations of the rights of LGBT people are not allowed to permeate and colour the state’s case. Thuli has the constitutional right to innocence until proved guilty following thorough investigation and a fair trial,’ it said in a statement.

The Coalition of African Lesbians and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission says ‘it will ensure that Thuli Rudd has access to her constitutional rights and that this case is carefully monitored and documented to ensure that justice is done, both for Thulani and for the late Pitseng Vilakati’.

SWAZI BUDGET CUTS START TO BITE

The Swazi Government has ordered 14 percent cuts in all department budgets in order to stop Swaziland going into bankruptcy.

A total of E1.5 billion must be cut straight away, says Swaziland’s Finance Minister Majozi Sithole.

Already departments such as Education have said they can’t implement the cut and still provide schooling for orphans and vulnerable children, among others.

I notice that the 14 percent cut doesn’t apply to the parliament itself. The massive salary and expenses increases announced before Christmas will still go ahead.

The cuts are severe, but the Swazi media (at least) have failed to notice that Sithole’s E1.5 billion is nowhere near the E4.1 billion shortfall Swaziland faces from this year’s receipts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU).

Does Sithole have a plan to find the missing E2.6 billion? If his past performances are anything to go by I doubt it very much.

There has been some talk in the kingdom ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch that Swaziland might be able to borrow its way out of the crisis. But who would lend to such a corrupt regime as Mswati’s?

No, I fear more cuts will be forced onto the Swazi people (while the parliamentarians keep their own nest very well feathered, thank you).

Things will get very bad indeed before too long. I am reminded of the warning from Mbongeni Mbingo, the editor of the Times of Swaziland, that there may well be blood on the streets before this is over.

MORE SWAZI COLD-BLOODED KILLING

First it was trigger happy soldiers who killed civilians in cold blood and then it was the police force, now it’s the turn of security guards.

News comes that an alleged poacher Sicelo Mamba was shot 12 times by security guards after he was found hunting impala outside of a farm.

Now relatives want to know what happened. They are asking why the guards had to release 12 rounds of ammunition and are alleging that the guards where aiming to kill Sicelo.

According to a report in the Times of Swaziland, the only independent daily in the kingdom, Mamba’s sister Boshiwe Mamba said she later saw his body with bullet wounds in his head, back and one through the buttocks which seemed to have burst his bladder.

‘There is a lot of mystery surrounding his death and it looks like these people knew exactly who Sicelo was,’ she told the Times.

She added that the bandages all over his body made it difficult to see the other wounds.

According to Sanele Vilakati who had accompanied Sicelo Mamba on 3 January 2010, the two had gone hunting and that they killed two impalas.

‘He left when we had just killed the animals and we were to meet at home,’ Vilakati told the Times.

He said a few minutes later just after 7pm he heard guns shots and Sicelo was screaming like someone in pain.

Vilakati said that five more shots were fired at the crying Sicelo and then there was silence.

He said although the family believe that Sicelo was shot by farm guards, he believes he was shot by guards who look after cattle but carry R5 rifles.

The Times did not give the name of the farm where the killing took place because police are still investigating, although the newspaper failed to explain how revealing this information would hamper the police.

I don’t know where the incident took place, but I do know there has been a history of attacks by security guards in rural Swaziland.

As I wrote in 2008, a young Swazi man, Musa Gamedze, was hunted down and executed in broad daylight at his home, in full view of his children. According to eyewitness reports the man who fired the fatal shot was the General Manager of a local private game reserve, Mkhaya, accompanied by three police officers.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) reported at the time that Big Game Parks (BGP) owns and manages Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary and Mkhaya Nature Reserve. It also manages Hlane National Park, the country’s largest protected area, held in trust for the Nation by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

In 2005 Friends of the Earth Swaziland published a research report into the conflicts arising from the management of protected areas. It exposed numerous cases of human rights abuses which were alleged to have been committed in the name of conservation by game rangers and put forward various recommendations. These include the urgent repeal of section 23 of the Game Act, used by perpetrators of these human rights abuses to avoid prosecution.

POLICE CHIEF’S NEW TERRORISM SCARE

Swazi Police Commissioner Isaac Magagula intensified the pressure on human rights in Swaziland yesterday (12 January 2010) by announcing a further crackdown on terrorists.

This came despite an assurance only last week from Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini that there were no terrorists in the kingdom.

Magagula said terrorists would not be allowed to operate in Swaziland. ‘Our priority is the safety of our country, he said.

Magagula claimed, but has given no evidence to support this, that some people go into Swaziland as investors ‘but later siphoned the money they obtain from their business operations to other countries, where it finances terrorist activities’.

He wants a ‘Financial Intelligence Unit’ set up with Swaziland’s Central Bank to track suspicious accounts.

According to the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, Magagula said, ‘We are fully aware that some investment activities come with a lot of crime attached. It is our priority as police to curb money laundering and ensure that terrorism is not financed through monies obtained from Swazis.’

But the people of Swaziland need not worry. Magagula is after all a self-proclaimed friend of the people and his police service wouldn’t dream of infringing on civil liberties by spying on people’s bank accounts.

No, he told the Swazi media, they won’t be targeting all accounts only those that are ‘suspicious’.

I hope Mario Masuku and other PUDEMO members keep their spare cash in a sock under the bed.