YET ANOTHER SWAZI POLICE KILLING

Trigger happy Swazi policeman have shot dead a man and critically wounded another in the latest example of a shoot-to-kill policy.

This time police shot at a car that failed to stop when they instructed.

Police opened fire and two men were shot in the head. One died and the other has critical wounds and is paralysed in hospital.

Media reports from Swaziland are (as usual) incomplete and confused but the basic facts seem to be that a Toyota car failed to stop when instructed by police at Motshane on Sunday morning (17 January 2010) while it was on the way to a church service.

Police shot at the fleeing car which had three occupants. The two men were hit by bullets and the driver later abandoned the car and escaped, but was later captured by police. He later escaped from magistrates’ court and is currently on the run.

Relatives of Roy Mkhondvo, the man who died, said doctors at the Mbabane Government Hospital showed them the bullet which was planted inside the dead man’s skull.

This shooting is the latest in a long line of killings by Swaziland police. There is mounting evidence that police gunned down three robbery suspects, killing them in cold blood.

They were said to have been trying to break into a building at Sidvokodvo Valley Farm.

ROUGH JUSTICE FOR SEX WORKERS

How about this for rough justice in Swaziland.

Three Swazi soldiers refused to pay two sex workers for the service they had provided to them so the girls stole their cell phones.

The soldiers reported the theft to the Mbhuleni community police who promptly went and beat the living daylights out of the girls who then confessed to stealing the phones.

When reporters from the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent newspaper, visited the area they found the girls bleeding. One was so badly injured she was lying helplessly on the ground.

And what happened to the soldiers who refused to pay for the services they had received? Nothing at all.

The sex workers also said that soldiers were their regular customers, but they always give them a tough time when it’s time to pay.

One of them disclosed that some of the soldiers who are their customers always resort to violence when the time to pay comes.

SWAZI POOR FORCED INTO SEX TRADE

Women textile workers in Swaziland are so exploited by their bosses that they have to turn to prostitution to survive.

Workers in a factory in Matsanjeni typically earn as little as E80 (10 US dollars) a fortnight and are sometimes paid weeks late.

High poverty levels among the populations of Lavumisa, Nsubane, Somntongo, Matsanjeni and Siphambanweni force young men into crime and girls into early prostitution.

Sibongile Maziya is one of several women who ‘emigrated’ from Siteki to Matsanjeni shortly after the garment factory closed shop in her town and another opened further south.

The Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, visited the remote Swaziland areas of Lavumisa, Nsubane, Somntongo, Matsanjeni and Siphambanweni and found high levels of poverty that forced young men into crime and girls into prostitution.

The newspaper told the story of one young woman who ‘emigrated’ from Siteki to Matsanjeni shortly after the garment factory closed shop in her town and another opened further south.

The Observer reports, ‘At first the wage payouts were regular and she could afford to pay rent and enjoy two meals a day. Things have changed for the worst. Last month alone they were paid two weeks late and very low wages of at most E80 for a fortnight.

‘The hamlet of Lavumisa is relatively quiet during the day but there are pockets of life at weekends with a few watering holes and a colonial hotel a few metres from the border showing some sparks of nightlife.

‘But you must come in the evening or even on a working day when truckers make a stopover before crossing the border out of Swaziland or from South Africa. The local young girls and some of the day shift Matsanjeni textile workers jostle for the truck drivers for a quick round of sex at very competitive fees, at times as low as E10.’

This is not an isolated incident as women textile works have previously revealed they have to work as prostitutes to get enough to afford food.

It was also reported in July 2008 that bosses at textile factories were demanding sex from women in return for jobs.

In March 2008 it was revealed that textile workers in Matsapha were so poorly paid that some were close to starvation.

KING CALLS FOR SWAZIS TO SACRIFICE

King Mswati III of Swaziland has finally risen from his slumbers and recognised that his kingdom is facing economic meltdown.

But instead of leading his subjects by cutting his own spending, selling off his palaces, abandoning his vanity project, the E1.5 billion Sikhuphe International Airport, and returning to the people the money he ‘holds in trust’ for them, he is telling ordinary people that they must make the sacrifices.

And he holds to some strange notion that everything will be all right, even though all indications are that they will not be.

Swaziland faces economic meltdown because after years of warning the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) has cut the amount of money it gives Swaziland. This year Swaziland will get E1.9 billion – down from E6 billion last year.

King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, told a gathering of 8,000 of his ‘warriors’ that they needed to exercise caution and tighten belts in the wake of the economic crisis.

The Swaziland Government has already asked for budget cuts in all its departments and revealed that it doesn’t have cash to pay much-needed farm subsidies.

This will almost certainly mean there will be fewer crops grown this year and unless international donors gift aid to Swaziland people will go hungry and some might starve.

King Mswati told his warriors not to panic ‘because government would look into the real causes of the decreased SACU revenue and come up with a programme to better the lives of the people’.

This is a fantasy, of course. As I have been reporting for more than a year the Swazi Government shoulders much of the blame for the economic crisis through its own mismanagement and ignorance.

The king said it was vital that the kingdom produced sufficient food to feed its people and neighbours in need.

The Times Sunday, an independent newspaper in Swaziland, reported the king saying, ‘he had strong faith that the country would realise a bumper harvest this year’.

Perhaps, heeding warnings from elsewhere that the economic meltdown might lead to civil disobedience among Swazi people, King Mswati told his warriors they should continue to show respect. He added that ‘disrespectful Swazis’ should be taught the importance of respect.

We should expect those ‘disrespectful’ progressives who long ago saw through King Mswati and his henchmen to feel the heat as the economic crisis grows worse.

SWAZI SOLDIERS EXECUTE CIVILIANS

Swaziland soldiers have murdered two civilians in an execution style killing. One woman begged for her life saying she was a mother to a young baby.

The soldiers made the pair knell down and pray and perform push-ups before making them run away and shooting them dead in cold blood.

Details of the murder were revealed this week after accounts of the killings appeared in the Weekend Observer.

Suspicions had previously been aroused that soldiers had killed in cold blood two people accused of trying to smuggle a stolen Toyota Quantum vehicle into Swaziland from South Africa, but the details published are truly shocking, even by Swaziland standards where the army and police are generally recognised to be out of control.

The Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, reported that two people were spotted by the army in the stolen Toyota and were forced to stop after soldiers opened fire on the vehicle.

The two occupants ran from the vehicle into long grass.

The Observer reports that as the two escaped they dropped a cellphone which was picked by one of the soldiers.

The two had been using the cellphone to call for backup. Later two other people arrived in a Mazda 3 sedan. This car was driven by a woman, Lucia Dlamini, who, as she approached the ‘rendezvous’, called on her cellphone but her message was received by a soldier who told her to come closer because ‘ they were in trouble’.

Lucia followed instructions which led her car to pass through an army camp hidden in the bushes a short distance away.

‘By then the army personnel had taken positions,’ the Observer reports.

Other soldiers followed Lucia’s car while others were scouring the area for movement in case the two thieves emerged from the vast tall grasses.

After nearly three hours of no action, Lucia’s car emerged past the army camp and at the same time the two thieves stood up from the tall grass in relief that their back-up had finally arrived.

The Observer reports that residents say at first there were warning shots and the two thieves stood with raised hands.

‘But then immediately after that it was bullet to flesh. The two fell but shots continued to ring.

At about the same time Lucia’s car was sandwiched by two army vehicles, says the Observer.

‘About less than a kilomtre from the army camp Lucia’s car was ordered out of the narrow road and drove along the narrow stream. Some residents say by that time almost the entire community was watching.

‘Residents claim that the two were first ordered out of the car and to pray. Lucia was heard begging the soldiers to spare her life because she had a young baby but it all fell on deaf ears.’

The residents also say that before the woman and an accomplice were riddled by bullets they were ordered to do press ups several times.

‘They were then told to flee into the tall grasses and then shot. It was a perfect kill,’ the Observer reports.