Just as news is announced that the poorest workers in Swaziland are to be forced to pay income tax for the first time, Swazi Members of Parliament have voted more money for themselves.
The move also comes just as civil servants in Swaziland have been told they will not get improved salaries this year because the money has run out.
The MPs want E13 million (about 1.3 million US dollars) that was set aside for them in December 2009 to be handed over.
A government directive increased perks for ministers and MPs, but this was set aside after rows in parliament that it gave more money to cabinet ministers than to MPs.
Now, even though Swaziland is on the verge of bankruptcy and government budgets have been slashed, the parliamentarians refuse to give up.
The MPs’ selfishness was called ‘greed’ by Mbongeni Mbingo,editor of the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper. Writing in his own newspaper,he said the decision, ‘marked the end of any dream that this country could pull itself together and work towards a common purpose of finding a solution to this disastrous situation’.
He said the MPs failed to show ‘that they are aware that the people that voted them into office did so because they expected them to represent the people’s interests and not those of their stomachs’.
Swazi government refuses to register Media Complaints Commission
MBABANE, Swaziland, March 11, 2010
Efforts by the local media to operationalize a self-regulatory framework have failed following government’s refusal to register the Media Complaints Commission (MCC). The media have now resolved to appeal to the Minister of Information for intervention though reserving the right to approach the High Court of Swaziland to compel the government to register the MCC.
On 11 March 2010 MISA-Swaziland, which is assisting the media to operationalize the MCC, met editors to map the way forward. The Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ), which is leading the self-regulatory process, was also in attendance.
It was reported during the meeting that following a resolution by media owners to have the MCC registered in order for it to have a legal status, lawyers were approached in November 2009 to file an application with government to have the MCC registered.
However, the Registrar of companies with whom the application was lodged, declined to register the MCC arguing that its objectives appeared to overlap with a proposed Bill that seeks to introduce statutory media regulation. The lawyers were advised that the approval of the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) would be required before the registration of the MCC could be considered.
On 15 January 2010 the lawyers wrote to the Director of Information in the Ministry of ICT to seek his guidance on the matter but so far no response has been received.
“At this point we might indicate that the media, having submitted an application for registration (of the MCC) to a public official, is entitled to speedy administrative justice. If, therefore, no response is received from these public officers or no satisfactory response is received, the media may consider moving an application to the High Court for an order calling upon the Registrar of Companies and the Ministry of ICT to show cause why the MCC should not be registered within a specific period to be fixed by the court,” the lawyers wrote recently.
The editors resolved to seek an audience with the Minister of ICT, Nelsiwe Shongwe, to discuss the issue. In the event the talks with the Minister fail, an application to the High Court would be made to compel government to register the MCC. Other options were also considered.
Background
The Swazi media has been struggling to set up the self-regulatory mechanism for the past 10 years. In 2009 the government accused the media of delaying the self-regulatory process and introduced a Media Commission Bill 2009 that seeks to introduce a statutory framework. The Bill, which was however rejected by the media, is yet to be submitted to Parliament for debate. The MCC itself was launched in 2007 but it was unable to operate pending its registration with government.
The following is a media statement issued by the Swaziland Solidarity Network about the decision of the Swazi Government to impose income tax on the poorest workers in the kingdom.
SSN Statement
09 March, 2009
It is apparent to anybody who is not in denial that the Swazi economy is on its knees.
It is apparent to anybody who is not in denial that the Swazi economy is on its knees.The country’s revenue has sunk so low that the government, through the ministry of finance has decided to resort to the most pathetically anti-poor policies in order to remedy the situation.
The Swazi economy has not been doing well for the last decade, recording the lowest economic growth in the region at an average of 2% annually when the regional aggregate was 5%. What made the situation worse was that when the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) recently decided to review its formula for sharing receipts it reduced Swaziland’s share by 30.8 percent. That act in itself was enough to lead to a crisis in a country so heavily dependent on SACU receipts for its revenue. As a direct result the ministry of finance to reduce the national budget by E1 Billion for the 2010 financial year. This budget cut was enforced indiscriminately throughout all ministries, which meant that already ailing ministries like the health and education ministries would also be expected to go deeper into crisis.
Alongside these drastic yet unavoidable measures, the government seeks to increase its revenue base. Unfortunately, in doing so, it has done the unthinkable by introducing a 3% tax for the poorest labourers whose have previously been deemed too low to be taxed. This is an outrageous demand to make on a population that has had to endure lack of basic necessities that government has an obligation to fund. It is a move which will increase the economic gap between the country’s elite and the poor folk whose cheap labour is the reason why Swaziland still has an economy in the first place. It is also a move that exhibits a low level of thinking. Taxing the poorest labourers amounts to burning a candle at both ends, and it will only exacerbate the prevailing circumstance instead of remedying the situation. This is unfortunately not the time to destabilise the population by enforcing policies that will impact negatively on the morale of the economy’s producers. It is a time to make the decisions which, although unpopular to the ruling elite, will resuscitate the economy
A more logical approach would therefore include reducing the royal budget or simply just doing away with it completely. The royal family has enough privately owned assets and companies to feed itself. There is absolutely no reason why it should still be on public welfare at the expense of more deserving sectors of the population. Another perhaps more pragmatic solution would be reducing the defence budget, which currently stands at E663 million, despite the fact that the country is not at war and has more than enough police and riot-police to control the population, should it find the need to do so.
Issued by The Swaziland Solidarity Network [SSN] South African Chapter
The poorest workers in Swaziland are to be forced to pay income tax for the first time, while the Swazi Royal Family continue to take a third of a million emalengeni a day of taxpayer’s money for themselves.
The latest wheeze from Swaziland’s Minister of Finance Majozi Sithole, is to make anyone who earns less than E3,000 a month (about 300 US dollars) pay income tax.
Sithole says this will bring in about E50 million a year. He says the new move will allow low earners to contribute to what he calls the cost of the kingdom’s ‘social programme’.
At the same time that Sithole was announcing that the very poorest workers in the kingdom would have to pay up, he hid the cost of the Swazi Royal Family from the king’s subjects.
In Swaziland it is not considered good form to ask how much King Mswati III,sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, costs his subjects. But last year news leaked out that the king and his family cost the taxpayer E130 million a year.
As Swaziland slips towards bankruptcy because of the mismanagement of the economy by Sithole and the rest of the Swazi Government and a cut back in revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) King Mswati continues unhindered.
The budget announced last month (February 2010) revealed some distressing figures about just how poor people in Swaziland are. We already know that seven in ten people live in abject poverty, earning less than one US dollar a day. In addition we now know that another 11percent earn less than E3,000 and until now were considered too poor to pay tax. They make up a half of the total workforce on Swaziland of about 222,000.
A group of Christian leaders in Swaziland have hired a ‘hitman’ to murder journalists who exposed them as devil worshippers.
Three reporters have been targeted because they reported that a group of pastors had been worshipping the devil as a way to raise money.
According to a media report in Swaziland,the pastors have ‘enlisted the services of hitmen from South Africa to eliminate three journalists who apparently blew the whistle on them’.
The journalists are reported to be Channel Swazi News Editor Mhlonishwa Motsa, Ingwazi News Editor Lucky Ndzimandze and reporter Zweli Dlamini, also from Ingwazi.
The newspaper reports that the pastors ‘met behind closed doors’ and they decided ‘that the journalists be assassinated for “meddling into our business”’.
This is not the first time Christian leaders in Swaziland have called for journalists they do not like to die.
In 2007 Pastor Justice Dlamini, a well known pastor and media figure, said he was praying for the death of two journalists from the Times of Swaziland after that newspaper published a report about Dlamini and an argument he had with another pastor about a clapped out car owned by Dlamini’s church.
I am happy to report that Pastor Justice’s prayers did not work and he just made a complete fool of himself.
I hope this latest case of Pastor Power proves to be just as ridiculous.
