PUDEMO NOT LINKED TO AUDP

The following is a media statement from the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) denying that it has links with the African United Democratic Party (AUDP) and criticising the Swaziland media for reporting that it has.

SOURCE

PUDEMO SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

23 January 2011

We wish to correct the unfortunate, incorrect and highly misleading assertion by the media in Swaziland, in particular most recently the Times Group of newspapers that the African United Democratic Party (AUDP) “is a breakaway wing of PUDEMO.”

No matter how many times this can be repeated, it will not distort the truth. PUDEMO has neither links nor history with the AUDP. We share nothing in common ideologically and otherwise. The formation of the AUDP has got nothing to do with PUDEMO – period! We cannot recall in our history where the founders of the AUDP decided to walk out of PUDEMO and announce they were breaking away to form their own organization.

We humbly request the local media to therefore, correctly identify the AUDP and allow it to do its operations without the media linking it to PUDEMO, especially its formation and history – lest this be accepted as truthful when in fact it is not.

We may never know what the intention of the media is by constantly reporting and misleading its readership on this matter. If it is not intentional and deliberate, then we forgive them with the understanding that this will not happen ever again in the future.

However, if this is deliberately done by the media in general or by individuals within the media, then we have no choice but to conclude that there is a deliberate ploy to undermine PUDEMO, a very unfortunate scenario journalistically. Such negative and incorrect reporting on PUDEMO and its members has been happening in the past and were forced to approach the former Managing Editor Martin Dlamini to correct with his reporting staff. Such incorrect and misleading captions were:

‘PUDEMO hijacks…”

“PUDEMO turns … into a political rally.”

We are also aware that at times the local media does not publish the correct information that we give it on the pretext that we are a banned organization. Surprisingly we would find incorrect and negative information on PUDEMO splashed in the media without verifying with us on the true position. PUDEMO is always available and does not shy away from the media.

This humble advice is not only directed to the Times Group, but to all media houses in Swaziland. We urge the media in general and individual journalists to report fairly and in a balanced way not only on PUDEMO, but on any issue that is of interest to the general readership to avoid creating negative perceptions on the media.

IS SWAZI KING’S HEALTH IN JEOPARDY?

How good is the health of Mswati III, Swaziland’s king and sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch?

Probably not as good as it should be.

Last week, the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) reported that King Mswati was suffering from a series of mental health problems. It said, ‘sources feel that the king is no longer in control of his mental faculties and has lately become irrational and unpredictable’.

I don’t know how true this is (and I suspect it would be difficult to get concrete evidence to support the claim). But, while we can’t be sure about his mental health, there is ample evidence that the King’s physical health is in jeopardy.

Not to mince words: the king is obese. ‘Obese’ is a medical term for very fat.

Anyone who has seen pictures recently of King Mswati with his shirt off will see that he is sporting a rather large belly. Obesity experts like to say that such a person is ‘apple shaped’.

I can already hear supporters of the King saying the big belly is a sign of wealth and wellbeing. It means the King has a healthy appetite and can afford to eat well: which, of course, is more than can be said for most of his one million subjects. Seven in ten of them earn less than one US dollar a day and don’t know where their next healthy, balanced meal is coming from.

But, whether the King’s friends (many of whom are apple-shaped themselves: or worse, pear shaped) like it or not, King Mswati’s health is at grave risk.

Obesity can cause a number of health problems, such as type 2 diabetes (a condition caused by too much glucose in the blood), and heart disease (when the heart’s blood supply is blocked).

In the short-term, obesity causes problems such as breathlessness, increased sweating, difficulty sleeping, inability to cope with sudden physical activity, and feeling very tired every day. Maybe that’s what the SSN ‘sources’ have been noticing and not mental health problems at all.

Being overweight or obese can also shorten life expectancy (how long a person should live). In obese adults over 40 years of age, as the King is, obesity can shorten life expectancy by six-seven years.

Of course, in Swaziland, life expectancy of a person has been estimated at 33 years, so one might argue that King Mswati has had his allotted time already.

So, what is to be done? Actually, the solution is pretty simple. The King needs to go on a diet and exercise a lot more. If he gets on the treadmill and burns off the calories, he can lose the apple.

But, to lose weight, you have to have willpower.

See also

EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/03/swaziland-emperors-new-clothes.html

IS SWAZI KING READY TO SACK PM?

Has King Mswati III signed the political death warrant for Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister?

As I predicted in December 2010, the Observer newspapers, in effect owned and edited by King Mswati III, are continuing their calls for Dlamini to resign.

The latest call comes today (22 January 2011) from Alec Lushaba, editor of the Weekend Observer. And he seems to be writing with the full support of the King.

Lushaba writes in his own newspaper, ‘My view is that the prime minister and his collective failed His Majesty the King in 2010. Their actions have put the name of king and country into disrepute and for that and that alone, they have to go.’

He goes on to say that the King’s ‘image’ internationally has been damaged.

You will notice that Lushaba says Dlamini has failed the King and not the people. The King’s ‘good name’ is really all the newspaper cares about.

Lushaba also accuses Dlamini of making the King look like a liar over support for the Royal Jozini Big Six, the tourist development that was closed down by the King in November 2010.

Lushaba previously told us that his newspaper would never publish anything about King Mswati, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, without the King’s permission.

So we must assume that the King himself supports the Observer’s call for Dlamini’s resignation.

Lushaba writes, ‘... it is unSwazi and foreign in our culture to use His Majesty the King and iNgwenyama as your shield when under attack. If anything, it is expected that iNgwenyama uses or sacrifices his lieutenants when under-siege.’

He goes on, ‘Now that iNgwenyama is officially out of seclusion, what do we expect him to do?’

I cannot believe Lushaba would dare write such words unless he had the permission of the King.

Dlamini should start collecting cardboard boxes now in readiness for the office clearout he will surely have to make shortly.

The only question that remains is does he resign or is he sacked?

See also

‘SWAZI OBSERVER’ PLOTS FOR THE KING

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/12/swazi-observer-plots-for-king.html

IS IT TIME TO PULL THE TRIGGER?

http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=20171

'BIG BROTHER' SNUBS SWAZILAND

Swazi newspapers are getting their knickers in a twist because the television ‘reality show’ Big Brother Africa 6 (BBA6) won’t be auditioning for contestants in Swaziland.

But why are they surprised? Swaziland was excluded from the previous five series of BBA, so nothing’s different now.

In last year’s (2010) series (BBA5) 14 ‘housemates’ were put together in a house, locked away from the world, and had cameras following them for 24 hours a day for three months.

The point of the game is that viewers are asked from time to time to nominate one of the housemates for eviction from the house. This goes on until everybody except one person is voted off and that person is declared the winner. The winner gets to go away with US$ 200,000 (about E1.4 million).

Swazis are not invited to audition for a place in the house because not enough people in the kingdom subscribe to DSTV, the satellite television company that broadcasts Big Brother. And Swazi people are just too poor (seven in ten earn less than US$1 a day) to be attractive to advertisers.

BBA6 that starts in May 2011will be the sixth year that Big Brother Africa has been broadcast, but the programme format has been around since the 1990s when it started in the Netherlands. Local versions of the programme have been broadcast around the world since. In its day it was one of the most successful programme formats in the history of television, but in many countries it has past its ‘sell-by’ date and has been dropped.

Back in the 1990s, the programme makers made all kinds of claims for Big Brother. They said it was a social experiment to see how people would react to living so closely to one another without a break and for such a long period. Sociologists and psychologists rushed to praise the programme for its intellectual insights.

Nobody seriously says that kind of thing now. It didn’t take too long before the truth came out. The reality of this ‘reality television’ programme was money. That’s why it took more than a decade to reach Africa – there’s not much money in the continent.

Here’s how it works. The BBA6 programme makers want 14 contestants from across Africa. Instead of auditioning people across the continent and taking the best people they can find they will only look in Africa’s richer nations. That’s why they won’t bother to come to Swaziland.

BBA6 will choose no more than one person from any single country so they can spread the interest in the programme around the continent. Countries to be represented include Angola, Botswana, Kenya and South Africa.

Big Brother is targeted at a very particular audience of young people. To be attractive to sponsors and advertisers the audience need to be in well paying jobs and have money to spend on the goods and services advertisers want to sell.

Advertisers who use television have trouble reaching younger adults, so Big Brother is always aimed specifically at these kinds of people. The programme wants the audience to relate to the participants so they chose men and women to take part who come from a very narrow social demographic.

Usually the housemates are aged in their twenties. They don’t have run-of-the-mill jobs in the real world. In BBA5 contestants had jobs such as ‘radio DJ’, ‘business owner’, ‘radio producer’, ‘events coordinator’, ‘film maker and actor’, ‘musician and broadcaster’, ‘writer, director and actor’, ‘actress, musician and model’. This range of occupations is hardly typical of the average African.

Even though the Swazi people are too poor to be attractive to the programme makers they are being exploited for some of their cash.

MTN, the only cell phone company in Swaziland, sponsors the programme and rakes in the cash by encouraging viewers to send SMS messages to the programme. You also need a cell phone to be able to cast your vote to evict a housemate.

A spokeswoman for DSTV in Swaziland tried to divert attention away from the real cause of Swaziland’s exclusion by saying that some viewers in the kingdom illegally got their service from neighbouring South Africa and this made it look like fewer people in Swaziland were DSTV viewers. This, she claimed, was the reason why Swaziland was not to be represented in BBA6.

According to a report in the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned and edited by King Mswati III, the spokeswoman even went so far as to urged viewers to ‘demonstrate patriotism’ by taking the DSTV service from Swaziland, rather than from South Africa.

What she didn’t say was that people take the South African service because it broadcasts more live English Premier League football matches that its Swazi counterpart. It’s nothing to do with ‘patriotism’ or BBA.

See also

BIG BROTHER SHOW CONS AFRICANS

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2007/11/big-brother-show-cons-africans.html

LUTFO: SWAZI MEDIA TALK IN RIDDLES

I wish the newspapers in Swaziland would stop talking in riddles about the Lutfo Dlamini corruption scandal.

Today (21 January 2011), it’s the turn of the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper.

Its managing editor Mbongeni Mbingo writes about how the Swaziland Government Cabinet often talks about ‘collective responsibility’.

He then asks, ‘How does Cabinet reconcile this with what is happening with their colleague at foreign affairs?

‘We do not know as yet the extent of the problem that we are made to believe the minister has got to answer to, to his superiors, but I was just thinking that his colleagues would perhaps have taken the fall too.

‘But then again, perhaps this was a decision that did not involve Cabinet! Only time will tell, and the public waits, with bated breath.’

Indeed, if by the ‘public’ Mbingo means Times’ readers, they do indeed wait with baited breath to find out what’s going on. The rest of us know that Lutfo Dlamini, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and Phesheya Dlamini, Swaziland Ambassador to Kuwait, were both sacked from their jobs last week because they are implicated in a corruption scandal involving missing millions of emalengeni that was intended for King Mswati III, King of Swaziland and the last absolute monarch in sub-Saharan Africa.

Yesterday, the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned and edited by King Mswati, dribbled on about Lutfo Dlamini being away from work ‘sick’ and his cabinet post being assigned temporarily to Clement Dlamini, the Agriculture Minister.

We expect this misleading reporting from the Observer, but the Times claims to be an ‘independent’ newspaper. Could the people at the Times show us that independence and tell their readers what is really going on. Please.