Rupiah and his tyrannical royal Swazi friend

Rupiah and his tyrannical royal Swazi friend
Written by Editor

WHEN it was announced that King Mswati III was coming to visit our country, to be the guest of our President, we felt like immediately opposing his visit. But on reflection we told ourselves to wait and hear what King Mswati was going to say about his country. And we also wanted to hear what Rupiah Banda was going to tell his guest. Now that all that needed to be said has been said, we feel it is time for us also to say what we think should be said.

We were extremely surprised to hear Rupiah say: "It is befitting that we, in Zambia today, should pay tribute to you and the people of Swaziland for the exemplary leadership you have continued to display. Zambia has been following with keen interest the social and economic developments, which have been taking place in your beautiful kingdom. We congratulate you on your wise leadership that had successfully blended traditional and democratic governance. While you allow traditions to guide the Swazi society, you have alongside ensured that the Swazi people benefit from economic development and actively participate in the election of their representatives in the government of your majesty. In this regard, we pay tribute to you personally and your people for the successful conduct of the elections last September, which contributed to the democratic rule not only in your kingdom but also the SADC region as a whole."

In life it is very important to be clear about things.

What tribute can Zambia pay to Mswati for exemplary leadership? What exemplary leadership has Mswati displayed? What social and economic developments have been taking place in Swaziland that Zambia has followed with keen interest? What traditional and democratic governance has Mswati successfully blended through wise leadership? And what elections can Mswati be praised for in Swaziland?

Whilst Rupiah has a right to invite Mswati for a visit, we wish to express our strong displeasure at the presence of the King in our country. We say this because Mswati is running a tyrannical royal dictatorship in Swaziland. And by highlighting this matter, we wish to strongly signal that it is time now for SADC to put serious pressure on Mswati for the democratisation of Swaziland. The Tinkhundla system based on the banning of political parties and the suppression of freedom of association and political activity that Swaziland has, is one of the most oppressive systems in the contemporary period. Whilst the Swazi King was entertained to a state banquet here and enjoyed game viewing in one of our national parks in the company of Rupiah, he has subjected the people of Swaziland to hunger and poverty whilst he and his family enjoy a lavish lifestyle.

Millions of rand are being wasted in Swaziland to finance the Mswati dynasty; which includes throwing expensive birthday parties, procurement of luxury motor vehicles and financing personal shopping sprees; whilst the majority of the people do not have access to basic services and the HIV/AIDS pandemic is ravaging the country.

For far too long, SADC and the African Union (AU) have turned a blind eye to the brutalities meted out to the Swazi people by Mswati.

Why should Swaziland still belong to some 17th Century archive or political museum, as a source of tourist attractions and academic interests for European anthropologists keen on studying how 17th Century Africa looked, a classical example of backwardness and primitive social relations of the worst order, with no regard for human dignity, of women in particular?

Should it not be of interest to all of us that in our region we have a country that has evaded the powerful media screens, the academic freedom train of political scientists and all the world's watchdogs who should have been ashamed of their witting or unwitting silence and failure to uncover more than 35 years of legalised political fraud in the name of Swazi culture and tradition?

But why should a fast-evolving world of information super highways on a global scale afford to tolerate the longest state of emergency in the region, and most probably on the continent as a whole? These are the questions we should pose to our government, multilateral institutions of governance in our region and continent, as well as beyond. But even more uncomfortably, we must also pose them to ourselves. Should we be pardoned, for we did not know, or we did not see or we just chose silence, for it is golden sometimes and more convenient than the sacrifice that comes with challenging things?

Swaziland was a British colony until 1968 when an arrangement of convenience was made between the colonialists and the local traditional leadership under the monarchy for a settlement that would comfortably accommodate both forces in some form of partnership, that would not upset the conditions designed by colonialism, but only integrate a few among the historically oppressed in the form of the monarchy and its appendages.

The regime remains stubborn that only Tinkhundla non-party elections shall take place and that the tight hold of the royal state on the levers of power is not about to be eased. On September 19, 2008, the system conducted daylight fraud called elections, legally fooling the world that things are happening, or about to happen, in Swaziland.

In a world of double standards, who cares! We live in a world where the interests of the powerful determine where cameras should focus, no matter what the issues and their depth.

Who can dare explain to us the logic of a country that has never seen anything close to democratic multiparty elections since 1973, yet no one, including civil society, has raised this issue. All of us prefer to remain quiet or, at best, passively lament this situation. And others like Rupiah even go to the extent of praising it. All we can see is hypocrisy and selective morality or double standards in the application and defence of democratic principles and traditions. However, we are very sure that the struggle for the affirmation of human dignity in Swaziland will not be televised, but it will unfold in the humble surroundings of that country's communities and places.

Swaziland is a neo-colonial and semi-feudal enclave ruled by an absolute monarchy together with his family. It is a country that is naturally endowed with abundant resources, but is suffering from the crisis of a royal kwashiorkor, called the Tinkhundla system. This system by definition is about the entrenchment of royal hegemony in all spheres of Swazi society, thus turning the people into objects of royal pity and plunder. This is the essence of royal rule, through imposed hegemony, where the King is everything. He is the chancellor of the university, he is the commander-in-chief of the army, he is the patron of thousands of NGOs that front for his hegemony in the name of serving the poor, he is a head of state and more than anything else, a very key businessman, with huge economic interests in every sector of Swazi society. His hands are full of activity that reinforces his greed and entrenches his monopoly over every sphere of Swazi society, not least the economy. This basic truth is important to always remember and recite in order to capture the real essence and structure of Swaziland, and why it is performing. It is obviously suffering from the heavy weight of royal plunder, lack of innovation and creativity, and more than anything else, greed and cancerous corruption, which had permeated every sector of Swazi society and has destroyed its moral fibre.

It is in this sense that we must also locate the critical debate about what has become known about Swazi culture and tradition. The little of what remains from the rich heritage and tapestry of Swazi being, has been eroded in favour of royal interests, which is the core of what remains in the idea of Swazi culture and tradition today.

Certainly, the decent Swazi culture that their forebears cherished so much would never tolerate legalised rape or even abuse of children and women, it would never promote slavery, where the poor people are forced to work in the private farms of the chief and the king, it would never tolerate that an individual could amass so much wealth while the people languish in desperate poverty, as it would never allow decision making and participation in matters of public interest to be a monopoly of the royal family and their friends. We must expose evil practices disguised as Swazi culture and traditions and call them what they really are, we must call things by their names.

Swaziland has undergone so many changes, but fundamentally, all the changes are about how best to preserve royal rule, at all costs. These artificial and cosmetic changes create a false illusion and gives an impression that something dramatic is happening in that country, yet daily they are drifting further and further away from where they should be going, towards a new and democratic Swaziland, free from royal plunder and oppression.

The more changes happen, the more things remain the same and the more royal oppression becomes deeply institutionalised in Swaziland. Swazi people have even began to lose some hope that things will ever really change.

In 1973, the King proclaimed a decree that banned political parties and criminalised all forms of political activity, which paved the way for monopoly over public affairs and politics by the royal family and their friends, a case that holds to this day. They have a royal family that regards the people of Swaziland as mere objects of exploitation, oppression and the satisfaction of its greedy interests, disguised and their national pride and culture. The luxury of elections is too far-fetched for the people of Swaziland. Since 1973, Swaziland has never seen what it is like to participate in free and democratic elections, where you can openly contest, freely persuade people, be openly scrutinised and, finally, be held accountable for your promises.

Swaziland today has the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence in the world, which is now at 38 per cent from around 40 per cent; it has one of the highest levels of inequality between the rich and the poor, with wealth being unevenly distributed; the economy is no longer growing, but has stagnated and has, in fact, been going down every year since around 2000; the abuse of women is dressed in nice gowns and called Swazi culture and tradition, which undermines the rich heritage of their true culture, thus serving a narrow selfish interests of a royal minority; about 70 per cent of the population live below one US dollar a day and more than 300,000 of Swaziland's around one million citizens depend on food aid as means for survival; the bulk of the economy is now based on the informal sector, and on casual and contract labour, which provide very insecure jobs and pay very low; more than 52 per cent of the total income of the Swazi government is derived from the Southern African Customs Union pool, and were this not so, and its reliance on the South Africa rand to which the Swazi currency pegged, inflation would be in the double digit figures.

The economy of Swaziland is centred around the royal family and its friends. Cabinet dances to whatever tune that is sung by the master; last year the royal family received funds and aid and distributed it through the King, Queen mother, princes and princesses, in order to be perceived as benevolent and caring for the poor and suffering, while they are the primary cause of the hunger experienced by the Swazi people. Balancing these handouts with the extravagant expenditure by this family on itself is like chasing a wild goose.

In his proclamation to the nation, the monarchy on April 12, 1973 said: "Now, therefore I, Sobhuza II, King of Swaziland, hereby declare that, in collaboration with my Cabinet ministers and supported by the whole nation, I have assumed supreme power in the Kingdom of Swaziland and that all legislative, executive and judicial powers is now vested in myself and shall, for the meantime be exercised in collaboration with my Cabinet ministers. I further declare that to ensure the continued maintenance of peace, order and good government, my armed forces have been posted to all public services. All political parties and similar bodies that cultivate and bring about disturbances and ill-feelings within the nation are hereby dissolved and prohibited."

Many spectators have convinced themselves that this decree has ceased to be the foundation of the ruling political architecture of Swaziland. The truth is that it still continues to be the force behind the establishment. And the new constitution is simply a reinforcement and further entrenchment of this decree and its fundamental provisions. The royal regime, in response to the pressures of the Swazi people's struggles, tried a hasty constitutional review process in which it was the player, the referee and the match commissioner at the same time and all were privileged to be simply spectators in a game they were supposed to be the players. Clearly, Swaziland is not what Rupiah says it is. And no shortcuts will take Swaziland to the promised land of milk and honey, but only a protracted, honest and all-inclusive process leading to a multiparty democratic constitutional dispensation will deliver them to the land of their dreams. That is why the Swazi constitution reaffirms the fundamental perspectives of banning political parties and all forms of political activity, frustrating the popular aspirations of the whole population and undermining the supremacy of the rule of law. Such an arrangement will not take Swaziland forward.

In the circumstances in Swaziland, what are the possibilities of holding free, fair and democratic elections that should constitute the basis of a legitimately acceptable outcome and whose product could be the express will of the people? What is the basis for Rupiah praising such elections? And it is not only the political parties that remain banned in Swaziland. The media, the Judiciary and all public institutions remain tightly in the monopoly of the royal family and its friends and are used to criminalise political parties as divisive, fomenting war and are described as un-Swazi. Traditional institutions and structures continue to be vehicles of intimidation and abuse, agitating against democratic practices. Parliament has no powers, but is a mere rubber stamp of the royal family. The constitution remains illegitimate and does not have fundamental guarantee for the creation of a conducive environment to conduct democratic elections.

Given all this, what exemplary leadership of Mswati is Rupiah paying tribute to? It may simply be a sign or signal of where Rupiah wants to take Zambia. This is what he admires and probably wishes Zambia was like Swaziland.