(From Swazi Media Commentary 3 April 2009 www.swazimedia.blogspot.com)
Does anyone on the international stage still support Swaziland’s King
Mswati III?
I ask the question following news that leaders of South Africa’s ruling
party, the African National Congress (ANC), have come out against the
undemocratic regime in Swaziland, including the king.
King Mswati, sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch, rules his subjects with an iron fist.
Political parties are banned and he makes all the important decisions
in Swaziland. Last year he unconstitutionally appointed Barnabas Dlamini as
prime minister and most of his cabinet ministers are not elected.
Jesse Duarte, spokesperson for ANC told a seminar hosted by the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (COSATU) at its headquarters in Braamfontein that
the ANC does not support King Mswati.
According to Swaziland’s independent newspaper, the Times Sunday, Duarte
is not the only member of the ANC to have criticised Swaziland’s system
of governance. Other members of the ANC have expressed similar
sentiments in the past. In one instance, ANC members participated in a
well attended march against the king during a Southern Africa
Development Community (SADC) meeting in Sandton, in 2008.
Although
the ANC is South Africa’s ruling party and is expected to comfortably
win the forthcoming elections in that country we shouldn’t expect any
change in policy soon. I have always believed that if South Africa
wanted regime change in Swaziland it could achieve it with the click of
a finger. Although Swaziland is politically ‘independent’ it is in
effect an economic province of South Africa, sharing a common foreign
exchange rate among other economic matters.
If
South Africa were to impose trade sanctions on Swaziland, the kingdom
would fold inside a month. Those people who presently uphold King
Mswati’s despotism would abandon him the moment it became clear the
king had to be removed and political form enacted to save the kingdom.
Although King Mswati remains in power he is discredited. As the US State
Department in its annual review of human rights in Swaziland noted earlier this
year, ‘Government
agents continued to commit or condone serious abuses, and the human
rights situation in the country deteriorated. Human rights problems
included inability of citizens to change their government;
extrajudicial killings by security forces; mob killings; police use of
torture, beatings, and excessive force on detainees; police impunity;
arbitrary arrests and lengthy pretrial detention; arbitrary
interference with privacy and home; restrictions on freedoms of speech
and press and harassment of journalists; restrictions on freedoms of
assembly, association, and movement; prohibitions on political activity
and harassment of political activists; discrimination and violence
against women; child abuse; trafficking in persons; societal
discrimination against mixed race and white citizens; and harassment of
labor leaders, restrictions on worker rights, and child labor.’
When you read a list like that it makes you yearn for the ANC to pull the
plug on King Mswati right now.
Link
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2009/04/support-for-swaziland-king-ebbs..html
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SA
Swaziland Solidarity EOM Forum" group. Visit the group site at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sa-swaziland-solidarity-eom-forum for more
options, pages and files.
To post to the group, send email to
[email protected] or reply to this message.
To unsubscribe, send email to
[email protected]
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
