Siyaya eSwaziland, 7th September!

The Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC), formed by trade unions, political parties, civil society groups and churches, has called for a global day of action on September 7, 2010. It will include a mass protest and show of “defiance” in Swaziland. Delegates from the international labour movement will join the action in Swaziland.

1.3 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive. King Mswati III controls the parliament, appoints cabinet ministers, judges and senior civil servants, and makes and breaks the law at will. Political parties are banned, along with most demonstrations and meetings. Strikes are illegal. Gatherings of any kind are often broken up by police assaults. The media is subject to constant harassment and intimidation. During the latest wave of repression, in May 2010, democracy activist Sipho Jele, who had been arrested and interrogated, was allegedly “found” by police hanging from the rafters in a prison toilet.

Swaziland’s autocracy is based on the “Tinkhundla” system through which royally sponsored traditional leaders dispense patronage and exercise control at local level. But Swazis themselves reap no benefits from it. Swaziland now suffers the world’s highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection – perhaps as much as 40% of the adult population and 42% of all expectant mothers. Swaziland has the highest annual rate of death from AIDS, about 10,000 a year - 1% of the population. Life expectancy has plummeted and is probably now as low as anywhere in the world. Fifteen per cent of households are headed by orphaned children.

While 70% of the population live on less than a dollar a day and 25% rely on food aid, the royal family make do on some $67,000 a day. According to US-based business magazine Forbes, Mswati’s personal net worth is an estimated $200 million.Mswati is also head of a multi-million pound conglomerate, set up in 1968 by royal charter, which owns a significant slice of nearly every major Swazi business and industry – sugar, mobile phones, mines, media, tourism. Theoretically, Mswati holds the conglomerate’s assets in trust for the nation, but the fund, like all royal assets, is shielded from public scrutiny. Six in ten Swazis are engaged in subsistence farming, mostly on communal land owned in trust by the king, whose family also directly own a major share of the remaining “privately owned” land. Forced labour is commonplace. Under Swazi Administration Order No. 6 of 1998, it is a duty of Swazis to obey orders from local chiefs to participate in compulsory works (which may include construction and agricultural labour or even weeding the gardens in Mswati’s palaces). There are severe penalties for those who refuse. The Swazi monarchy has maintained its grip by collaborating with the prevalent regional powers, first with the Boer republics, then the British Empire and in the 1980s with apartheid South Africa. Besides assisting in the arrest and killing of African National Congress members who had fled to Swaziland, the king denounced sanctions against South Africa, the only Commonwealth leader besides British PM Margaret Thatcher to do so. Coca-Cola, whose concentrate plant, exporting to much of Africa, is located in Swaziland because of favourable tax arrangements and access to cheap raw sugar. Coke accounts for up to 40 per cent of Swaziland’s GDP, and an unknown but sizeable chunk of this goes directly into the king’s pocket.

The days of the absolute monarchy are definitely numbered.