Support Swaziland Strikers

Riot police in Swaziland are under fire for using rubber bullets and teargas against striking workers. A strike at Swaziland Plantation has entered its second month amid clashes between police and workers.

Swaziland Agriculture and Plantations Workers Union (SAPWU) Chairperson Sibusiso Masuku told the Swazi Observer newspaper the police had taken a violent stance against the workers. Masuku explained, 'The riot police are just pawns used by the Plantation Forest Company administration to fight against us, we feel safer when they are not present as we do not understand their way of thinking.' 

In June 2015, Swaziland was listed as one of the top ten worst countries in the world for workers' rights. It was grouped alongside some of the worst human rights violators on the planet, including Belarus, China, Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Swaziland's false customs

Swaziland’s King Mswati III passes suppression, unaccountability and royal opulent spending in the face of drought, starvation and poverty, as traditionally “Swazi” values. Tradition is also the basis for Swaziland’s constitution (from 2005), where the words “...in accordance with Swazi law and custom” are used many times. The constitution also gives the king executive authority in Swaziland and in effect lets him determine what constitutes “Swazi law and custom”. 

The Swazi system of governance, ‘Tinkhundla’, is indeed unique”, says, Sonkhe Dube, a young exiled activist who is the International Secretary of the Swaziland Youth Congress. “They claim it is a democratic institution that encompasses traditional forms of leadership. But in a democratic state, the cabinet is not handpicked by a king who literally controls everything without being accountable to his citizens”. No culture remains frozen in time. Culture is, or ought to be, about the adjustment of society to the needs of its citizens, as well as the other way round. But according to Sonkhe Dube, the current Swazi Tinkhundla system of governance is by no means adjusting itself to the needs and wishes of the people. It is neither democratic nor even truly traditional in a Swazi sense.

“It is a system based on the manipulation of culture to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the greedy monarchy. The monarchy should stop hiding behind culture. Swazi culture in not only about ceremonies but also about social responsibilities which the present powers that be are intentionally ignoring”, says Sonkhe Dube.

King Mswati III has recently spent $ 14 million on a new personal 375-seater jet and will be spending millions of dollars more on hosting a SADC Heads of State summit this year, while a quarter of his population is starving.

In Swaziland, King Mswati’s father King Sobhuza II was given the power to appoint and dismiss chiefs and in 1957, 11 years before independence, acts of disobedience against the king were made illegal by a colonial act. The foundations that were laid for such royal hegemony were seen a couple of years after independence, in 1973, when Sobhuza II banned political parties, declared a state of emergency that is yet to be officially repealed and began ruling as an absolute monarch. Swazis are made to believe that the monarchy rules through the people by way of a traditional people’s parliament, ‘Sibaya’, say Sonkhe Dube. “But when the king called Sibaya in 2012, and the convention pronounced to the king that they wanted the Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini and his cabinet out, the king responded by keeping them. The same Prime Minister is still in charge, against the will of the people”.

Swazis are also at the mercy of the king through his chiefs in their everyday lives. “Chiefs allocate land to people and chase them out of their chiefdoms if they feel there is something wrong with them, as happened in Kamkhweli and Macetjeni, where the king sanctioned the eviction of families. The king and the chiefs also order their subjects to do voluntary manual labour in their fields. The product from the manual labour culturally has to cater for the vulnerable and orphaned, but currently it is not doing that, yet people are still required to provide labour for the chiefs and the monarchy. Culturally, the king and chiefs do not own the land but are supposed to be holding it in trust for the people”, Sonkhe Dube says.

Sharing out the billions?

The wealth gap between the world's richest and poorest has continued to widen in recent years. About 15 percent of Africa's population lives on less than $1.00 per day, according to the Brookings researchers .

Researchers at the Brookings Institution suggest that the generosity of just one billionaire would completely restructure the poverty landscape in Swaziland, whose economy is nearly 4,000 times smaller than that of the U.S. More than 40 percent of Swaziland's 1.3 million citizens live below the global poverty line of $1.90 per day, but these people could be hauled over that benchmark by a single individual's act of philanthropy, according to the report.

The Brookings researchers calculated the net worth of the richest billionaire in a handful of emerging and developing economies. In Swaziland's case, that billionaire was international business icon Nathan Kirsh, whose net worth clocks in at about $3.9 billion. If Kirsh pledged to give half of his wealth to the citizens of Swaziland over the course of the next 15 years (not entirely unlike Bill and Melinda Gates' Giving Pledge), extreme poverty would be eradicated from the country. South Africa's richest billionaire would only be able to lower the country's poverty rate from 18 percent to 14 percent, even with a net worth of $7.4 billion.

Findings from the study was that it's much harder to pull African countries out of poverty than it is countries elsewhere, thanks in part to "the depth of poverty in Africa" and the region's relatively high prices for basic necessities.

Of course Swaziland's despotic monarch could also make a huge difference by giving up his wealth. Socialists don't call for the rich to share with the poor but call for the expropriation of the expropriators. 

A Heart that Never Dies

Swaziland’s absolute monarch, King Mswati III, not only demands total loyalty from his citizens – most of whom survive on less than a dollar a day from handouts from the UN – but he also makes sure that meetings he deems ‘political’ are disrupted by police, who harass and beat up activists like Bheki. Many of them are subsequently charged with terrorism for trivial ‘offences’ such as shouting ‘viva PUDEMO’ or wearing a PUDEMO t-shirt (Swaziland’s largest banned political party, the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO).

A new documentary, ‘Swaziland – Africa’s last absolute monarchy’, made by award-winning Danish investigative journalist Tom Heinemann, describes the fight for democracy and socio-economic justice through the eyes of Bheki Dlamini, a young activist and leading member of PUDEMO. It was at university, while studying Sociology and Public Administration, that Bheki really started questioning the doctrines and cultural codes of Swazi society. The different views of students and lecturers had an impact. ‘University changed my perception and how I looked on society,’ he says.

Bheki chose to act on his new-found beliefs by, amongst other actions, helping organize civic education for poor and illiterate people in Swaziland’s rural areas. After having had his home ransacked and been detained on several occasions, Bheki was arrested in 2010, tortured, and charged with terrorism for allegedly committing arson against an MP and a police officer, crimes that he and his colleagues said he could not have committed. Bheki was in prison for nearly 4 years. He was kept in a filthy cell, no larger than 5 by 12 metres, 24 hours a day and with up to 40 other inmates.

When the trial finally began, all charges against Bheki were quickly dropped and he was released. But as Bheki told the large crowd that had gathered outside the courthouse to greet him upon his release: ‘I am moving out of the small prison into the bigger prison.’ A few months later he was forced to flee Swaziland, when the police tried to arrest him after he had given a speech on May Day.

‘No matter what they do to me, the fight continues,’ hesays, unflinching and looking straight into the camera. ‘The state is afraid, so if we can push much harder it is going to succumb to our pressure.’ 

A Despot's Time Will Come

King Mswati the Third of Swaziland has a fleet of luxury cars, a dozen mansions and 15 wives. Mswati is the last absolute monarchy on the continent and has ruled since he was 18; his father had banned all political parties a decade earlier. Many Swazis are too poor to agitate, and those that do are quashed. There are no trade unions. Members of the main opposition group, the “People’s United Democratic Movement,” are regularly arrested, peaceful demonstrators beaten up and journalists sent to jail. Many of his subjects live grim lives: Swaziland is the seventh-hungriest country in the world, 63 percent of its citizens live below the poverty line and more than 1 in 4 adults (aged 15–49) have HIV/AIDS. GDP growth is negative and unemployment is at nearly 23 percent.

He buys luxury cars worth 61 years of Swazi wages, takes trips to Las Vegas on private jets and picks a new virgin wife every couple of years. Most Swazis are too busy trying to feed their families to start a revolution. “The majority aren’t screaming for democracy because they are not educated,” says Nhlanhla Msibi, the Swazi author of The Delayed Revolution: Swaziland in the Twenty-First Century. HIV has wiped out “muscle,” too, he says: “There’s only young orphans or old people.”

But in the cities, a democratic movement is challenging Mswati’s rule. “It’s a rotten, pathetic, undemocratic and corrupt system,” says Philani Ndebele of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, a coalition of organizations demanding multiparty democracy in the country. There are elections. It’s just that Mswati decides the outcome

For Western nations that promote democracy abroad, Swaziland lacks geopolitical significance. While there are some exceptions — South Africa rescinded $207 million after Mswati refused to make basic political reforms, and the United States booted Swaziland from the African Growth and Opportunity Act over human rights concerns — few countries care much about that small patch of green next to South Africa.

 “The problem is that Swaziland is not Zimbabwe. There is no extreme humanitarian crisis and it has no oil or interesting natural resources,” says says Chris Vandome of the Africa program at U.K.-based Chatham House. It does have is sugar — the country’s main export — but it can’t compete much with producers like Brazil.

Mswati hasn’t done much to diversify the agricultural industry.  Budget cuts have become so severe that teachers are not getting paid and schools can’t open their doors, yet Swaziland spent about $478 million over the past four years on defense, and the king’s annual household budget is $61 million.

“If things continue like this, the country will soon be depending on humanitarian aid and eventually collapse into a failed state,” warns Msibi.

Nevertheless, public disaffection is on the rise. Several mass protests have taken place since 2011. “Transformation is inevitable,” says Ndebele, citing the Arab Spring. “No matter how despotic, brutal and indifferent a regime is, it can be toppled.”

Swaziland bans trade unions

Swazi Minister of Labour and Social Security, Winnie Magagula, has announced a Cabinet resolution deciding that, pending legal reforms, all federations should stop operating immediately. All trade union and employer federations will be effectively banned, a clear violation of ILO Convention 87, ratified by Swaziland, guaranteeing freedom of association for workers and employers. Federations were called upon to submit reports of their operations to date, including their prepared audited financial statements to the Commissioner of Labour.

Tripartite bodies such as the Wages Council, Labour Advisory Board, Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration Commission, Swaziland National Provident Fund, Training and Localization Committee and the Social Dialogue Committee will stop functioning as a result.
Article 5 of ILO Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize recognizes the right of workers’ organizations to establish or to join federations and confederations of their own choosing.

The Swazi government has ignored repeated calls from the international trade union movement to respect rights guaranteed under international conventions ratified by Swaziland. Instead they have suspended workers’ right to freely associate and to carry out trade union activities completely.

http://www.industriall-union.org/swaziland-bans-trade-unions

"No Better Future For Workers Than Solidarity And Unity"

Victory for sugar workers at Swaziland's Tambankulu Estates but Illovo refuses to settle!

Note from the editors: Illovo is the largest sugar plantation owner in Africa, with plantations in six African countries. The company is at the centre of numerous land conflicts.

Last week we asked you to support the strikes by Swaziland's Agricultural & Plantation Workers' Union (SAPWU) at two major subsidiaries of South African sugar TNCs. Thousands of you responded, and the union won its demands at Tambankulu Estates - a significant victory for rural workers in the country. But management at Illovo's Ubombo is refusing to concede similar demands.

South African-based Illovo, Africa's largest sugar company which boasts of being "one of the world's lowest cost sugar producers", is 51% owned by the UK's Associated British Foods. In Swaziland they are in partnership with the despotic King Mswati III, who has banned political parties and de-registered the country's national trade union center.

Southern Africa's impoverished sugar workers have been rising up for improved living and working conditions. In late May/early June this year, an 11-day strike by the South African Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) and two other unions won important wage and non-wage improvements from the country's sugar employers, including Illovo.

The Swazi sugar strike actions have now spread to another company, the citrus and sugar producer United Plantations, which supplies cane to Ubombo/Ilovo. SAPWU is leading the fight against rural poverty in Swaziland.

Illovo, whose Swazi plantation and refining operations are many times greater than Tambankulu Estates, is a hugely profitable company which can at least meet the terms negotiated by the union at a major competitor.

From here

UPDATE:

Settlement in Swazi sugar strike brings important gains for workers The three-week strike by the Swaziland Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union (SAPWU) has ended with a settlement bringing workers a 10% wage increase and satisfying the union's non-wage demands, including improved benefits for seasonal workers. Over the course of the strike involving some 3,000 workers, union members stood up to intimidation by military and security forces and legal action by the company intended to hamper picketing. Ubombo Sugar, the Swazi subsidiary of South African sugar giant Illovo, is 40% owned by Swaziland's despotic monarch Mswati III. Illovo in turn is 51% controlled by the UK's Associated British Foods (ABF). The union's general secretary Archie Sayed has written that "The workers of Ubombo send their gratitude to all who contributed to their struggle and appreciate the spirit of solidarity which has also come as a lesson to them that there no better future for the workers as solidarity and unity."

from here

Swaziland's Government Gets Poor Marks All Round

A large majority of people in Swaziland go to bed hungry and blame their government for failing to address their food needs, according to findings from the first formal survey to determine how Swazis view their standard of living.

The results from Afrobarometer, an independent research project that measures public attitudes on social, economic and political issues in 35 African countries, reveal a chasm between the daily struggles faced by most Swazis and the ability of government to address persistently high unemployment, chronic food insecurity and poor service delivery.

The government, which received mostly poor or failing grades for service delivery and corruption, has responded frostily to the survey findings released in December 2013.

Respondents gave poor marks all around to the government’s economic performance, with 58 percent rating management of the economy as "very bad". Two-thirds said government efforts to improve the lives of the poor and create jobs were “very poor”, and 77 percent felt that the authorities had done nothing to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

Participants also expressed disapproval of the job performances of their elected officials, the police and the anti-corruption board, as well as of their Prime Minister, who was appointed by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

Government spokesman Percy Simelane, who is employed by the prime minister’s office, declined to comment on the survey findings, saying, “We don’t know the methodology.”

However, the research methodology was published along with the survey findings, explaining that 1,200 adult Swazis had participated and that respondents were equally divided between men and women, with those residing in rural areas outnumbering those living in urban or peri-urban areas by three to one, in keeping with the country’s largely rural demographics. The country’s four regions were about equally represented.

One of the key questions was: “In the past year, how often have you or your family gone without enough food to eat?” Nineteen percent of respondents answered “always” and 46 percent answered “several times”.

Local NGO workers who deal with food security issues commented that the survey findings confirmed their own assessments based on anecdotal evidence. “The polling doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know from conditions on the ground, but it does provide a statistical foundation for our observations,” said a food distribution manager who works for an international aid organization and asked not to be named.

“We get government officials who say the poverty and hunger situation is exaggerated by NGOs. They deny a problem so they don’t have to spend money on it and accuse NGOs of saying things are bad to get more donor funding,” the manager said.

Swaziland has sufficient arable land to overcome its chronic food insecurity, but according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), it lacks the necessary agricultural and land-use policies to empower small-scale farmers.

Two-thirds of Swazis live on communal Swazi Nation Land, which is held in trust by King Mswati. Households are allocated plots by their local chief. Without title deeds, smallholder farmers lack collateral to secure bank loans that would allow them to make their land more productive by purchasing better seeds, fertilizer and irrigation equipment.


Swaziland has not produced enough food to feed itself since the 1970s. It depends on international food aid to bridge a gap that varies from year to year, ranging from two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 million people in 2007 to about one-tenth of the population in 2013, after a better than average rainfall, according to WFP.

“Two out of three Swazis do not get enough to eat. This has been known to government for some time, but government doesn’t see this as a systemic problem but something that can be remedied with food aid,” said Thabo Nxumalo, an agronomist and agricultural consultant in the Manzini region.

“Food aid is supposed to be a temporary solution to an emergency situation. Government sees food aid as a means to avoid having to put into place policies to put an end to food insecurity,” he alleged.

Nxumalo commented that if Swaziland is to overcome its food shortages, in the absence of government willingness to make fundamental changes to the land-use policy, it will be up to international donors to address the problem in the same way that they responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic by financing improvements to the country’s healthcare system.

Donor aid has vastly improved Swaziland’s healthcare system, and a majority of the survey respondents said they had benefited from better service at clinics and hospitals.

“It took the AIDS crisis to improve healthcare. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has really boosted the country’s health system. The AIDS crisis would be out of control without this assistance,” said Valarie Dlamini, a healthcare consultant in Manzini.

The survey revealed that many Swazis also experience frequent water shortages. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they lived without water in their homes - either piped in directly or from a well or borehole on their property - and 29 percent said they seldom have water in their homes, likely because nearby water supplies have dried up.

“That half of Swazis do not have adequate water is surprising because Swaziland’s climate is quite rainy most of the year, and the country is crossed by large and small rivers that flow all year round. This is a matter of service delivery. Government is not providing irrigation and water storage facilities,” said Amos Ndwandwe, who works with the Ministry of Natural Resources to drill boreholes in rural areas.

Two-thirds of respondents said it was “very difficult” to get water and electricity connected to their homes. But those who had these services said paying for them was also a pressing problem.

Nearly half of those surveyed said their families had gone without an income on one occasion over the past 12 months, and 38 percent said they had gone without an income several times during the past year.

Fifty-six percent of respondents described economic conditions in the country as “very bad”, and half considered their own economic situation as “very bad.”

Dlamini expressed surprise that this percentage was not higher, considering that two-thirds of Swazis are estimated to live in chronic poverty, existing on less than US$2 per day. “However, the survey was of people’s perceptions, and many Swazis are used to the way they have to live,” she said.

“In terms of lifestyles, it isn’t much different from the way they grew up and their ancestors lived – mud huts without water and sanitation, food security dependant on the rains, and little by way of government services.”


Posted from here

Little changes in Swaziland

 King Mswati III of Swaziland, Africa's last absolute monarch, was claiming to have received a vision from God. Coming in between two rounds of parliamentary elections, the King's spokesperson announced that Mswati said he had been told by God to make his kingdom a "monarchial democracy". Many of the country's opposition groups and activists - many of whom are exiled in neighbouring South Africa - ridiculed the news, highlighting the monarch's undemocratic record and criticising the elections as superficial window-dressing.

In the final round of Swaziland's parliamentary elections in September, over 400,000 Swazi voters cast their ballots to elect 55 MPs. However, the vote was again held according to an electoral system known as tinkhundla, which was implemented in the 1970s and under which political parties are not allowed to participate. In protest, Swaziland's main opposition party, the People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), boycotted the elections, calling the polls a farce and a sham designed to maintain the King's absolute rule.

 Last week when Mswati summoned his kingdom to a sibaya (a cultural gathering) at his royal residence where he re-appointed Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini as Prime Minister for a fourth time, and perhaps dashed completely when it was announced yesterday that the new cabinet would include eight members of the old guard.

Indeed, keeping with tradition and continuity following the election, Mswati selected 10 MPs in addition to the elected 55, and re-appointed Dlamini, of the Dlamini clan, as Prime Minister. Mswati's unsurprising choice of a tried-and-tested monarchist and conservative to head government further cements the Dlamini clan's political legacy. Establishing their dominance through military conquest, absorption and subjugation of other smaller or weaker clans since the 1400s, the Dlaminis in present-day Swaziland continue to rule and dominate as its members occupy influential positions as traditional chiefs, royal advisors and top-ranking civil servants thereby reinforcing Mswati's power.

PM Dlamini is himself a member of the royal family and one of the country's longest-serving premiers. Meanwhile, the new senate composed of 30 senators - 20 chosen by the king and 10 elected by parliament - consists of six of the King's brothers and sisters as well as 14 loyalists including the controversial acting chief of KoNtshingila, Gelane Zwane, whose senatorial appointment sparked protest in her southern district of Shiselweni resulting in a heavy-handed state intervention. With a selection of family and trusted allies to keep a watchful eye on things, the King appears keen to maintain the status quo rather than yield to calls - whether domestic, international, or other-worldly - for democratic reform. Dlamini's return to the helm does not bode well for an improvement in labour relations. Many are mindful of the hostile relationship between the state and the unions.

As well as packing decision-making positions with loyalists, Mswati also seems to be trying to curb any potential influence the few opposition figures who managed to get elected might have. Following the announcement of the election results on 21 September, Dlamini banned all private meetings between newly-elected MPs. On several occasions legislators tried to hold private lunches to discuss voting strategies for electing their ten members of the senate, but they had to be cancelled after the prime minister threatened police action if MPs held meetings other than those convened by parliament. Like their predecessors, it seems Swaziland's new MPs' wings have already been clipped.

Much has been made of the election of trade unionist and anti-government activist Jan Sithole; the new MP for Manzini North is seen as a potential reformer and voice of dissent. Apart from Sithole, former teachers' union activists, Phineas Magagula and Saladin Magagula, as well as controversial youth activist Titus Thwala could be among those calling for change.  Shortly after their election, both former teacher activists quickly withdrew their previous criticism of the monarchy and promised to serve dutifully. Phineas Magagula was rewarded by becoming Minister for Education, a position which could suggest open-mindedness on the part of Mswati, but can also be seen as a way to ensure a potential dissenter toes the line. Meanwhile, at last week's official introduction of legislators to the King, Sithole pledged his allegiance to the Crown, raising eyebrows in both pro-monarchist and opposition circles. It is too early to predict what this might mean, but it is important to remember that given the overwhelming majority of monarchists and moderates in government, it is unlikely a minority will change the system from within no matter how outspoken.

Last year, during a wave of industrial action in the education and public transport sectors, thousands of members of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) took to the streets calling for a 4.5% salary increase. After weeks of striking, other workers unions marched in solidarity demanding the same increment. However, rather than engage in dialogue with the protesters, the state, commanded by Dlamini, responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and widespread arrests. The salaries of striking teachers were slashed by 33% and government sought a court order to declare the strike illegal and have SNAT's leaders imprisoned.

Click here for Tendai Marima’s full article

'Coca-colonised'

Coca-Cola is one of the largest and wealthiest companies in the world, as well as being one of the world's best-known brands. The desperate situation of the poverty-stricken workers in the sugar cane fields in Swaziland, who harvest the sugar cane that is the most important ingredient of African Coke. Their plight is not deemed newsworthy. They live their lives in a brutal and repressive absolute monarchy where King Mswati III and a small elite live in luxury while the majority of Swazis live in abject poverty.

Over one billion cans or bottles of Coca-Cola are consumed every day and the Coca-Cola Company makes huge profits every year, over $15-billion in 2005.

Due to the lessening of growth potential in Western markets, where the American market had been dropping off since 1984, Coca-Cola has delved into the markets of developing countries, not least in Africa. Here growth potential is higher and competition less fierce. Coca-Cola can be bought all over Africa, where the Coca-Cola Company is one of the largest employers with over 160 plants and nearly 70,000 employees. Coca-Cola has therefore had a huge impact on the economies of both many African countries and their citizens in recent years. Not least in Swaziland, where Coca-Cola contributes over 40 per cent of the country's gross domestic product.

The Coca-Cola concentrate that is the most important ingredient in the Coca-Cola that is consumed in Africa and parts of Asia and Australia comes from a huge industrial plant in Mapatsa, Swaziland. The Coca-Cola Company chose Swaziland because of the favourable tax arrangement that the regime gives it, as well as the country's abundance of cheap labour and raw sugar. The real point, though, is that Coca-Cola is probably in Swaziland because it is a dictatorship that oppresses its unions and population. This allows wages to be kept low and unemployment high. Swaziland has been 'Coca-colonised', so to speak.
'Coca-Cola can blackmail Swaziland at any moment it likes. If it doesn't get its way it simply has to threaten to take its business elsewhere,' as Richard Rooney, a former associate professor at the University of Swaziland puts it.

Coca-Cola has been accused of dehydrating local communities in its pursuit of water resources to feed its own plants, drying up farmers' wells and destroying local agriculture...it takes almost three litres of water to make one litre of Coca-Cola," says English anti-poverty and human rights organisation, War on Want, in a report on Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola and its affiliates have also been accused of abusing 'countless fundamental human rights', according to a HRCI research report, such as anti-union violence, discriminatory practises and union busting. Coca-Cola is certainly happy with their relationship with the autocratic Swazi regime.

Cutting cane is backbreaking work, and accidents are common,' states a 2004 Human Rights Watch report on sugar cane workers. 'Of all forms of agricultural work, sugar cane is the most hazardous.' This certainly also applies to Swaziland, according to the sugar cane workers. In a small village in Vuvulane, most of the adults worked in the sugar fields as casual labourers for between 400 and 550 rand per month. 'This is not enough to pay for medicine, proper food or school fees for our children,' one villager said. 'Sometimes we do not eat for days. We used to have our own vegetable gardens but these were confiscated by the sugar company. We sometimes fish in the nearby dam in the evening, when it is dark. If we are caught we will be arrested as the dam is owned by the sugar cane company,' another villager said. Practically none of the children in the village, who were clad in dirty and ripped clothes and looked underfed, attended school and many of the villagers receive food aid. In addition to this, the water supply is controlled by a privately owned company that readily closes the water supply from the village if they are not paid on time.

Does Swaziland really benefit from having the Coca-Cola Company effectively propping up its royal dictatorship? Yes, the Coca-Cola Company might provide a large part of Swaziland's annual GDP, but what good is this to the impoverished sugar cane worker or the average Swazi who can barely make ends meet? What good is it when much of this GDP ends up in the pockets of a small elite?

Improved consciousness has enabled Swazi workers to link their poverty, poor working conditions and the low wages that the multinationals pay to regime and company neglect and neo-liberalism. And the workers of Swaziland have therefore been more open and clear in their demands in recent years. Examples of this are the massive strikes by over 16,000 underpaid, and frequently abused, (mostly) female textile workers, in 2008, and the recent historically large demonstrations for socio-economic justice and democracy in March and April 2011. Swazi workers might previously have seen their struggle against Coca-Cola and the Swazi regime as akin to David's struggle against Goliath. But recent events seem to prove that they are slowly waking up to the fact that David ended up winning that battle.

Taken from here http://allafrica.com/stories/201106260017.html

swaziland inequality

The Swazi economy has all but collapsed - with devastating consequences for the poor. Swaziland is Southern Africa's second-smallest economy after Lesotho. Swaziland ranks as one of the most unequal societies in the world. The royal family consumes about 5 per cent of the annual budget while 70 per cent of Swazis live below the poverty line of US$1 per day. This reality exists despite the fact that Swaziland qualifies as a middle-income state due to a flattering per capita GDP. Swaziland is therefore not poor in strict economic terms. However, the country's glaringly skewed politics of distribution certainly are. The Swazi economy is therefore characterised by massive concentration in the hands of a tiny minority with land in the hands of a few (largely members of the royal family who are unable to use it for productive purposes). The economy is largely agro-based, with semi-feudal relations frustrating its development potential, as the majority produce for their landlords rather than for national or for their own benefit.

At the time of Swaziland's independence in 1968, the royal minority inherited a highly skewed colonial economy. The edges of the skewed nature of the economy were further sharpened through a royal 'bourgeoisification' process, with the establishment of a 'royal fund' through the vehicles of Tibiyo and Tisuka TakaNgwane. To date, royalties from mining as well as land held by the monarchy for the Swazi nation (utilised by the major sugar and forestry estates), accrue to the royal family through these institutions, and not to the state, lesser still to the people. This system is designed to ensure that the parasitic royal family maintains their huge, highly unproductive and unfettered share from government in the form of the Swazi National Treasury (SNT), an entity separate from central treasury. There has been the deliberate design of the Tinkhundla royal regime to monopolise national resources and allocate these for their own narrow interests, to the exclusion of the suffering majority of the people.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Swazi economy is characterised by huge unequal distribution of income and living conditions, regional disparities in income and living conditions, skewed property income and land ownership, inequality in upward mobility and favouritism in social opportunities, unequal access to safe and clean water and sanitation facilities, massive rural and urban poverty and landlessness.

The enormity of the current crisis is spoken for when one looks at the facts surrounding Swaziland: life expectancy is now at 31.88 years, 30 per cent of all children are orphaned or vulnerable due to living with a critically ill parent, only 6 per cent of the national budget is allocated to health and 2.4 per cent to social services, 69 per cent of the population live in extreme poverty, 25 per cent of the population live on food aid donations and unemployment is estimated at over 40 per cent.

Meanwhile, the king has an estimated personal fortune of US$200 million. The Swazi monarchy is estimated to be wealthier than the country as a whole. The health and education budget for members of the royal family using expensive institutions outside the country continues to skyrocket, whilst education and health facilities in the country continue to deteriorate and collapse. Social expenditure, national development and the interests of ordinary people suffered as royal projects such as state-of-the-art royal villas and clinics received priority funding. This explains the deepening inequalities in income and opportunities for the poor majority, particularly for women and those living in rural areas.

For a long time, the royal regime openly flirted with the apartheid regime, benefitting from the sanctions against apartheid South Africa and acting as a sanctions buster, collaborating with the Pretoria regime and other such global forces. Swaziland was seen as an alternative destination, with apartheid South Africa products being branded as originating from Swaziland.

from here

stealing from peter to pay paul

Swaziland's government, feeling the pinch of a growing financial crisis, has suspended this quarter’s pensions for the elderly and redirected the money to pay the school fees of orphans and vulnerable children. About 5 percent of Swaziland's approximately one million people are 60 years old or older and eligible for pensions.

The pension stipends are indispensable for many of the elderly, as there is no alternative form of social security and private sector pensions are rare. The grants were increased two years ago from $21 per quarter to $85 and are paid four times a year. But a loaf of bread costs about $1, so most people subsist on maize-meal, supplemented by wild spinach, edible herbs, emasi (sour milk) and occasionally meat.

"You cannot live on such money as government provides but it can help you survive," said Gogo Khumalo, a 70-year-old widower in rural Mliba, 100km east of the capital, Mbabane.

Roughly two-thirds of Swazis live below the poverty line. Swaziland has the world's highest HIV prevalence rate - 26.1 percent - and one in four Swazis between the ages of 15 and 49 are living with the virus. Mbabane recently saw the largest anti-government protests in years, sparked by the construction of "vanity projects" like a new $1 billion international airport, built at the expense of social services.

"Taking from the elderly to meet the needs of orphans and vulnerable children is stealing from Peter to pay Paul," Solomon Thwala, a primary school teacher, told IRIN. "There are sources of funding other than putting the elderly in jeopardy."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92263

swaziland outlook bleak

The Swazi government recently conceded that unemployment was running at 40 percent, despite doggedly maintaining for many years that it was 26 percent, but economists expect this to rise, pushing up already high poverty levels - about two-thirds of Swazis live in chronic poverty.

Government has announced a reduction of 7,000 public service jobs in 2011 but the impact will have a ripple effect throughout the economy. According to the government's Central Statistics Office, one employed person supports, on average, 10 others.

Swaziland has the world's highest HIV prevalence rate - 26.1 percent – so one in four Swazis between the ages of 15 and 49 is living with the virus, and about half of those infected, or 110 000, are on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which can prolong a person’s life. The budget for HIV/AIDS would be cut by 10 percent in 2011.

Subsistence farmers on communal Swazi Nation Land, where about 80 percent of the country's one million population reside, use government tractors for ploughing, but government fuel depots have run dry and the machines are standing idle."This is planting season. It is December now, and for six weeks we have not been able to get seeds in the ground," farmer in the central Manzini region, told IRIN.

However, government spending on non-essential programmes has not been cut. A recent request by the finance minister for an additional $50 million towards the building of an international airport was approved by parliament and the airport's final cost is expected to be in the region of $1 billion. Cabinet officials have also awarded themselves substantial pay rises, and have extended retirement benefits to former government officials.

"..as more business shut and public sector workers are laid off, it is inevitable that more people will join the ranks of the poor." Amos Ndwandwe, an economist at a bank in the capital, Mbabane, explained

Swazi PM threatens torture of union activists

Swaziland prime minister, Barnabas Dlamini, suggests that dissidents should be beaten on their feet with spikes. He also said foreigners who meddled in the affairs of sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch should be subject to the traditional punishment, known as "sipakatane". The punishment involves using a pedal with metal or wooden spikes to beat someone's bare feet repeatedly, causing paralysis.

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.

Pervasive Poverty in Swaziland

With a population of about 1.1 million, Swaziland has over 759 000 people living below the poverty line.48 per cent of the population lived on less than US $ 1 per day which translates to about E7.50 in local currency while 78 per cent lived below US $ 2 per day. The United Nations Complementary Country Analysis which was published in April this year blames this problem to the inequalities in the distribution of wealth in the country and the HIV/AIDS scourge where the country remains with the highest HIV prevalence in the world.

Income distribution remains skewed, with 56 per cent of wealth held by the richest 20 per cent of the population, while the poorest 20 per cent of the population owns less than 4.3 per cent.

HIV /AIDS translates to an estimated loss of 20 years of life expectancy in the country.

20-25 per cent of Swazi households are food insecure.

29 per cent of children under the age of five are showing signs of stunting which is an indication of malnutrition over an extended period.

The mortality rate has risen dramatically, with maternal mortality increasing from 229 deaths per 100 000 births in 1996 to 589 per 100 000 in 2006.

In Swaziland there is limited access to and control of productive assets such as land and water for sustainable livelihoods for the poor, and inadequate capacity to participate in policy making and decisions.The UN noted that physiological and social deprivation which includes risk, vulnerability, lack of autonomy, powerlessness and lack of respect was prevalent in the country.

Royal Rip-off

In Swaziland it is a criminal offence to criticise the king’s private life. The king enjoys a personal fortune of about £145 million. He also receives money from the national budget for his family’s upkeep. Last year this totalled £12 million — more than was set aside for education. In May he bought 20 armoured Mercedes Benz cars at a cost of £150,000 each.

Reports from the kingdom said that the king had dispatched at least five of his 13 wives and dozens of retainers to France, Italy, Dubai and Taiwan on a secret tour last week, using £4 million from the state budget.

Swaziland is home to about 1.2 million people, more than two thirds of whom live in abject poverty on less than 50 pence a day. More than a quarter of the adult population has HIV — the highest ratio in the world.

Campaigners have been accusing Whitehall of double standards. “They shout about Zimbabwe, but keep quiet about what is happening in Swaziland, even though they are one of its biggest aid donors...” Lucky Lukhele, of the Swaziland Solidarity Network , told The Times.

Swazi King's Birthday

The media are having a field day exposing the hypocrisy of millions ,officially put at $2.5 million though widely believed to be five times higher , being spent on celebrating King Mswati III's birthday .

He will be 40 .

unemployment, 40 percent
HIV rates: nearly 40 percent among adults. Life expectancy has nearly halved since 1998 because of the AIDS epidemic and is now less than 31 years, according to the most recent U.N. figures.

70 percent live below the poverty line, and 20% depend on international food aid.

A new constitution took effect in 2006 maintains the ban on political opposition parties. The king appoints the prime minister and the cabinet. A previous king ,Sobhuza , declared a state of emergency in 1973 which Mswati has never formally lifted.

About 5,000 trade union members took to the streets Wednesday to protest against the expenditure

Tribes or Nations ??

From The London Times

" Siphiwe Hlophe, founder of Swaziland for Positive Living (Swapol) led a 1,000-strong demonstration in the capital Mbabane to protest that eight of his 13 wives, plus their children and an entourage of bodyguards, maids and hangers-on, had chartered a plane to Dubai for a shopping spree. English public-school-educated King Mswati III, whose personal take of the national budget is half the health budget, is estimated to have spent £2.2m on the trip and is planning a huge 40th birthday party.

Swaziland has the worst HIV infection rate in the world; 31% for women.
It is also pathetically poor, with nearly 70% of its people living on less than 50 US cents (about 27p) a day.

In Swaziland the king and the ruling elite refer to the Swazi nation but pretend that Swazis are a traditional tribe, utterly obedient to the king and his chiefs. The king misuses tradition to appropriate the country’s meagre resources, prevent development and keep the people subservient.

What is the difference between a tribe and a nation anyway? Tribalism describes a frame of mind all human beings suffer from: a pig-headed “my group, right or wrong” attitude. In Africa people are always referred to as members of tribes, but how can 25 million Yoruba or 33 million Hausa people be called tribes? If they are, then surely the English, Welsh and Scots must be British tribes. Does the media refer to former Yugoslavia as tribal or the Israel-Palestine conflict as a land dispute between two semitic tribes. That’s how it would be described if they lived in Africa.

Africa’s problem is not tribalism as such, but the utterly incoherent nation states cohabited by different ethnic groups bequeathed to Africans half a century ago. Africans had no part in the creation of their nation states. At the end of the 19th century, Europeans drew lines on maps of places they had never been to. Fifty years ago the filled-in spaces became Ghana, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, countries that had never existed before. Suddenly pitched into independence, they had no sense of common nationhood. By contrast the ruling Europeans had always emphasised ethnic differences and suppressed any sense of nationalism.

Beneath the surface of Africa’s weak nation states lie old cultures, old communities, very different societies with their own laws and languages. Nigeria contains some 400 different ethnic groups. Uganda has more than 40. They lack what we take for granted: a common conception of nationhood and national citizenship. The unification of Africa remains a distant dream, and separatism is frowned on because it could lead to bloody disintegration..."

We also read that a meeting of more than 200 African kings and traditional rulers has bestowed the title "king of kings" on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The rulers, wearing gold crowns, sequined capes and colourful robes met in the Libyan town of Benghazi. Sheikh Abdilmajid from Tanzania told the BBC that the traditional rulers could play an important role. "The people believe in the chiefs and kings more than they believe in their governments,"
While Col Gaddafi told the assembled dignitaries "We want an African military to defend Africa, we want a single African currency, we want one African passport to travel within Africa,"

Socialist Banner declares that only through democratic de-centralised world socialism can the African peoples become united but also Africa will be unified with the rest of the world and enjoy common ownership of the worlds treasury.

Swazi Strikes

A bloody week of the worst labour strife in a decade has exposed cracks in the Swazi government's poverty-alleviation plan of creating thousands of low-paying jobs by promoting a textile industry.

In the strike action, which began on 3 March, workers participating in peaceful marches to demand better salaries have been teargassed and beaten by police . Local media reported that the Swaziland police carried out unprovoked attacks on peaceful marchers on the first day of the strike. Several injuries were reported after riot police shot teargas into a line of marchers . On 5 March, several marchers were beaten and teargassed after vandals sealed the lock on the gate of a textile factory with glue. Uncertain of the culprits' identities, the police randomly struck at marchers, some of whom had to be hospitalised.

Textiles have become a key player in Swaziland's otherwise moribund manufacturing sector, which saw many of its multinational companies relocate to South Africa when apartheid ended in 1994 . Swaziland's textile industry is dominated by garment-making factories owned by Taiwanese immigrants who came to Swaziland in 2000/02 to take advantage of preferential trade conditions with the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act . The country is one of the few that has diplomatic ties with Taiwan and does not recognise the People's Republic of China. Taiwan returned the favour by encouraging its garment-makers to invest in Swaziland.
In turn, the Swazi government has offered tax holidays to incoming firms, and constructed factory shells that are sometimes leased for free of charge to large employers.

Low wages and "cultural conflicts" bedevilled labour relations from the outset, but came to a head when a strike vote was approved by 30 percent of the nation's 16,000 Swaziland Manufacturing and Allied Workers Union members . The union seeks to raise wages by 12 percent.

"My take-home pay is R300 (about US$38) a fortnight," said Cynthia Ndwandwe, a mother of five employed by an Asian-owned garment factory. "I can no longer afford to buy bread."

"Textile workers are forced to live on mediocre salaries," said Fakudze , president of SMAWU . "How can breadwinners be expected to provide for their families on just R600 ($77) a month?"