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Time to boost solidarity for Swaziland's liberation Press Release 24 January 2010 By Mark Waller The dire situation in Swaziland is quickly intensifying for both the liberation movement and the country's people as a whole. The pro-democracy opposition of organizations that make up the liberation movement is facing tighter repression, as its cause becomes more vocal inside the tiny nation and stimulates more active solidarity internationally. On a broader level, most of the roughly 1 million population - the majority of whom live in impoverished rural areas - face more relentless oppression. Some 70% of them have poverty, disease and lack of adequate access to health, education and nutrition ruthlessly imposed on them by the autocratic regime of King Mswati III, Africa?s last unconstitutional and absolute monarch. The Mswati court, packed with wives, a queen mother, princes and princesses esconsed in palaces of their own, squats on Swaziland like a giant tick, gorging itself on the country's fast-depleting wealth and capacity. The royal court and the rest of the regime is a paradigm of callous indifference to the sufferings of the majority of the population. Together with the ruling political system that sustains it, it is the core reason for the people's terrible deprivation. By diverting cash to support its own luxurious lifestyle and away from the needs of the people it is in large part responsible for why the country's HIV/AIDS rate (over 26% among adults) is the world's highest and people's life expectancy is one of the world's lowest (32 years). Thanks to the Mswati regime, 40% of the population rely on food aid from the UN Food Programme, despite the fact that Swaziland is classed as a middle-income country, and regardless of the great stretches beautifully fertile countryside locked up as "crown" estates. But it would be wrong to see Swaziland as some weird feudal remnant - though like many countries (the UK, for instance), it does contain feudal leftovers. Swaziland is squarely capitalist in the form and character of its key areas of production, distribution and exchange. Manufacturing and intensive agricultural business might be skewed to providing a slice of their ownership and takings to the bloated autocracy, but otherwise they function totally within local and global capitalist practices. The country's middle-income status derived in large part to agriculture, forestry and mining (13% of GDP), and textile and sugar manufacturing (37% of GDP). Its export markets in sugar and textiles with the US and the EU accelerated in the early 2000s, and have been pumped up by preferential trading agreements. The strongest export and import markets are with South Africa, allowing Swaziland a level of economic balance that it would have lacked if it had been located on some forsaken geo-economic periphery. Though no longer booming, business in Swaziland is securely locked onto a trajectory fully recognizable within today's phase of late capitalism/globalized imperialism. The Swazi ruling class, apart from the monarchy, does not derive its power from its hold on arable land as the prime source of wealth accumulation, as it would if it were a feudal kingdom. Industry and intensive agriculture, the existence of capitalist elites and an oppressed working class put Swaziland very much in the modern world. True, capitalism coexists with a grotesque expression of an ostensibly 'traditional African' royal rule, but then capitalism has always favoured whatever system best allows it to get on with its job ? from fascism to social democracy to oligarchy. There is a limit to this, however, when government, demography and developments resulting directly from the behaviour of the ruling class put a brake on capitalist economic growth. In this case, Swaziland's autocracy has become increasingly an obstacle to profit-driven enterprise. The effects of mass poverty, the depletion of the working population due to the HIV pandemic, declining subsistence agriculture and increasing social dysfunction are all outcomes of the regime's negligence and inability to act against crises. The recent collapse of SAPPI Usutu, the country's only pulp mill, and Swazi Paper Mills are largely due to the government's hopeless spending directed by the monarch. The obtuse Mswati III is determined to bulldoze ahead with the mother of all vanity projects, the building of the Sikhupe International Airport at a cost of about R500 million. Swaziland already has a perfectly good, though very under-used, international airport at Matashapa. The plan is that the new airport will handle about 300,000 passengers a year arriving on long-haul 747 flights. It has been marketed as offering a gateway to South Africa's and Swaziland's tourist destinations, and a sure way for Swaziland to ride the wave of golden opportunities whipped up by the 2010 World Cup. But the Sikhupe project missed the World Cup - it was supposed to be ready by May this year - is still far from complete and now can't pay its construction workers. Autocratic rule in Swaziland rests on an abstruse government system vamped up in 1973 from the old system of traditional councils, tinkhundla. This new tinkhundla government was put in place by Mswati III's predecessor King Sobhuza II, and accompanied by rulings that prohibited political parties and outlawed free political activity. Swaziland's new 2005 constitution upholds this system, for instance meaninglessly allowing only individuals to stand for election and not political parties. At the same time, culture and tradition are abused by the regime to justify the existence of the Mswati autocracy. One instance of this is the fact that young women who do not take part in the annual Reed Dance may find that they do not get bursaries for higher education. If the current trend in Swaziland is increasingly unfavourable to capitalism, it is even more aggressively turned against progressive forces in the country. The banned People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO), the Swaziland People's Liberation Army (Umbane), and the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) were all declared "terrorist entities" in November 2008, three months after the entry into force of the Suppression of Terrorism Act. Members of these organizations and of other barely-tolerated civil society organizations, including trade unions, are routinely persecuted. Shortly after May Day this year trade unionist and political activist Sipho Steven Jele was murdered in police custody after being arrested for wearing a PUDEMO t-shirt. The last few years have seen a steady growth of protest and opposition against the dictatorship and of solidarity from progressive forces outside Swaziland, which I won't detail here. At present the Swazi government is increasingly being put on the defensive by a more emboldened opposition movement. Rather like the United Democratic Front of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle years, the Swaziland United Democratic Front (SUDF) is carrying on the liberation fight overground while PUDEMO has to operate underground, as did the ANC. The Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC) currently coordinates Global Weeks of Action on Swaziland (GWoAS). The first of these was in September this year, with follow-ups in November and beyond. The September GWoAS was attended by internationalists from South Africa and Europe, who were assaulted and deported by the Swazi police. They were among 78 people who were detained on the eve of demonstration marches through Mbabane and Manzini. PUDEMO leader Mario Masuku and SWAYOCO leader Wandile Dludlu were also forcibly prevented from joining the marches. Amnesty International condemned "the unlawful arrests, detentions and use of violence by the security forces to intimidate and disrupt peaceful protest activities." Following the protests, Prime Minister Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini said that the police should consider using "sipakatane", the beating or whipping of the soles of the feet, to punish pro-democracy activists. He denounced the involvement of foreign workers and solidarity organizations as "undue interference in the internal affairs of Swaziland". Much of the visible day-to-day struggle in Swaziland, meanwhile, takes place through the trade union movement in Swaziland, in particular the National Public Services and Allied Workers Union (NPSAWU), which has a high profile role in the GWoAS events. Though the unions are forced to steer clear of issues that the authorities consider to be political, the bread-and-butter struggles they are tackling have a clear political thrust and importance in the current situation. The ongoing case (at the time of writing) where government has tried to end overtime work shifts by fire fighters and has brought in soldiers with no prior fire-fighting training to run fire stations is one of many labour struggles where the unions emerge as principled defenders of workers against a brutish and inept government. The government has tried to clamp down on political activity by outlawing public servants from taking part in any form of political work, under the Public Service Bill. "This bill is merely an extension of the previous Suppression of Terrorism Act," said PUDEMO Secretary-General Siphasha Dlamini in early October. "It is targeted at members of PUDEMO and the trade union movement, and the thinking seems to be that if they don't get us with the Suppression of Terrorism Act, then they'll hit us with the Public Service Bill." At the same time, the tinkhundla government is hastily putting up window dressing to appear to the outside world that Swaziland actually has immaculate democratic credentials. According to Siphasha Dlaminini, though the government is piloting a bill that ostensibly makes way for the registration of political parties, it does not do away with existing prohibitions on parties. "The aim is to allow non-oppositionist parties, and to further exclude forces that want a full multiparty democracy." The murder of Sipho Steven Jele and the clampdown on Swazi and foreign activists who attended the September GWoAS drew further foreign media and civil society attention to Swaziland, and there was heavy condemnation of the regime from many sides, including COSATU and the SACP in South Africa. In response, the Swazi government appears to have tried to clean up its image in early October by organizing for Prime Minister Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini to receive a 'World Citizen Award of Excellence' from an organization called World Citizen Awards International, based in the Bahamas. A Swazi government press release said the PM is "a highly respected global figure whose role in history has been significant." The citation for the award was later altered to being for the Swazi nation as a whole "for combating the scourge of the AIDS virus". But the award turned out to be a sham and a public relations blunder by the Swazi regime. According to the Bahaman newspaper The Tribune, the Swazi authorities paid the notorious Bahaman con man Rudy King to set it up for the PM. There is also little the regime can do to rescue its image in other respects. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have refused to back Swaziland's application for funding from the African Development Bank, and the European Union has recently refused to grant budget support to Swaziland because of the government's "ineligibility", an apparent euphemism for mismanagement. IMF-approved funding would not have been good news for the Swazi people, as it would entail the customary IMF conditions of cutting public spending and taxing the poor. But the red card to Swaziland is a sign of growing impatience over its wasteful practices, which have included awarding ministers hefty pay increases. The EU has said it would only give project funding for water, health and education, under the EU-Swaziland multi-annual country strategy for the period 2008-2013. At the same time, the regime in Swaziland has to cope with a 50% drop in revenue transfers from the Southern African Customs Union, which before this year accounted for some 60% of total government revenue. "I think that we're seeing some definite progress in the way the international community treats Swaziland," said Dumezweni Dlamini of the Foundation for Social and Economic Justice, which is active in the SUDF and SDC. "There is a reluctance bail the country out financially. But ultimately the solution to the problems has to come from united organizations in Swaziland themselves, in terms of a democratic adjustment. No amount or economic adjustment alone will work." All of which suggests that solidarity with Swaziland's liberation movement needs stronger and more concerted efforts. According to activists in the country, these need to focus on a number of levels: to expose the truth about the Mawati regime to the rest of the world, to lobby for sanctions and boycotts of Swaziland, to get resources for progressive organizations inside the country and in exile, to extend the SSN's network internationally and to coordinate international solidarity work. Latest Updates Pre-WSF Meeting: Interim Press statement SASFROC 24 January 2011 PRESS STATEMENT - NO EMBARGO The Southern Africa Social Forum Regional Organising Committee SASFROC Calls for Southern African regional solidarity in support of the World Social Forum in Dakar Senegal from 6 - 11 February 2011 As the latest World Social forum will be held in Dakar Senegal from 6th to 11th February 2011, the Southern Africa Regional organizing Committee encourages all social movements, civil society organizations and Non Governmental organizations to endorse the event in Africa by participating physically, publicising its occurrence and submitting their proposals for social change across the globe and in their constituencies. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism and hegemony come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action The World Forum in Africa will constitute a unique opportunity for global social movements to develop their critique of world capitalism in the light of the current crises, to achieve a better understanding of the new issues at work in today's world, to prepare democratic and popular alternatives and to reflect on the future of the World Social Forum itself, as an open space. This event will also be extremely important for African peoples. For them, it will constitute an unprecedented opportunity for collective democratic expression and will enable them to move towards a way out of the political, institutional and economic deadlock that has been imposed on them by their ruling classes, by the great powers, and by the international financial institutions. It is in this light, that the SASFROC comprising of various civil society organisations in the Southern African region has come together to facilitate a platform of Southern African regional participation in the forum through the following mechanisms; 1. A collective information package highlighting common regional issues of developmental concern 2. Exhibition of Southern African social, economic and political experiences 3. Registration of a discussion space within the forum for Southern Africa regional concerns to be used by participating organisations. The SAFROC therefore appeals to organisations within the region to participate effectively within the WSF space by ensuring as much information dissemination locally, regionally and globally on issues affecting people of the Southern African region and to prepare to participate in the Southern African Social Forum to be held in Lusaka, Zambia in 2011. For further information, please contact; Email: info@zcsd.org.zm, Tel: +260 211 236219, Fax: +260 211 236219 WSF Website; http://fsm2011.org

Latest News - Article

Time to boost solidarity for Swaziland's liberation
Press Release 24 January 2010

By Mark Waller

The dire situation in Swaziland is quickly intensifying for both the liberation movement and the country's people as a whole. The pro-democracy opposition of organizations that make up the liberation movement is facing tighter repression, as its cause becomes more vocal inside the tiny nation and stimulates more active solidarity internationally.

On a broader level, most of the roughly 1 million population - the majority of whom live in impoverished rural areas - face more relentless oppression. Some 70% of them have poverty, disease and lack of adequate access to health, education and nutrition ruthlessly imposed on them by the autocratic regime of King Mswati III, Africa?s last unconstitutional and absolute monarch.

The Mswati court, packed with wives, a queen mother, princes and princesses esconsed in palaces of their own, squats on Swaziland like a giant tick, gorging itself on the country's fast-depleting wealth and capacity. The royal court and the rest of the regime is a paradigm of callous indifference to the sufferings of the majority of the population. Together with the ruling political system that sustains it, it is the core reason for the people's terrible deprivation.

By diverting cash to support its own luxurious lifestyle and away from the needs of the people it is in large part responsible for why the country's HIV/AIDS rate (over 26% among adults) is the world's highest and people's life expectancy is one of the world's lowest (32 years). Thanks to the Mswati regime, 40% of the population rely on food aid from the UN Food Programme, despite the fact that Swaziland is classed as a middle-income country, and regardless of the great stretches beautifully fertile countryside locked up as "crown" estates.

But it would be wrong to see Swaziland as some weird feudal remnant - though like many countries (the UK, for instance), it does contain feudal leftovers. Swaziland is squarely capitalist in the form and character of its key areas of production, distribution and exchange. Manufacturing and intensive agricultural business might be skewed to providing a slice of their ownership and takings to the bloated autocracy, but otherwise they function totally within local and global capitalist practices.

The country's middle-income status derived in large part to agriculture, forestry and mining (13% of GDP), and textile and sugar manufacturing (37% of GDP). Its export markets in sugar and textiles with the US and the EU accelerated in the early 2000s, and have been pumped up by preferential trading agreements. The strongest export and import markets are with South Africa, allowing Swaziland a level of economic balance that it would have lacked if it had been located on some forsaken geo-economic periphery. Though no longer booming, business in Swaziland is securely locked onto a trajectory fully recognizable within today's phase of late capitalism/globalized imperialism.

The Swazi ruling class, apart from the monarchy, does not derive its power from its hold on arable land as the prime source of wealth accumulation, as it would if it were a feudal kingdom. Industry and intensive agriculture, the existence of capitalist elites and an oppressed working class put Swaziland very much in the modern world. True, capitalism coexists with a grotesque expression of an ostensibly 'traditional African' royal rule, but then capitalism has always favoured whatever system best allows it to get on with its job ? from fascism to social democracy to oligarchy.

There is a limit to this, however, when government, demography and developments resulting directly from the behaviour of the ruling class put a brake on capitalist economic growth. In this case, Swaziland's autocracy has become increasingly an obstacle to profit-driven enterprise. The effects of mass poverty, the depletion of the working population due to the HIV pandemic, declining subsistence agriculture and increasing social dysfunction are all outcomes of the regime's negligence and inability to act against crises.

The recent collapse of SAPPI Usutu, the country's only pulp mill, and Swazi Paper Mills are largely due to the government's hopeless spending directed by the monarch. The obtuse Mswati III is determined to bulldoze ahead with the mother of all vanity projects, the building of the Sikhupe International Airport at a cost of about R500 million. Swaziland already has a perfectly good, though very under-used, international airport at Matashapa.

The plan is that the new airport will handle about 300,000 passengers a year arriving on long-haul 747 flights. It has been marketed as offering a gateway to South Africa's and Swaziland's tourist destinations, and a sure way for Swaziland to ride the wave of golden opportunities whipped up by the 2010 World Cup. But the Sikhupe project missed the World Cup - it was supposed to be ready by May this year - is still far from complete and now can't pay its construction workers.

Autocratic rule in Swaziland rests on an abstruse government system vamped up in 1973 from the old system of traditional councils, tinkhundla. This new tinkhundla government was put in place by Mswati III's predecessor King Sobhuza II, and accompanied by rulings that prohibited political parties and outlawed free political activity. Swaziland's new 2005 constitution upholds this system, for instance meaninglessly allowing only individuals to stand for election and not political parties. At the same time, culture and tradition are abused by the regime to justify the existence of the Mswati autocracy. One instance of this is the fact that young women who do not take part in the annual Reed Dance may find that they do not get bursaries for higher education.

If the current trend in Swaziland is increasingly unfavourable to capitalism, it is even more aggressively turned against progressive forces in the country. The banned People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO), the Swaziland People's Liberation Army (Umbane), and the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) were all declared "terrorist entities" in November 2008, three months after the entry into force of the Suppression of Terrorism Act. Members of these organizations and of other barely-tolerated civil society organizations, including trade unions, are routinely persecuted. Shortly after May Day this year trade unionist and political activist Sipho Steven Jele was murdered in police custody after being arrested for wearing a PUDEMO t-shirt.

The last few years have seen a steady growth of protest and opposition against the dictatorship and of solidarity from progressive forces outside Swaziland, which I won't detail here. At present the Swazi government is increasingly being put on the defensive by a more emboldened opposition movement. Rather like the United Democratic Front of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle years, the Swaziland United Democratic Front (SUDF) is carrying on the liberation fight overground while PUDEMO has to operate underground, as did the ANC. The Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC) currently coordinates Global Weeks of Action on Swaziland (GWoAS).

The first of these was in September this year, with follow-ups in November and beyond. The September GWoAS was attended by internationalists from South Africa and Europe, who were assaulted and deported by the Swazi police. They were among 78 people who were detained on the eve of demonstration marches through Mbabane and Manzini.

PUDEMO leader Mario Masuku and SWAYOCO leader Wandile Dludlu were also forcibly prevented from joining the marches. Amnesty International condemned "the unlawful arrests, detentions and use of violence by the security forces to intimidate and disrupt peaceful protest activities." Following the protests, Prime Minister Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini said that the police should consider using "sipakatane", the beating or whipping of the soles of the feet, to punish pro-democracy activists. He denounced the involvement of foreign workers and solidarity organizations as "undue interference in the internal affairs of Swaziland".

Much of the visible day-to-day struggle in Swaziland, meanwhile, takes place through the trade union movement in Swaziland, in particular the National Public Services and Allied Workers Union (NPSAWU), which has a high profile role in the GWoAS events. Though the unions are forced to steer clear of issues that the authorities consider to be political, the bread-and-butter struggles they are tackling have a clear political thrust and importance in the current situation. The ongoing case (at the time of writing) where government has tried to end overtime work shifts by fire fighters and has brought in soldiers with no prior fire-fighting training to run fire stations is one of many labour struggles where the unions emerge as principled defenders
of workers against a brutish and inept government.

The government has tried to clamp down on political activity by outlawing public servants from taking part in any form of political work, under the Public Service Bill. "This bill is merely an extension of the previous Suppression of Terrorism Act," said PUDEMO Secretary-General Siphasha Dlamini in early October. "It is targeted at members of PUDEMO and the trade union movement, and the thinking seems to be that if they don't get us with the Suppression of Terrorism Act, then they'll hit us with the Public Service Bill."

At the same time, the tinkhundla government is hastily putting up window dressing to appear to the outside world that Swaziland actually has immaculate democratic credentials. According to Siphasha Dlaminini, though the government is piloting a bill that ostensibly makes way for the registration of political parties, it does not do away with existing prohibitions on parties. "The aim is to allow non-oppositionist parties, and to further exclude forces that want a full multiparty democracy."

The murder of Sipho Steven Jele and the clampdown on Swazi and foreign activists who attended the September GWoAS drew further foreign media and civil society attention to Swaziland, and there was heavy condemnation of the regime from many sides, including COSATU and the SACP in South Africa.

In response, the Swazi government appears to have tried to clean up its image in early October by organizing for Prime Minister Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini to receive a 'World Citizen Award of Excellence' from an organization called World Citizen Awards International, based in the Bahamas. A Swazi government press release said the PM is "a highly respected global figure whose role in history has been significant." The citation for the award was later altered to being for the Swazi nation as a whole "for combating the scourge of the AIDS virus". But the award turned out to be a sham and a public relations blunder by the Swazi regime. According to the Bahaman newspaper The Tribune, the Swazi authorities paid the notorious Bahaman con man Rudy King to set it up for the PM.

There is also little the regime can do to rescue its image in other respects. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have refused to back Swaziland's application for funding from the African Development Bank, and the European Union has recently refused to grant budget support to Swaziland because of the government's "ineligibility", an apparent euphemism for mismanagement.

IMF-approved funding would not have been good news for the Swazi people, as it would entail the customary IMF conditions of cutting public spending and taxing the poor. But the red card to Swaziland is a sign of growing impatience over its wasteful practices, which have included awarding ministers hefty pay increases. The EU has said it would only give project funding for water, health and education, under the EU-Swaziland multi-annual country strategy for the period 2008-2013. At the same time, the regime in Swaziland has to cope with a 50% drop in revenue transfers from the Southern African Customs Union, which before this year accounted for some 60% of total government revenue.

"I think that we're seeing some definite progress in the way the international community treats Swaziland," said Dumezweni Dlamini of the Foundation for Social and Economic Justice, which is active in the SUDF and SDC. "There is a reluctance bail the country out financially. But ultimately the solution to the problems has to come from united organizations in Swaziland themselves, in terms of a democratic adjustment. No amount or economic adjustment alone will work."

All of which suggests that solidarity with Swaziland's liberation movement needs stronger and more concerted efforts. According to activists in the country, these need to focus on a number of levels: to expose the truth about the Mawati regime to the rest of the world, to lobby for sanctions and boycotts of Swaziland, to get resources for progressive organizations inside the country and in exile, to extend the SSN's network internationally and to coordinate international solidarity work.

Latest Updates Pre-WSF Meeting: Interim Press statement SASFROC 24 January 2011

PRESS STATEMENT - NO EMBARGO

The Southern Africa Social Forum Regional Organising Committee SASFROC Calls for Southern African regional solidarity in support of the World Social Forum in Dakar Senegal from 6 - 11 February 2011

As the latest World Social forum will be held in Dakar Senegal from 6th to 11th February 2011, the Southern Africa Regional organizing Committee encourages all social movements, civil society organizations and Non Governmental organizations to endorse the event in Africa by participating physically, publicising its occurrence and submitting their proposals for social change across the globe and in their constituencies.

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism and hegemony come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action

The World Forum in Africa will constitute a unique opportunity for global social movements to develop their critique of world capitalism in the light of the current crises, to achieve a better understanding of the new issues at work in today's world, to prepare democratic and popular alternatives and to reflect on the future of the World Social Forum itself, as an open space.

This event will also be extremely important for African peoples. For them, it will constitute an unprecedented opportunity for collective democratic expression and will enable them to move towards a way out of the political, institutional and economic deadlock that has been imposed on them by their ruling classes, by the great powers, and by the international financial institutions.

It is in this light, that the SASFROC comprising of various civil society organisations in the Southern African region has come together to facilitate a platform of Southern African regional participation in the forum through the following mechanisms;

1. A collective information package highlighting common regional issues of developmental concern

2. Exhibition of Southern African social, economic and political experiences

3. Registration of a discussion space within the forum for Southern Africa regional concerns to be used by participating organisations.

The SAFROC therefore appeals to organisations within the region to participate effectively within the WSF space by ensuring as much information dissemination locally, regionally and globally on issues affecting people of the Southern African region and to prepare to participate in the Southern African Social Forum to be held in Lusaka, Zambia in 2011.

For further information, please contact; Email: info@zcsd.org.zm, Tel: +260 211 236219, Fax: +260 211 236219

WSF Website; http://fsm2011.org