Nobody can dare make noise now: The African nation forsaken by fellow nations
Visitors to eSwatini are greeted by portraits of a beaming trio: King Mswati III, LaTfwala, the Queen Mother, and Prime Minister Russell Dlamini. Majestic mountains beckon. Enchanted tourists keep coming.
Reasons abound: luscious hills, delectable vistas and tranquillity. At the last count, eSwatini attracted almost 800,000 people per year, almost 1% of Africa’s tourist tally. It was only in 2018 that Mswati unilaterally reverted the kingdom’s name to eSwatini, undoing a corruption of an eponym that dated back to the 1800s with England’s invasion.
Travelers – including a gaggle of politicians from Andry Rajoelina, Madagascar’s ousted leader, and Lai-Ching-te, who arrived in May “stowaway-style” – are welcomed by the smiling trio and, of late, umpteen billboards bearing Mswati’s face. The background is a stunning scenery. Alas, beyond that beauty is repression.
“Swaziland is effective in instilling fear… that fear is immediately and deliberately interpreted to mean that the people of Swaziland are a happy and peaceful people,” a source said in an interview with political scientist Nqobile Mkhatshwa.
Talk about the fifth anniversary of the massacre is confined to private spaces. The tragedy, which began on June 29, 2021, was the state’s response to protests and petitions for issues like acute teacher shortages while the top brass was splurging amid soaring cost of living. The death toll hit 60 and the tally of those injured exceeded 200. Death toll estimates might vary but what’s for sure is that “nobody can dare make a noise now,” said editor Bheki Makhubu in the wake of subsequent killings.
Why has nobody been punished, people ask quietly. MPs who dared make a noise since 2021 – Bacede Mabuza, Magawugawu Simelane and Mthandeni Dube – were instantly ejected from parliament. Mabuza is serving a 25-year prison term. Dube, granted a pardon in November, suffers restrictions. Simelane, the third MP, was forced into exile. Another exile, Mlungisi Makhanya, leader of the outlawed People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), reportedly survived an assassination plot.
Back to the bloody 2021 incident, MTN was accused of complicity for shutting the Internet for 216-hours at the outset of the massacre. The “disproportionate (and) unnecessary” shutdown, as the International Commission of Jurists put it, eroded $15.8-million, almost R260-million, from the economy. MTN was not held accountable for the blackout.
In what seems a repeat of the 2021 of economic contradictions, lawmakers this year had a 54% salary hike, to just above R1-million per year when civil servants take to the streets to demand overdue increments. Still, by PM Russell Dlamini’s admission, two-thirds of the population live in poverty. Patronage is a factor, asserts the Swaziland Solidarity Network. “The Senate of 30 members, all appointed by the king… hold veto power over the people’s representatives,” reflected the network’s Sikhumbuzo Thomo in his review of the latest national budget.
The 2021 protests “demonstrated how far the regime has travelled down the road of internal coercion,” Thomo wrote. Every cent allocated to security forces reduced funds spent “on clinics, on textbooks, on agricultural extension officers” w could help farmers double their yield.
Meanwhile, the king is preaching peace. Vusi Simelane, president of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) scoffs. Though exiled after being kidnapped, suffering torture and threats of detention, the axed electronics engineering student considers himself lucky. He told The Continent that government mongers fear, citing his comrades SNUS deputy secretary-general Zanele Dlamini and Nokwethu Mabuza, a union branch leader, among people recently kidnapped.
“Some of the Swazis are abducted, jailed, exiled, killed for demanding freedom. (The king talks about peace) to look nice in the eyes of the international community,” Simelane said, citing cases like the murder of human rights lawyer and columnist Thulani Maseko. The latter’s widow, Make Tanele Maseko told The Nation that the king knew who pulled the trigger. “It was around 8pm when Thulani expressed his concerns about being killed. The king had spoken at around 3pm. At 10.15pm, (he) was shot dead [in front of his family],” she said.
The monarch had on that day, in January 2023, threatened action to end then-prevailing unrest and figuratively warned “ningabobese niyakhala, nasengicale kusebenta” (SiSwati for don’t you dare cry when I start to work). So, start to work the king did.
Maseko died while trying to get the national dialogue going. President Cyril Ramaphosa and Mswati had agreed that the regional bloc’s secretariat “would work closely” with eSwatini government to draft terms of reference for the national dialogue forum. Ramaphosa’s talk about the dialogue has fizzled. So has the 16-nation bloc’s. The elephant in the room, human rights violations, while the king welcomed two new ambassadors. As Mswati routinely welcomes guests and trots the globe, recently meeting Ramaphosa and other regional leaders at the customs union summit, the king – who is meant to protect his subjects like lions do their pride – has symbolically failed to meet the survivors or families of the victims of the 2021 tragedy. Like their principals, the diplomats are quiet about the massacre and other human rights abuses. Still, Uganda and Ghana are among governments cosying up to eSwatini.
Pretoria’s Mmaikeletsi Dube, parroting Ramaphosa, harped on enduring relations between the two nations but said not a word about repression. This is notable given the nations’ ties and that this time coincides with the massacre’s commemoration (in hushed tones). Media in South Africa, a neighbour in the throes of anti-African xenophobia, is active on matters that concern abuses in Zimbabwe but barely reflects on eSwatini’s politics or pain. As such, even the 2021 commemorations or the recent abductions didn’t get a mention in the news. The latest wave of Afrophobic violence also forced the exile community, living in parts of South Africa, to defer their commemorations.
With countries like, and media in, South Africa playing oblivious, the people in the kingdom must be feeling forsaken by Africa and the globe. As if on cue, the Zambian High Commissioner, Derick Livune, like Dube, sidestepped rights violations. “I wish to assure you, Your Majesty, that during my tenure, I will work with your government in pursuing all possible avenues for cooperation,” Livune said.
In a sombre assessment, investigative journalist Zweli Dlamini noted that SADC – like the United States and Taiwan – disregard brutality in the landlocked kingdom. “If people are silenced by the barrel of the gun, who’ll speak out?”
In a country where political parties are banned, trade unions and student movements sustain the pro-democracy sentiment but they too are restricted. Cue the banning of this year’s May Day rally. More chilling, a unionist was arrested on May Day then “suicided” in custody for merely wearing a Pudemo T-shirt. To date, the state attacks people in political and trade union regalia. Pudemo, which turns 43 this month, remains exiled. The movement derides Mswati for auctioning eSwatini’s autonomy by granting diplomatic passports to two non-Swazi citizens: preacher Uebert Angel and Wicknell Chivayo, a tycoon who, Swaziland News reports, is a fraudster. In what seems like a line from a telenovela of contradictions, eSwatini last week received 11 unlawfully-deported US detainees as part of the $5.1 million prison-cell-for-cash deal with Washington.
Ironically, government hounds pro-democracy activists. Mabuza, the MP who’s already imprisoned for speaking out in favour of reforms, fears that the state would assassinate him while he’s behind bars.
eSwatini PM Russell Dlamini, himself hand-picked by the king, insists that Swazis prefer Tinkhundla – the core of “monarchical democracy”. But this is countered by research by University of Swaziland who found that people who wanted the Tinkhundla system reviewed far outnumbered those who favoured it. The debate dates to 1973 when King Sobhuza II, reigning monarch’s father captured executive, legislative and judicial powers and later imposed Tinkhundla. Mswati has thus run an absolute monarchy by decree since day one.
The 1970s were testing for Southern Africa. Namibia and then-balkanised South Africa still endured apartheid, under John Vorster. Openly Nazist in his youth, Vorster was, as apartheid leader, embraced by Tel Aviv and a decolonised Malawi. Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe were yet to defeat colonialism. Lesotho, founded by King Moshoeshoe as a beacon of peace, had suffered its first coup, hatched by Pretoria. The latter, along Portugal and the US would later stoke civil wars in Angola and Mozambique. State terror rocked Lesotho where Fred Roach, a British officer, headed a violent para-military force. Over here, Sobhuza outlawed parties, muting eSwatini opposition’s calls for plurality. Today, Mswati, who maintains the ban, silences calls for reforms. That was the crux of the 2021 bloodshed. Further, it is alleged, that was the crux of Maseko’s murder and a spike in political killings.
People recall, in whispers, police swooping on unarmed protesters and bystanders and opening fire. For Simelane, then a high schooler, the 2021 events galvanised the nation. He singles the death of Thabani Nkomonye, a law student. Police said it was a car crash. Youths, citing glaring discrepancies, fingered the state. The nation has suffered many other mysterious deaths.
Fast-forward to today: fear and silence continue to reign. Makhubu, the editor au fait with eSwatini’s modus operandi, was apt: nobody can dare make a noise now.
Shoks Mnisi Mzolo