Swaziland, the last autocratic monarchy in Africa, is a country in an almost constant state of crisis. The repeated human rights violations and harassment of the Swazi democracy movement by the Swazi regime, the huge inequalities between a small Swazi elite and the poor majority, and an Aids prevalence rate of over 40% should make newspapers and governments around the world react. In recent months the house of the Swaziland United Democratic Front National Organising Secretary has been bombed, maybe by the Swazi police; the President of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions has has his house searched by no less than 12 police officers; the leader of the largest opposition party, PUDEMO, Mario Masuku has been charged with acts of terrorism for speaking his mind and is more or less constantly harassed by police; student leader Pius Vilakati has gone missing after having been attempted abducted by police; and human rights activist and PUDEMO member Sipho Jele died in police custody, probably at the hands of the police.
But these stories are rarely if ever covered by the foreign media or condemned by world leaders or governments and the historic background to Swaziland’s present situation is more or less unknown.
This article will therefore give a brief historical overview of Swaziland and comment on the situation, after which Morten Nielsen from Africa Contact will briefly comment on the problems of the Swazi regime.
History
Colonialism
Swaziland was a British protectorate for over 60 years and bore the brunt of the a colonisation not unlike that of other African colonies, including its African “subjects” being treated cruelly and looked upon as savages, and hut taxes that were designed to proletarianise the the Swazis and use them as a cheap source of labour. Swaziland was an example of British “colonialism of the cheap”, however, and the traditional societal structure was to a degree kept in place, to a degree invented and changed to suit British interests and the interests of the Swazi monarch, and much of the daily administration was subsequently carried out by the King and his chiefs.
Independence
Swaziland’s gained its independence in 1968 after the Swazi monarchy had become the champion of the nationalist cause, playing on the homogeneous nature of the Swazi population and a Swazi tradition, most of which is surprisingly recent in origin. The reason for Swaziland’s relatively smooth road to independence had indeed been the patient diplomacy of the Swazi monarch, King Sobhuza II. The democracy that had been agreed upon with the British colonisers soon broke down, however, and King Sobhuza II suspended the Independence Constitution in 1973, proclaimed a state of emergency, banned demonstrations, political parties and meetings in the process, and began ruling by decree – probably because he feared the steady increase of progressive politics and votes for the main opposition party, the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC). The reasons given for the suspension were more along cultural lines, however, the King claiming that “the constitution has permitted the importation into our country of highly undesirable political practices alien to, and incompatible with the way of life in our society”and was therefore “unfit for the Swazi way of life”.
Cooperation with the apartheid regime
The Swazi monarchy was certainly not progressive in its politics nor in its friends as it had cooperated closely with apartheid South Africa, as well as with the Portugese in Mozambique. Not only had King Sobhuza II based his post-independence strategy on advice from a prominent member of the South African Afrikaaner Broederbond, Van Wyk de Vries, but from around 1978 both Sobhuza II and his successor choose to sign security pacts with its southern neighbour, as well as to help in, or at least not impede, the hunting down and killing of ANC members based in Swaziland. The Swazi government also criticised the campaign of sanctions and disinvestment that was mounting against South Africa in the eighties, making it the only Commonwealth country besides Thatcher’s Britain to do so. This harassment of the ANC continued right up until the unbanning of the ANC in South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela, although members of the democratic movement disagreed with this policy and helped protect and aid ANC members.
Politics
The question of land lies at the heart of the coercion of the Swazi monarchy. This is because of a system where all non-privately owned land is held in trust by the King, who therefore in effect controls all allocation of public land, and where forced labour, forced contribution, and forced removals are commonplace. In addition to this, women are only able to gain access to land through their husband, thereby being doubly oppressed.
Tinkundla
The Tinkhundla system of government is another important means of power – an electoral system where each Tinkundla elects one representative to the Swazi House of Assembly, but where political parties are illegal and where the King must accept all members of parliament, nominating a fifth of its members personally including the Prime Minister. Furthermore, he can simply choose to ignore parliament in his rulings. Power is still highly centralised, and accumulation of wealth is still to a large degree being dependent upon one’s state connections. This is one of the main reasons for the failure of democratisation in Swaziland, as it is in much of Africa: It is not in the interest of those in power to change the status quo and opposition parties and mass movements operating outside the Tinkundla system are thus the only plausible means of changing and improving Swazi society. The Tinkhundla system was seen as an experiment by king Sobhuza II, and a majority of Swazi’s believe it to be an experiment in need of either an overhaul or replacement with a more democratic system. In 1991, when a committee visited all the Tinkhundla, the system was “given an overwhelming vote of no confidence by the majority of the people who attended the meetings”, according to Richard Levin.
The Tinkundla-system was for many years seen as a necessary evil by the opposition. The NNLC had initially been the main opposition party, fighting within the Tinkhundla system for a more democratic Swaziland and winning three out of 24 seats seat in parliament at the 1972 elections, but police and government harassment, arrests, several splits, and the eventual suspension of the constitution, proclamation of a state of emergency, and banning of all political parties in Swaziland in 1973 severely weakened it.
From Sobhuza II to Mswati III
The cult surrounding Sobhuza II and his powerful oratory skills had too a degree legitimized his rule in the eyes of many Swazis, but when he died in 1980 much of this legitimacy and the relative stability of Swazi society died with him. Major confrontations occurred within the royal power bloc, and it took until 1986 before a new King, the present King Mswati III, could be coronated. Mswati III disappointed those who had hoped for a more progressive ruler, however. He pledged to “protect and preserve our revered traditional institutions, allowing them to develop in line with our cultural evolution”, and proved to be no less authoritarian than his predecessor in e.g dissolving parliament in 1987. The increasing unpopularity and perceived illegitimacy of the king and the Swazi regime could also be seen in both the increasing strength of the democracy movement and the dwindling turnouts for elections – especially the poor turnout of the first elections to be held after Mswati III had dissolved parliament, where only about a third of the adult population voted.
