I have been trying so hard not to write about the sudden widespread uprisings sweeping through Africa. One day there is peace, the next, violence, beatings, bloodshed, and even loss of lives.
My biggest interest, naturally, is the uprising in Swaziland. The amount of media attention has caused me to kick off my nonchalant I-couldn't-be-moved attitude, and pay attention. Sorry, did I say media attention? Before you get it twisted, I meant SOUTH AFRICAN media attention - the international folk have been a bit preoccupied with Libya, Ivory Coast, and whichever other country is kicking their leader out!
So this uprising happened exactly as I expected.....the 'uprisers' came (12 April), took to the streets, were met with baton-wielding police and water cannons, and they ran for dear life. Word on the ground from yesterday (13 April) is that the streets were quiet and it was business as usual! Shocked? Surprised?? I’m not...
I've got many questions to the pro-democracy people (or can I just keep calling them 'uprisers'...I kinda like that word)....questions I have failed to get answers to without people getting personal, or getting emotional. So I will reserve my questions and comments, sip on a cocktail, and shake my head.
I read an interesting article on Times Live.....well, it was very much like the rest of the articles and comments I have read on twitter from South Africans calling for change in Swaziland (makes me wonder why it’s mostly the South Africans speaking and not the SWAZIS themselves....anyway, another story for another day!). The interesting bit of this article is a comment by a reader, Smindlo. He brought on a different light to the situation in the country, and showed ‘the other side’, and why Swazi’s are sitting out of this revolution. I couldn’t help but nod time and again.
As I said, I have been trying not to write about the uprisings...so I won’t! I’ll just let his comment do the talking, while I get a refill of my cocktail.......
WARNING: It is long! For the entire article, click here.
I was in Swaziland during the weekend of the 1st April 2011. My in-laws live in the rural hinterland, as subsistence farmers. They are well in their early eighties. No one has died in that part of the world generally at age 32 as the stats say. There is tap water and electricity, (all over rural Swaziland),thanks to the Chinese govt . The standard of living is generally ok. There are no hobboes in Mbabane and Manzini begging at the robots like in South Africa. The highway between oshoek to Manzini right up to Piet Retief is tarred and has street lights and has no single pothole. All the major South African chain stores and franchises are well represented in Swaziland. The social investment in Swaziland is one of the best.Their tourist industry is one of the best especially around the Ezulwini valley and the Malkerns areas.
There is a political system called Tinkhundla which is non-democratic and not representative of all swazi people and abuses the traditional chieftainship structure.
The Swaziland described by the pro-democratic groupings is very unreal. In my student days in Swaziland we marched and I was suprised when students and police started chatting together and forgetting to fight each other. i was soon taught that Swaziland is a homogenous country with one King, one set of traditions and one language. A far cry from the violent confronatational and divisive politics of South Africa.
Infact the pro-democracy group must remember that Swaziland while hosting refugees, was very much involved with the South African government and most ANC MK operatives were literally picked up by the Specail Branch police and frog-marched through Oshoek border psot with open Swazi police co-operation. It is the calibre of OR Tambo's l;eadership that the ANC did not use that in a destructive childish confrontation that would have cost us a set back of many years in the struggle.
Swazi have always had Kings dating back in the 1600's and they can all be accounted for name. It's not a modern contrivance but is a deeply embeded spiritual and cultural institution that all Swazi's unanimously love and cherish. So telling the world that you will destroy this institution in three days is not politically naive but sadly opportunistic. We South Africans failed to "destroy" the Boers in our struggle. And there is no repression of the kind of the Apartheid state in Swaziland. There is no franchise and it is the intellectual poverty of the opposition leadership to fail to grasp that and instead start using the "
Egyptian political script" regardless of the objective facts on the ground.
I dont want to criticise the Swazi activits but I cant help thinking they are using an old "struggle" script that will eventually work against them. having said that they must find ways and means to agitate for political freedomn and reforms in their country.
Not a single Swazi was killed during the "police brutality" while in South Africa scores of people were injured in Ficksburg just yesterday and one killed. Not a single name was given of the Swazi activists of their leaders detained.
The opposition will find it very difficult to convince everyone about their agenda. In fact there is a potential danger that the conservative rural masses of Swazi's may be unleashed to deal with them when they push too far about removing the King; an agenda that is divisive and naive and has the potential of causing civil war which the few middleclass civil servants mnay not win or may win at a terrible cost.
I often visit Swaziland and I am always amazed at the almost 100% airtime used on TV and radio to promote a virulent conservative superstitious kind of religious fundamentalism. You cannot win popular minds for a popular insurrection in that kind of climate. Essentially this is a bourgeosie struggle pushed forward by an educated midle class elite. I think some kind of honesty and integrity is needed on the part of the protesters to really come up with a new script. The credible goal is not to rubbish the Kingship but to work with it in order to find a new constitutional dispensation based on mutual respect and trust. The Brits got it right many years ago. Queen Elizabeth is also on the Forbes list of rich people and it is naive to expect Britons to stage a popular insurrection just because of that. In fact the difference between thwe quality of life enjoyed by Swazis can be seen by visiting neighbouring Mozambique which is still left behind by a solid 70 years of underdevelopement. Mozambicans have the vote but not the economic benefits. Swazi's have the economic benefits and not the vote.
King Mswati is not ranking with Bagbgo, Gaddafi or Mubarak. Swaziland circumstances are unique. And propaganda is a double edged sword it also cuts your own credibility if used indiscriminately without wisdom.
Having said that there is a strong case for political reforms in Swaziland and also Botswana where a single party has always held sway and intimidated others into submission and deliberately under- resourced the opposition.
I was in Mbabane and I almost thought I was in South Africa. Everyone was wearing bafana-bafana t-shirts , the political rhetoric was essentially South African, in churches, in pubs and infact one must be forgiven in thinking Swaziland was the 10th province of South Africa. It is not surprising for Swaziland protesters to "wait" for a political comment by Zuma on their political situation. They seem to have conveniently forgotten that both Zuma and Mandela are connected by family marriage bonds to King Mswati. I can bet my last two-bob that that comment will never materialise from Zuma.
While it is good for Africans to admire South africa any form of political-struggle colonial imperialism by South Africa will definitely be bad in the long run.
