SWAZILAND NEWSLETTER 25
Published by Southern Africa Contact (Denmark)

1. King cancels events marking World Aids Day - national disaster ignored.
BBC News, 1 December 2005.

2. South Africa urged to cut ties to Swaziland government (SAPA), 28
November 2005.

3. Prize for Sarah Mkhonza. Writers from Tunisia, Swaziland, Sierra Leone
and Vietnam receive Novib /PEN award. WiPC/IFEX, 25 November 2005.

4. Government turns down “orphan city” proposal by US evangelical group.
24 November 2005 (IRIN).

5. Breakdown in supply of antiretroviral drugs. 18 November 2005 (IRIN).

6. New dams to be built to boost irrigation. 30 Nov 2005 (IRIN).

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1. King cancels events marking World Aids Day. BBC News 1 December 2005.

Swaziland, which has the world's highest rate of HIV infection, has
cancelled events to mark World Aids Day, shocking activists. A royal
decree was issued just a day before the prime minister was due to give a
speech, saying it would clash with a traditional ceremony.

Some 38% of Swazi adults are HIV positive, rising to 56% for women in
their late twenties. King Mswati, who has 13 wives, is criticised for
setting a bad example.
The speech was cancelled because the month-long Incwala harvest festival
has started and all other ceremonies are banned during this period.

Prime Minister Themba Dlamini is expected to attend the Incwala ceremony.
Earlier, Mr Dlamini told the BBC's Newshour programme that the government
was working hard to reduce the rate of HIV infection, with campaigns
across the country.
"It has taken time for Africa to believe that Aids is a killer," he said.
The BBC's Thulani Mthethwa in the capital, Mbabane, says Aids activists
see the cancellation as a sign that government officials put loyalty to
King Mswati ahead of a national disaster.
Despite the ban, some activists have organised a dinner to commemorate
World Aids Day. People living with HIV are also upset that there is a
shortage of free anti-retroviral drugs. Some $1.5m-worth of funding was
cancelled because the government does not have effective systems to
monitor patients taking ARVs.
In August, King Mswati ended a four-year sex ban on young Swazis imposed
to curb the spread of HIV/Aids. Our correspondent says this was very
unpopular, especially in urban areas.

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2. South Africa urged to cut ties to Swaziland government (SAPA) 28
November 2005.

Johannesburg - Youth groups called on the South African government on
Monday to cut ties with Swaziland. The groups from Swaziland and SA met in
Johannesburg and agreed on a programme to render the Swaziland monarchy
ungovernable. They said the programme would include asking the SA
government to cut its economic and political ties with Swaziland.

The youth solidarity consultative conference, convened by the Young
Communist League of SA, was attended by organisations including the
Congress of SA Trade Unions, the SA Students' Congress and the Swaziland
Youth Congress.

Un-banning of political parties
They said a number of pickets would be held, with a national day of action
on December 9.
A memorandum of demands would be submitted to Swaziland's high commissions
and consulates asking for the un-banning of all political parties in
Swaziland and an end to the intimidation of political leaders. The youth
wanted an end to arbitrary arrests, torture and victimisation of political
leaders, trade unionists and activists, and the immediate release of
political prisoners.

Democratically elected parliament
They were demanding an all-inclusive process of constitutional
transformation and reforms, and a democratically elected parliament.
They were also calling for the provision of education, food and water, the
creation of jobs and a commitment to fight HIV/Aids.
They said: "The Swaziland Youth Congress also committed itself to heighten
resistance against the Swaziland regime through mass rallies, with the
first being on the December 10 to demand jobs.
"It can only be through crises that the Swaziland regime will transform."

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3. Prize for Sarah Mkhonza. Writers from Tunisia, Swaziland, Sierra Leone
and Vietnam receive Novib /PEN award. WiPC/IFEX, 25 November 2005.

This is the fifth annual Novib and PEN Emergency Fund award. Tunisian
journalist Sihem Bensedrine is awarded as editor of the online magazine
Kalima, alongside her colleague, the writer and academic Om Zied (Neziha
Rejiba). Both are well known for their efforts for the freedom of the
press in their country, and as a result both are continuously watched by
the police and suffer intimidation. The Kalima
website is blocked by the authorities and is only accessible outside the
country. The struggle for freedom of expression was put into the
international spotlight during the World Summit on Information Society,
held 16-18 November in Tunis, where participants were able to witness
first hand
the repression of independent civil society activists.

Also receiving awards were Sarah Mkhonza, a writer and academic forced out
of Swaziland after a campaign of harassment against herself and her
family; Claudia Anthony, a journalist for the independent For di People,
as well as other newspapers, forced to flee Sierra Leone because of her
reporting; and the eminent Vietnamese writer, Duong Thu Huong, who was
detained in the early 1990s and who has since lived under restriction and
who faces difficulty in publishing in her own country.

Excerpt from Sarah Mkhonza, "What the Future Holds" (1989):

"When Kiki boarded the bus that day she was an angry woman, determined to
see Menzi and talk to him about her life and the baby's. She had heard
that he worked for the Standard Bank in town and she knew that she could
no longer sit at home and be stubborn because it also affected the life of
her little one.
As the bus drove on she was working out what she would say to Menzi. She
would tell him that he must not pretend to be smart because that would not
help him. She would tell him that he had ruined her life. She would have
been doing nursing right now; instead there she was, walking about with an
infant sniffing on her back. This had not been an agreement. She had not
said she wanted to be a mother. She had never said she wanted anything at
all. She had not spoken a word. He had done it all to her. And there she
was, taking all the suffering like a lamb before the shearers. Yes, she
would tell him like she had never told anybody before.
When the bus got to town, she tied the baby securely on her back, got off
and went straight to the bank. When she reached the door she spotted him,
right behind the counter, head bowed, and cursed under her breath.
She made sure she joined the queue that he was serving. Her heart was
pounding and her fury was mounting. She could feel the baby's weight on
her back. She didn't know if it was right to do what she was going to do,
but what else was there? She watched the people in front of her as the
queue became shorter and braced herself for the encounter. She was not
going to beg, for beggars received only small amounts. She was determined
to fight for her rights."

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4. Government turns down “orphan city” proposal by US evangelical group.
24 November 2005 (IRIN).

MBABANE, 24 November (IRIN) - After months of controversy, the Swazi
government has turned down a church group's offer to build an "orphan
city" in exchange for the country's two largest game parks and other
property.

Enterprise and Employment Minister Lutfo Dlamini was quoted in the Swazi
media on Thursday as saying, "We pointed out that their approach to the
problem was too radical for us to understand."
The offer made by the American Christian Evangelical group became public
in June, when an agreement between the government and the church group was
reported in the Swazi media.
The group had asked for the Hlane Nature Reserve, the Mlawula Game Park
and government-built factory shells in the eastern provincial capital,
Siteki, for commercial exploitation, as well as more than 5,000 ha of
communal Swazi Nation land to build a complex to house 60,000 orphans.
In return for receiving five percent of the small country's landmass for
free, with a guaranteed 99-year lease on all holdings, the Dream for
Africa (DFA) initiative would have constructed an orphan complex of huge
proportions.

However on Thursday, Dlamini, the cabinet's point man in negotiations with
DFA, said the government could not turn over national assets in exchange
for what critics of the plan called an "orphan city".
Some lawmakers feared the Christian group would use the growing number of
AIDS orphans for indoctrination into a cult.
Critics decried the secrecy with which the project was being handled. When
the proposal came to light in June, it took the private Big Game Parks of
Swaziland, which manages Hlane Nature Reserve, and the Swaziland National
Trust Commission, which runs Mlawula Game Park, by surprise.

Other critics said isolating orphans was contrary to Swazi tradition.
"We have to examine projects proposed to help orphans and vulnerable
children in light of what these can do for the Swazi people, and not just
the donors. These have to be sensitive to the needs of Swazis," said
Emmanuel Ndlangamandla, director of the Coordinating Assembly of NGOs
(CANGO), an umbrella federation of child welfare and other NGOs.

"Taking African children out of their communities and placing them in an
orphan city, separating them from roots of family, community, nation and
name goes against fundamental and valuable African values and traditions
of inclusiveness, of family, and of collective responsibility for children
of the clan," said Alan Brody, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) country
representative.
According to UNICEF, by 2010 about 15 percent of Swaziland's population is
expected to be AIDS orphans aged under 15.
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5. Breakdown in supply of antiretroviral drugs. 18 November 2005 (IRIN).

MBABANE, 18 November (IRIN) - Swaziland is facing a serious breakdown in
the supply of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for patients with HIV, and some
hospitals acknowledge that stocks ran out weeks ago.
Sporadic ARV shortages have been reported at the main government hospital
in the capital, Mbabane, and at the provincial government hospital in
Siteki in eastern Swaziland.
The Hlatikhulu Government Hospital in the southern Shiselweni District has
reportedly not had ARV drugs since October - for three weeks, HIV patients
arriving to refill their prescriptions have left empty-handed.

Health organisations said the derailing of ARV distribution was a setback
for efforts to treat AIDS in a country with one of the world's highest HIV
prevalence rates.
"Key to the national strategy to get people to take blood tests and
determine their HIV status has been the assurance that having HIV is not a
death sentence, because there are drugs available to treat the illness,"
an official with an AIDS counselling service told IRIN.
"We have seen people become very serious about AIDS; they are serious
about taking ARVs; they know that any interruption in their drug-taking
can negate the treatment," said Doris Dlamini, a nurse at the RFM Hospital
in the central town of Manzini.
"My health is deteriorating - I can see it, my family can see it - the
drugs keep me alive. I was told I must not miss taking them even for one
day," said Thab'sile Nkambule, 26, who works at an agriculture supply
store and relies on the Hlatikhulu Government Hospital for her medication.
On Friday she attempted to bypass the long queue that usually forms in
front of the hospital pharmacy by arriving at five o'clock in the morning,
three hours before the pharmacy opened. But her effort was frustrated when
she was told no ARVs were available.

The Ministry of Health could not formally comment on the nationwide
shortage of ARVs, because a spokesman was not available. However,
officials told IRIN they were aware of the drug shortage, and that appeals
for help were being made to donor organisations.
Swaziland, with an adult HIV prevalence rate estimated at over 40 percent,
has 10,000 people on treatment out of the 230,000 people living with the
virus.

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6. New dams to be built to boost irrigation. 30 Nov 2005 (IRIN).

MBABANE, 30 November (IRIN) - Three dams are to be built in southern
Swaziland at a cost of R280 million (US $44 million), in response to
nearly a decade of drought that has slashed agricultural production. The
dams, ranging from eight to 48 metres in height across the LowerUsuthu
river, are expected to be completed in 2008 by a consortium of local and
South African construction companies.

"Our primary object is to improve the lives of the people and we urge them
to make use of the dams, which will be of great benefit to them," said Dr
Lukhele, CEO of the Swaziland Water and Agricultural Development
Enterprise, at a signing ceremony this week.

Nearly a third of Swaziland's 1.1 million people will again be forced to
rely on food aid this year. Some of the firms working on the new project
were involved in Swaziland's largest public works undertaking, Maguga dam,
which spans the northern Komati river and is 60 percent owned by
neighbouring South Africa. Although Maguga opened in 2003, the water level
has never exceeded 25 percent of capacity. Expectations that the water
would be used for lowveld irrigation projects have not been realised,
necessitating the new Lower Usuthu initiative.

Plans to capture the flow of southern Swaziland's largest river were first
drawn up in 1996, but have now been given urgency by the ongoing drought.
"There are cyclic patterns of wet and dry years. When the Maguga dam was
completed it was the end of the wet years, which is why its water level
has dropped. If we want to increase irrigation in the country, we must
come up with new dams to hold available water," Lukhele explained.
The Ministry of Agriculture has urged small-scale Swazi farmers to combine
their land into cooperatives and cultivate cash crops for export. Only
cooperatives, not individual farmers, would receive irrigation water from
either the Maguga or the Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project.

Four out of five Swazis reside on communal land as subsistence farmers,
and the government's poverty alleviation efforts in rural areas hinge on
making agriculture a viable commercial venture for them.
Until now, the emphasis has been on farming sugar cane - Swaziland's top
export. However, major sugar plantations have been downsizing operations
and laying off thousands of workers as sales have slumped.
Prices are pegged to the strong South African rand, making exports less
competitive, while the European Union, which has subsidised Swaziland's
sugar industry by buying a fixed quota above global prices, plans to slash
the price it pays by 37 percent.
Prime Minister Themba Dlamini returned from England on Wednesday, where he
had impressed upon British government officials the disastrous effects the
price cut would have on the Swazi economy. "As we presented our case, we
noted that most small-scale farmers in the kingdom are also in sugar
farming. If the price is reduced, their situation will be worse."


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