SWAZILAND@NEWSLETTER 30
PUBLISHED BY SOUTHERN AFRICA CONTACT (DENMARK)

Earlier issues and full text of statements by the democratic movement in
Swaziland can be read at
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/SAK-Swazinewsletter

1. Indiscriminate torture and royal decree are not the marks of a land
governed by the people. Nicole Fritz, The Star (Johannesburg), 6 March
2006.

2. Britain’s High Commissioner attacks regime on visit to Swaziland. By
Stephen Bevan (Pretoria), news.telegraph, 5 March 2006.

3. Ban on political parties to be challenged, 27 February 2006 (IRIN).

4. Bomb suspect's wife to be exhumed. By Nqobile Ndlovu. 2 March 2006 (AND
Johannesburg).

5. Swazi economy falters as public wage bill soars, 24 February 2006
(Reuters).

6. Mswati copies Mugabe. Jean-Jacques Cornish, Mail & Guardian (SA), 24
February 2006.

7. Document: Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) memorandum to
Swaziland consulate, 14 February 2006. More protests planned.

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1. Indiscriminate torture and royal decree are not the marks of a land
governed by the people. Nicole Fritz, The Star (Johannesburg), 6 March
2006.

Swaziland receives its share of criticism. But much of this criticism
tendsto centre on the king's seemingly voracious appetite for the latest
modelsin Maybach motorcars and maidens - as if he were a playboy king who
only needed to grow up.

Sadly, recent developments might be read in a much more sinister way. Late
last year and early in 2006, 16 individuals were arrested in Swaziland and
charged with treason, sedition and attempted murder. The arrests followed
a series of fire-bombings of government premises. Their bail hearing is
set for March 7 2006.

Some of the accused, like Ignatius Dlamini who serves as the
secretary-general of the People's Democratic Movement (Pudemo), and
Wandile Dludlu, president of the SRC at the University of Swaziland, are
familiar to Swazis. Most, like Gibholo Nkambule who hawks fruit and
vegetables outside Mbabane, are not. All are members or supporters of
Pudemo or its youth league, the Swaziland Youth Congress (Swayoco).

Both organisations are illegal in Swaziland and have been for many years,
banned by King Sobhuza in 1973. Pudemo's leadership has had to withstand
numerous criminal prosecutions and in some instances have been detained
for years without trial. This history
in itself raises questions as to the credibility of and motivations behind
the current spate of charges.

Many of the accused maintain that they were tortured - suffocated with
rubber hoses and plastic bags - when first detained. They allege that they
were forced to make incriminating statements against themselves and other
accused under coercion. Pudemo has stated that some have health
complications as a result of the abuse.

Mduduzi Dlamini, an accused who pleaded guilty in early February to
treason, now maintains that his statement was extracted under torture. Two
individuals have come forward and made statements to the accuseds'
lawyers, detailing how they too were detained, subjected to abuse, and
forced to make incriminating statements against the accused.

These incidents, if true, clearly run counter to Swaziland's new
constitution and its protection from inhuman, degrading treatment.

A decade in the making, the constitution is the product of submissions
made to a constitutional review committee. Yet in upholding King Sobhuza's
ban, no organisations or political parties were entitled to make
submissions. In its final formulation, the constitution does inscribe a
right of association but allows for it to be limited in several instances,
and makes no mention
of political parties, leaving it unclear whether the ban on these
organisations will persist.

In addition, although the constitution speaks of being the supreme law, it
is not certain to what extent the king himself is bound. Earlier confusion
as to whether the constitution had entered into force was clarified early
in February when King Mswati issued a royal decree proclaiming its
enactment.

The very method of enactment - by royal decree - raises questions as to
the supremacy of the constitution as law.

Treason and sedition, despite being some of the oldest crimes, will always
be important tools in the arsenal of any democracy and have a place in any
genuine constitutional order. They prohibit the subversion of the
majority's will through unlawful means. But in other contexts they can
also, all too easily, be used as pretexts to shore up undemocratic power.

If Swaziland hopes to escape this suspicion, it must take immediate steps
to investigate the allegations of torture and misconduct against the
police and ensure that any subsequent trial proceedings against the
accused are scrupulously fair and untainted by further suggestions of
abuse.

And if it hopes to demonstrate that the new constitution does indeed usher
in a new epoch in Swazi history, it will have to make clear that the king
himself is bound by its provisions and clarify that free and fair
political activity, the hallmark of any democracy, is not only permitted
but protected under this constitution.

* Nicole Fritz is The Star's contributing editor and also executive
director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, Braamfontein.

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2. Britain’s High Commissioner attacks regime on visit to Swaziland. By
Stephen Bevan (Pretoria), news.telegraph 5 March 2006.

Paul Boateng, Britain's High Commissioner to South Africa, has delivered a
stinging attack on the regime of neighbouring Swaziland during a visit to
present his diplomatic credentials.
After facing criticism for not pressing the South African government hard
enough on its policy of "quiet diplomacy" towards Zimbabwe, Mr Boateng
directly criticised the regime of ruler King Mswati III, whose extravagant
lifestyle contrasts starkly with the poverty of his subjects.

Mr Boateng, who was Britain's first black Cabinet minister, said:
"Corruption, violence, intimidation and torture have no place in the new
Africa of the 21st century.

"It is on issues such as these that the reputation of Swaziland rests. You
will doubtless wish to be vigorous in ensuring that your kingdom's
reputation is not further undermined."

King Mswati III, 37 and educated at in Britain at Sherbourne school in
Dorset, has attracted international criticism for his profligate
lifestyle. He maintains a fleet of luxury cars and 11 young wives in a
land where almost 70 per cent of the population live on less than 40p a
day and 40 per cent of the population are HIV-positive.

Last month Amnesty International called on the king to crack down on
police abuse after reports that political detainees had been tortured.
A constitution introduced on February 7 has also been criticised as not
reformist enough because it leaves ultimate political power in the king's
hands.
Responding to Mr Boateng's comments, Percy Simelane, a Swazi government
spokesman, accused him of lacking "insight" into the country. The
constitution reversed a ban on political parties, he added.

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3. Ban on political parties to be challenged. 27 February 2006 (IRIN).

The head of Swaziland's oldest political party has pledged to officially
register his organisation, testing whether Swaziland's new constitution
has really marked the end of decades of a royal decree prohibiting
political opposition.

At a meeting of the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC), Obed
Dlamini, NNLC president and Swaziland's prime minister from 1989 to 1993,
offered veiled criticism of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last
absolute monarch.
"We want the person who is in authority to be told squarely the truth.
There are those who always salute him, and they are deceiving him,"
Dlamini said of the Swazi king, perpetuating a custom of blaming palace
advisors for failures of the monarchy.

Analysts and political parties have complained that the new constitution,
formulated by the Constitutional Review Commission headed by King Mswati's
brother, Prince Mangaliso Dlamini, remained vague on the key issue of
legalising political parties.
Last week Prince Dlamini said that the time was not right for the return
of political parties, and that only individuals rather than political
party representatives could run for parliament.

Labour leaders and members of human rights organisations who attended the
party meeting urged the NNLC to register itself.
"We cannot accept the fiction of being told that political parties are
free to operate with such a [royal decree] in place. To allow the myth
that individual merit is the only path to parliament, in a multi-party
era, is to deny the existence of parties," said Vincent Ncongwane,
secretary-general of the Swaziland Federation of Labour.

The final decision on the constitution's position on political parties can
only be made by the courts, analysts argue.

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4. Bomb suspect's wife to be exhumed. By Nqobile Ndlovu. 2 March 2006 (AND
Johannesburg).

Swaziland bomb suspect’s wife Fikile Fakudze’s body might be exhumed for
further investigation to ascertain the cause of her death. Fakudze was
married to Mduduzi Mamba who is currently behind bars and awaiting a
treason trial for the spate of bombings of the country’s government
structures.

Mamba’s wife commonly known as LaFakudze died in January 2006, few hours
after being held by the Swazi police for an intensive investigation of her
husband's involvement~in the petrol bombings. A medical practitioner who
operated on her at the Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki said LaFakudze’s
demise was a result of trauma and massive torture.

LaFakudze’s family strongly believes that the police tortured her on the
day she was interrogated. Thus the family has filed a lawsuit against the
police demanding answers on what happened on the day she was taken in~at
the Siphofaneni police station for questioning.

However, the Royal Swaziland Police (RSP) denies that they tortured the
former deputy head teacher. A trial date has not yet been set for the
matter to be heard in the High Court. Last weekend the Mamba and Fakudze
families converged at Siphofaneni for her cleansing ceremony. The bomb
suspect’s brother, Bheki Mamba, told AND today that LaFakudze’s body will
have to be exhumed if the courts demand further evidence.

“We believe that a postmortem was performed at the Good Shepherd Hospital
but we have not seen the results. It’s availability will strengthen our
case to prove that she was killed, she became a victim of the gruesome
killing by the police entrusted to protect us,” he said bitterly.

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5. Swazi economy falters as public wage bill soars. 24 February 2006
(Reuters).

Tiny Swaziland faces a growing challenge in diversifying its revenue as
five years of drought and the battle against the world's highest HIV rate
erodes the country's finances, analysts said.

The southern African nation's Finance Minister Majozi Sithole last week
unveiled a slowdown in economic growth to below two percent this year, a
swollen budget deficit for fiscal 2006/07 and dwindling foreign reserves.
While his 6 billion rand budget was billed as "pro-poor", almost half of
government spending for the 2006/07 financial year will go on financing a
ballooning public wage bill after huge salary hikes for civil servants.

Analysts said they were concerned about rising spending at a time when
economic growth is waning as textile and sugar industries shrink, and
Swaziland remains heavily reliant on payments from South Africa through a
regional trade agreement.
"The civil service wage bill is most worrying and certainly this is cause
for concern," said Stanley Matsebula, head of the country's leading bank,
SwaziBank. He urged more fiscal discipline.
"If government fails to do this, there will soon be need for a
supplementary budget," he added.

Swaziland's King Mswati III has courted controversy over his love of
luxury cars and palaces for his multiple young brides, while more than
two-thirds of his subjects live below the poverty line and a quarter rely
on food aid to survive.
After arriving at parliament in a luxury Mercedes limousine earlier this
month, Mswati said in his state of the nation address the economy was in
serious trouble and that foreign exchange reserves had fallen to below two
months of imports.

REFORM PLEDGE

Sithole's snapshot of the economy delivered in his budget speech last week
was equally grim.
Swaziland expects its budget deficit to shrink slightly to 4.3 percent of
gross domestic product (GDP) in the financial year ending March 2006,
compared to 4.5 percent last year, but remains way off a target of 2
percent.

Sithole vowed to rein in future spending by streamlining the civil service
but said the government was still looking at ways to finance the deficit,
with the 2006/07 budget inflated by salary hikes for MPs, firemen, police
and jailors.

Only 20 percent of annual school leavers were able to find jobs, he
pointed out. "We certainly made bad choices a few years ago. That is all I
can say for now," Sithole said.
The country expects revenues paid by South Africa under a five-country
Southern African Customs Union (SACU) arrangement to cover 62 percent of
next year's budget. Sithole also admitted that local revenue collection
had stalled.
"In the long run they need to find alternative sources of revenue because
SACU customs income will diminish as trade tariffs are reduced," said
Standard Bank economist Jan Dubenage.

Sithole expects economic growth in Swaziland, which is struggling to
attract foreign investment, to slow to 1.75 percent in fiscal 2005/06 from
2.1 percent in the previous year, although he hopes this will quicken to 2
percent in 2006/07.
Given that population growth is outpacing economic growth, this means life
is getting worse for the average Swazi.
Swaziland's soaring HIV rate -- the highest in the world at around 40
percent of adults -- has killed off key workers and weighed on
agricultural production, worsening the effects of a five-year drought.
A wave of petrol-bomb attacks blamed on the opposition party is also
deterring already reticent foreign investors and the country's key textile
industry is hit by competition from cheap Chinese groups and a currency
peg to South Africa's robust rand.

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6. Mswati copies Mugabe. Jean-Jacques Cornish. Mail & Guardian, 24
February 2006.

Swaziland’s King Mswati III appears to be emulating President Robert
Mugabe of Zimbabwe. The mini-me king is attempting a Murambatsvina-style
slum clearance of his own. Irin News Services reported earlier this month
that the bull-dozers are set to move in to clear a string of informal
urban settle-ments as the Swazi government and local authorities clamp
down on unplanned housing.

Forty homes have been earmarked for demolition in the Madonsa settlement,
a tract of peri-urban land bordering the central commercial town of
Manzini, 35km outside the capital, Mbabane. A further 100 homes at
Ludzidzini royal village, 20km east of Mbabane, also face destruction to
make way for an extension of King Mswati’s home to accommodate his 13
wives and their children.

The Mail & Guardian understands that the clearout operation has
temporarily been placed on ice, a move the leader of the banned
opposition, the People United for Democracy (Pudemo), Mario Masuku claims
was because of the international outcry raised by his party.

According to Masuku, the king’s strategy was to get local chiefs to carry
out the evictions that would target his members, particularly the 16
currently behind bars on charges related to a spate of bombings of
government buildings. Pudemo has denied any involvement in the bombings.

One of the detainees, Brian Shaw, who was allegedly shot in the shoulder
when he was arrested two weeks ago, has been placed under police guard in
the Mbabane hospital.

“Police are denying his family access. Not even his lawyer is allowed to
see him,” said Masuku. “It’s an old apartheid-era police trick to hold a
suspect who has been wounded and possibly tortured for a long time to
allow him to recover from injuries before letting people see the result of
their handiwork.” The opposition members are expected to appear in court
for a bail hearing on March 7.

Last week, members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s central
executive committee joined a picket at the Swazi consulate in Johannesburg
to press for democracy and human rights in the kingdom. Further protests
and a border blockade are also in the pipeline.

The South African government had been urging patience on Mswati’s critics
while he worked on a new Constitution. But, like Mugabe, the king has
tinkered with the basic laws to ensure untrammelled power. The result of
nearly a decade of labour, published this month, leaves Mswati sharing the
dubious title with Morocco’s Mohammed VI of one of the last two absolute
monarchs in Africa. His power to hire and fire parliamentarians has
remained unchecked and there is no mention of allowing opposition parties,
banned by Mswati’s father 33 years ago, the legal right to operate.
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7. Document: Congress of South African Trade Unions memorandum to
Swaziland consulate, 14 February 2006. More protests planned.

Delegates to COSATU's Central Executive Committee joined a picket of
several hundred pro-democracy activists at the Swaziland Consulate in
Johannesburg on Tuesday, in protest at the attacks on human rights in
Swaziland, and the lack of trade union freedom in that country.

The following memorandum was handed to the Consul's representative by
COSATU President Willie Madisha. More protests are planned, including
pickets of consulates in Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban on 7 March and
blockades of the border crossings into Swaziland on 12 April, unless the
Swaziland regime concedes to the rightful demands of the Swazi people.

COSATU Memorandum to Swaziland Consul, Johannesburg, 14 February 2006

The leadership and members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions,
together with members of the South African Mass Democratic Movement, are
here today to support the oppressed people and the workers of Swaziland in
their struggle for freedom, democracy and human rights.

We note with grave concern:
1. The gross abuse of human rights that continue to be perpetrated by the
government against its people, in particular workers, youth and political
activists;

2. The arbitrary arrests of political activists by the Royal Police and
the Royal Army;

3. The unilateral and dictatorial banning of political parties and their
related organs in advancing the rights of the workers and the poor;

4. The lack of a constitution or democratic governance and of any
involvement of the people in Swaziland in the current constitutional
review process dictated to by the King;

5. The use of state institutions and resources to sustain the greedy
interest of the Royal Family, using money worked for by the people of
Swaziland, at the expense of other socio-economic priorities;

6. The alarming and increasing exclusion of the people from the social and
economic wealth of the country, with the majority of the people in your
country subjected to abject poverty and rural under-development;

7. The lack of access to education, basic healthcare, water, electricity
and other basic services, which have now become an entitlement of the
elite in Swaziland whilst the masses of the people do not enjoy access to
all of these;

8. The increasing and alarming rate of HIV/AIDS amongst the people of the
country, with the King recently banning all activities related to
awareness, education and mobilisation of people to fight the epidemic.

We therefore demand the following:

1. The immediate and unconditional release of PUDEMO and SWAYOCO political
activists from jail and the dropping of all charges;

2. The immediate cessation of torture, abuse and the abominable conditions
in jails;

3. The immediate un-banning of all political parties, the unconditional
return of all exiles and cessation of political hostilities;

4. A broad forum comprising the political forces in Swaziland to look into
the human rights abuses that have been perpetrated on instruction or
consent by the Royal Family;

5. That the country's wealth be shared amongst the people, and be
distributed to meet the people's basic needs;

6. That the current constitutional review process involves all political
parties;

7. That state resources be redirected from servicing the Royal Family and
be used to serve the needs and interest of the people.

As members of COSATU and all other organs of the mass democratic movement
present here, we will continue to raise our concerns on behalf of the
abused and downtrodden Swaziland people in their fight against
neo-colonial and semi-feudalist rule.

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Earlier issues can be read at
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