Swaziland@Newsletter Extra

International community urged to impose sanctions on royal elite in
Swaziland

June 23, 2006

By ANDnetwork .com

Johannesburg (AND) The Danish delegation which recently visited the
Kingdom to assess the country's political climate has urged the
international community to impose sanctions on the royal elite in
Swaziland.

Patrick Mac Manus, spokesperson of Southern Africa Contact (SAC), said
increased pressure is required to push for democratic change in the
Kingdom. Mac Manus said Swaziland is facing unremitting crisis and without
urgent democratic renewal, the country will face further decline and
desperation.

”Throughout the years, SAC has supported the democratic movement in
Swaziland, both in material and political terms. As the successor
organisation to the Danish Anti-Apartheid Movement, we feel such
involvement natural.”

“In Swaziland the great majority of the people must submit to a status of
second-class citizenship, deprived of political rights by an authoritarian
regime, employing an oppressive interpretation of Swazi culture to
legitimise the rule of the royal clan,” said Mac Manus.

King Mswati III, the last African absolute monarch has been under fire
from various sections of the international community to allow political
democracy in the tiny kingdom.

SAC said governance is in deep crisis in Swaziland and the crisis must be
brought to a head by a mass democratic movement which seeks to make the
country ungovernable, not least in the rural areas.

“Without deep political, social and economic transformation the very
survival of the nation would seem to be at stake,” Mac Manus added.

The Foreign Minister of Swaziland, Mathendele Dlamini, said the government
will only respond when SAC takes action.

“I have just arrived from the far-east, I don’t know of anyone calling for
sanctions against us. We can only comment on the implications if when they
act,” said Dlamini.

In May the European Union convened a meeting with civic groups in
Swaziland to collect views about their participation in the new
constitution. The EU intended to collect the opposition’s views on their
participation within the Kingdom’s new constitution.

A.N.D. Johannesburg
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