SWAZILAND NEWSLETTER EXTRA

"Swaziland is a failing, if not already a failed state. Only concerted effort
supported by all peace and democracy loving people of the world is needed to
secure a democratic breakthrough."

Country Report - Swaziland presented by Sikhumbuzo Phakathi of the Swaziland
Solidarity Network (RSA) at South-South People's Dialogue, Brazil 29 October-
6 November 2006.


1. Introduction

Swaziland is a tiny country landlocked between Mozambique and the Republic of
South Africa. Recent statistics put the country's population at 1.2 million.
Politically Swaziland is a kingdom ruled by a dynasty, which has denied
ordinary people their basic political rights. Until recently, Swaziland did not
have a written constitution and when one did come - under pressure from the
liberation movement, the People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO - the
product was a shoddy document which further entrenched the rule of the royal
family even above the same constitution, banning political parties and limiting
trade union activity and banishing the poor majority to abject poverty.


2. Land situation in Swaziland

The country is a typically poor country with over 70% of the people living in
rural areas. Land ownership is divided into three categories: privately owned
national land and concessionary land. Most of the productive land is in private
hands, the majority of whom are foreigners. Most of this land has been converted
into areas of export crop production. Foreigners own between 35%-43% of the
land. National land is under the authority of the chiefs hold it on behalf of
the king, who in turn "owns" the whole country. The ordinary people do not
own any land. The land on which they are settled does not belong to them and at
any time when the king or the chief finds fit the land can be repossessed from
them or alternatively they can be evicted. For example, there are over two
hundred families evicted from their land for challenging Mswati over imposition
of his brother as chief. The royal family uses land as an important
power-brokering tool and use it as a chip for patronage. Mswati combines the
worst excesses of colonial authoritarian governance with an absolute abuse of
culture.

The rural landless people have engaged in a wide range of struggles to get back
their land. There is a clear lack of political will to deal with the issue as
seen in the absence of a clear land policy. The landless demand a policy that
will, but not limit itself to:

- Solving land related disputes that have claimed many lives
- Promotion of land ownership by ordinary citizens
- Encourage and enforce rational and sustainable rural land use and land tenure
- Distribution of land according to societal needs

The above issues are also espoused by PUDEMO in its 'Land Back to the people
campaign'. PUDEMO further declares that the land belongs to the people and the
people belong to the land. To the ordinary people, the land is life, food and
dignity.

The royal family under King Mswati does not see it that way as it continues to
dispossess the people of the land of their forefathers. Land that was bought
from foreigners under the pretext that it will be distributed to the landless
ended up under the ownership of the royal family's investment arm TIBIYO
TAKANGWANE and in the private hands of friends and relatives of the royal
family and corrupt government officials.

3. Rural struggles

The struggle for land in Swaziland started during colonial times when the rural
masses organised themselves into collectives to fight for the land. The very
struggle for independence was about nothing else but land. The feudal system of
Swaziland hijacked the struggle and made it its own and entered into elite pacts
with the British to protect their interests. That is why even after 36 years of
independence the people of Swaziland still do not have land. The struggles have
not stopped. An organisation of the rural landless called Atibuye Emasisweni was
formed to advance the struggle of the poor.

In Swaziland a person who desires to live and till the land suffers unbearably.
The countryside has a treacherous terrain and an oppressive feudal order with
its main victims being women and children. Women are not allowed to access land
unless through their husbands or sons. This is a serious constraint on women
wishing to be economically independent, and is a clear characteristic of a
patriarchal system still surviving on primitive accumulation. This is the
greatest weapon of the rural masses that want restitution and food production
for themselves than be servants of the royal family.

The rural people's demand for land is gaining momentum. The people who work
the land do not own it. It is the king who owns it and has authority to compel
people to work for him. This hinders technical development and keeps the people
in economic bondage. This arrangement is necessary for the maintenance of an
exploitative power relation, which uses both economical and non-economical
means of coercion. In the same vein the regime also uses religion and tradition
to justify the 'divinity' of its authority.


4. Agricultural resources

Without enough arable land the rural poor have no livelihood. To them land is
life. Access to good quality land is a prerequisite for rural sustainable
livelihoods. In the context of Southern Africa in particular, food security and
land reforms are intricately linked. The ability of individual households to
produce food brings in the distributional aspect of land. Because of major
flaws in the area of reforms, Swaziland and many other countries in the south
are faced with food shortage. Despite the availability of land these countries
still find themselves having to import food and rely on donors to feed the
people.

If this scourge is to be dealt with, we need all governments to be committed in
land distribution. Tied to that, we need strong social movements to intensify
the struggles of the poor. As the droughts get worse it becomes a major
challenge to increased food production. For example, in Lesotho, 9% of the land
is arable and rainfalls are not reliable. These conditions also obtain the
Botswana and Namibia. And in Swaziland, the land available for family
cultivation is decreasing thus lowering food yield per family, and eventually
for the whole nation.

Decreasing food production must also be viewed within the government's macro
economic policy. The Swazi regime has put more emphasis on the expansion of
export based agricultural products such as sugar cane, which has greatly
diminished available food for the poor. This export based agriculture does not
benefit the poor but the rich. The general trend to lean more towards market
systems has worsened poverty while weakening the incentive to speed up land
reforms. The current arrangement suits the rich at the expense of the poor, as
these are some of the colonial legacies, which were not dealt with during
independence. And as a result of shortage of land, the government is now
encouraging zero-grazing stock farming that needs skills that the ordinary
people do not have. Agriculture is contributing a mere 15.7 % of the GDP. This
is extremely low for a country as unindustrialised as Swaziland. In a recent
article on the yearly Central Bank of Swaziland report (2006), we can read:

'The downward trend in economic performance is a reflection of the low growth
rate in foreign direct investment, weaker performance of the manufacturing
sector and low agricultural productivity.

Declining agricultural productivity, felt most acutely on communal Swazi Nation
Land, where 80 percent of the population lives in chronic poverty on small
farms under palace-appointed chiefs, was compounded by drought. The bank warned
of serious food shortages, particularly maize, the staple food.

Government policies encouraging subsistence farmers to pursue
commercially orientated farming practices to alleviate poverty have met with
limited success in diversifying crops, but not in production results. The
cultivation of more drought-resistant crops saw an increase in land devoted to
cotton production from 2,795ha last year to 2,861ha this year, but cotton
production fell by 1.3 percent. Sugar, Swaziland's main export, performed
slightly better, though this was at the expense of citrus, another principal
agricultural export, after several citrus estates switched to sugar
cultivation.'


5. Rural democratisation

The greatest challenge in the advancement of the struggle in Swaziland is that
most of the people live in rural areas. They are scattered, not properly
organised and have their lives attached to the land. They are controlled by the
local chief and bound by the laws of the country, which ban open political
activity. Organising in rural areas is a particular challenge that requires
methods that are not necessarily similar to those in urban and peri-urban
areas. The criminalisation of political parties and a general political
activism makes it risky for rural people to engage the regime openly.
Nonetheless, there are existing community-based structures that take up issues
of the poor.

The government's economic policy also contributes a lot to the misery of the
poor. The basis of this is the very arrangement of the Swazi economy, which has
the following characteristics:

o First, the deliberate policy of the tinkhundla royal regime to monopolise
national resources and allocate these in favour of their own narrow selfish
interests, to the total exclusion of the working people in general;

o Secondly, the economy has experienced growth that has not translated into
development and benefit for the majority of the people of Swaziland.

This situation is made worse by the fact that the economy of the country is
going through a deep-seated structural crisis, resulting in the lack of growth.
The key features of the Swazi economy, as indicated by a UNDP study include:

o High levels of poverty

o About 70% of the population live in rural areas

- The bulk of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority

- Land remains largely in the hands of a few

- The economy is still agro-based

- The economy is no longer expanding, thus it is destroying jobs and not
creating new ones, which also make it fail to absorb new job seekers

- The economy is largely dependant on the economy of South Africa, particularly
for revenue as indicated by the close to 50% SACU revenue which remains a key
source of revenue for the country

- Ultimately, the economy is going through a deep-seated structural crisis

A GNP per capita of $1360(1999) classified Swaziland as a middle income country,
disregarding huge inequalities so obvious in the country, assuming that the size
of the economy in relation to the population, automatically means guaranteed
access for all to basic resources, which is not the case in reality

However, as the 2002 report of the Central Bank of Swaziland indicates, "the
country's current economic slowdown is exceptionally deep and broad, with no
evidence that the downward spiral that began two years ago will see a
recovery". Almost all of these findings impact directly on the working class,
rural masses and all poor people in general.


6. Access to services

Given the above picture of the economy, it is no surprise that the government is
failing to render basic services to the people. This has led various
organisations especially those aligned to PUDEMO to wage struggles against the
government. The lack of services is one of the major crises facing poor people
the world over and in Africa in general. As civic society we must understand
that when people engage in struggle it is rarely for ideas. It is about
changing their quality of life, a better life, land, jobs, services and a
brighter future for their children. Therefore we need to ensure that our
programmes are conscious of this reality. If in the urban area there are still
towns with poor infrastructure networks, uncollected waste, blocked sewer
lines, un-maintained roads and all services provided at totally unacceptable
levels, the people rarely want to hear us talk rhetoric. They want us to
address their immediate issues.

The question of services also encompasses health care. Today we are faced with
issues of malnutrition, malaria, TB and other curable diseases. But as a result
of poor commitment from various governments, people continue to die. The AIDS
pandemic is killing more people than the world wars. Sub-Saharan Africa is
worst hit. AIDS is the single greatest threat to all the good things that the
continent is trying to do. It is a threat to the African Renaissance and the
New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Over 11.5 million people
have died of AIDS, equalling the combined population of New York and Los
Angeles. Of this a quarter were children. 83% of these deaths are in Africa,
and with an infection rate of over 42% Swaziland has the highest rate in the
world. As if this were not enough, the few existing health workers there are in
Swaziland (nurses and doctors) are leaving the country as a result of failure of
the government to improve their working conditions and provide basic medicines.


It is a tragedy that the least populous nation on earth has the highest HIV/AIDS
infection in the world. This is a confirmation of the view, which says that
there is direct relationship between HIV/AIDS and the extent of socio-economic
and political crisis facing a country. The AIDS crisis in Swaziland is a
political crisis arising from the way Swazi society is organised. It is the
poor and women in particular that are hit hardest. And as former SA president
Nelson Mandela once put it "AIDS kills those on whom society relies to
produce the crops, work the mines and factories, run the schools and hospitals
and govern countries. It creates new pockets of poverty........AIDS is no more
a disease, it is a human rights issue"

In the context of Swaziland, where culture is the instrument of royal
domination, this problem is even more pronounced. HIV is not only about the
personal behaviours of individuals but also and mainly about the organisation
of society. The task of organised formations is to develop one clear message of
hope to the people while also fighting the misinformation disseminated by the
regime through the state media. The king has portrayed himself as an AIDS
activist, yet back home he promotes behaviours that spread AIDS- such as
polygamy. Every year, the world awaits with interest as to how much younger the
kings new wife will be, and at what grade will she be forced to leave school.

The world cannot be silent any more. It is real people who are dying. It is the
poor. This is a human rights issue. It should go beyond narrow simplistic
political rhetoric. All of us have to act and act now. In Swaziland the rich
and the royal family have built themselves an exclusive hospital with state of
the art equipment, while state hospitals lack basic medicines. The time has
come for a broad movement to advocate for free treatment for all and an
improvement in service delivery. The basis of this movement must be our
understanding of development: development is concerned not only with
accelerating economic growth but also with improving the material standards of
living for the vast majority of our people. They have largely been bypassed by
economic growth in the past and are now the first victims of economic decline.
The main objective, therefore, is to generate a pattern of overall and
broad-based income growth, giving special priority to the incomes of the
working class and the rural poor.


7. Areas for common campaigns

The picture painted above is that of a people being crushed under a yoke of
oppression. Many have asked why there is no rebellion in Swaziland. Why the
liberation movement seems to be ineffective in pushing the regime to collapse.
There is pressure from within, but as history has taught us, internal pressure
alone is not enough. More pressure from the international community is needed.

The unfortunate and despicable thing is that some members of the international
community have been too willing to buy the royalists' line that change in
Swaziland must come slowly. The main culprit in denying the people of Swaziland
their liberty is the Commonwealth which has supported the undemocratic regime,
funded a royal constitution which took over ten years to draft and, at a cost
of USD 16.5m , seconded two so-called experts to draft the constitution.

The hypocrisy of the Commonwealth must be condemned in the strongest possible
terms. While being vocal on the state in Zimbabwe, it is annoyingly cosy with
the Swazi regime. While sanctioning Zimbabwe, the secretary general of the
Commonwealth says that the royalist constitution is the 'first step in the
right direction'. But Swazis don't need half a loaf. They don't even want
a full loaf. They want the whole bakery! That's what we deserve.

While the Commonwealth continues with its hypocrisy, the economy is plundered.
It is the corrupt Swazi elite that benefit from this, hence its co-operation
with international racists to defend the interests of the elite. That is why
this undemocratic system is maintained. Britain has stationed its intelligence
agency MI 16 in Swaziland to protect the political and economic interests of
the Swazi monarchy and work actively to frustrate the democratic movement. The
continued existence of the despotic regime is in the interest of British
imperialism.

It is in the context of all these forces at play that we need a proper response
that will take advantage of the global balance of forces. As civic society we
have ground to stand together. These are times when we should stop lamenting
and act. At a regional level, while the politicians bury their heads in the
sand let us support each other and mobilise across borders. International
solidarity knows no borders. We must act now before the low intensity rebellion
in Swaziland blows up into open conflict. Some of the areas that we can
co-operate in are:

- Sharing of experiences in sector mobilisation

- Establish sector-sector alliances across borders

- Exchange programmes to study in detail how other organisations work on a daily
basis

- Establish a solid and sustainable network of organisations to work together in
areas of common interest

- Establish a regional network/ organisation to lobby SADC to take actions
against countries that continue to violate human rights. Such an organisation
should seek to have a voice in SADC

- That we deal with some of the G8 resolutions that pertain to Africa; some of
these are that:

- The multilateral debt cancellation being advanced is still tied to compliance
with conditions which exacerbate poverty, open poor countries for further
exploitation and plunder, and perpetuate the economic stranglehold of the north
over the south.

- Even if there were no conditions, the proposal falls far short in terms of
scope and amounts to demonstrate a bold step towards justice by any standard

-It does not express any acknowledgement or responsibility for the historical
and structural causes of the poverty crisis and their own culpability. Without
this recognition, G8 leaders cannot make poverty history.

- Instead, the G8 statement is a re-affirmation of their commitment to push
poverty-inducing and debt-creating policies in the south.

- The $50 billion package is nothing fundamentally new, except an additional few
billions to already made commitments, in many other international and bilateral
platforms.

- G8 countries and donor have a poor record in delivering, even on their small
commitments and targets. Concrete actions towards the fulfilment of the 0.7%
ODA as agreed in Monterrey and other platforms are yet to come, yet we see more
public relations games than real delivery.

8. Conclusions

While the rural poor are not organised as in the industrialised areas, they
possess the greatest power: power that can transform the whole nation.
Swaziland is a failing, if not already a failed state. Only concerted effort
supported by all peace and democracy loving people of the world is needed to
secure a democratic breakthrough. While the present may be filled with
suffering and pain, injustice and misery, tomorrow could and will be better. As
the oppressed, we have a right to revolt. The only way a dehumanised people can
restore their dignity is through rebellion. Hence we must not be ashamed to
declare that there is dignity in rebellion. A people unable to rebel cannot
reclaim their land, they cannot get their freedom, and they cannot get better
services. A people who are unable to rebel cannot hope to achieve a sense of
pride in their humanity.


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