Swaziland@Newsletter 54
Published by Africa Contact (Denmark)

Earlier issues can be read at
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land, life and struggle of the Swazi people.
________________________________________________________

1. Elderly caregivers get little support. PlusNews (IRIN). 25 January 2008,

2, 100 workers locked in mine. Ackel Zwane, The Swazi Observer,
January 25, 2008

3. Today the Hawk Takes One Chick Year: 2007 Director: Jane Gillool.
The Center for Independent Documentary, 23 January 2008. The Center
for Independent Documentary - http://documentaries.wordpress.com

4, Swaziland: Too rich for aid. Swazi Media Commentary.
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/ Richard Rooney, January 23, 2008.

5. South Africa could review energy deals with neighbours. SABC News,
January 23, 2008.

6. Swaziland wants to buy power from Mozambique. MacauHub (Maputo,
Mozambique), January 24, 2008.

7. Dysfunctional leadership at the University of Swaziland: a symptom
of a failing state. Dr. Jabulane Matsebula PUDEMO Representative
Australia, Asia and the South Pacific Region, January 27, 2008

___________________________

1. Elderly caregivers get little support. PlusNews (IRIN). 25 January 2008,

The widowed Gogo (SiSwati for "granny") Thwala, 72, lives a life that
relies heavily on her survival skills as she single-handedly raises
three grandchildren, but not a trace of resignation or despair clouds
her smile.

"Yes, when the Lord took my son and his wife, and I was left with two
little girls and a boy to look after, it was hard to go back to work
but I am not without my resources!" said Thwala.

Her small hillside farm on communal Swazi Nation Land in Elwandle is
only five kilometres south of the country's main commercial hub,
Manzini, but few visitors tread the stony goat paths to reach it and
she might as well be living in a remote rural village.

Stones are the bane of farming Thwala's small plot, where nothing grew
last year because of drought. "Look now, how the maize is high!" said
Thwala, the sweep of her hand showing a field of healthy, bright green
maize stalks standing tall under blue skies.

Those skies have yielded consistent rain without any ruinous
hailstorms so far this year. "With this crop I can feed these
children. I can sell some extra for their school needs," she said.

Inside one of two mud huts on the property she opened a sewing kit and
set to mending one of her granddaughter's school uniform skirts, which
must again see service when the new academic year starts next week.

Thwala's two granddaughters are classified as orphaned and vulnerable
children (OVC), and therefore eligible for government payment of their
school fees. Her grandson, 5, will also qualify when he is old enough
to attend primary school.

Although slow and backed by insufficient funding, the government's
welfare services are gradually shifting from an almost exclusive focus
on OVC to recognise the needs of their elderly and often desperately
poor caregivers.

"I never thought I would have to raise children again. I thought that
part of my life was over. But what can I do? What can these children
do without me? I love them, and being with them helps soothe the loss
I feel at the death of my son and his wife," said Thwala.

Mkuluza Zwane, director of the Umtfunti Old Age Association, finds
Thwala's attitude commendable, but rare. "So many of these elderly are
simply worn out by the burdens they face in their old age. By custom,
they are supposed to be supported at this time ... by their children.
Now, because of the AIDS crisis, government must step in and provide
such support. It's a matter of humanity and respect for our older
generation."

Zwane's association has lobbied government to increase its monthly
pension for the elderly and last year succeeded in obtaining about
US$30 per retired person, up from a paltry $15 a month.

"No one can live on that, but it is supplementary income, based on a
belief that there still is some sort of family support. Most elderly
are not homeless. In Swaziland, the extended family can still be found
to assist, and neighbours."

However, some elderly people are truly alone, a recent phenomenon
caused by the social upheaval wrought by AIDS. In his policy speech
earlier this month, Prime Minister Themba Dlamini mentioned
government's desire to improve the lot of the elderly, and
acknowledged the plight of pension recipients who had to travel long
distances to receive their monthly cheques.

For ailing people forced to endure daylong bus trips, collecting
government allowances is a mixed blessing. Although Swaziland's
cash-strapped government is unlikely to further increase stipends for
the elderly, Dlamini promised action to facilitate payments.

The Queen Mother, who by tradition rules in conjunction with her son,
King Mswati III, has set up a charity called Phila EmaSwati to provide
assistance to the elderly. Last winter they distributed donated
clothing and blankets, but the government has not provided funding for
more extensive programmes.

While there is universal agreement that the elderly are essential to
mitigate the effects of the AIDS epidemic, their needs are not high on
the agendas of non-governmental organisations, other than the Umtfunti
Old Age Association.

"In Swaziland there are only a few orphanages. It is the [extended]
families who look after their orphaned relations, and this means?it is
the grannies who are doing the work of the social welfare
institutions," said Wilma Bhembe, a welfare worker in Manzini.

"They must be supported. If not, what will the children do, and what
will we do with the children? It is not enough to give children
emergency food rations and pay their school fees."

Despite its poverty, the nation prides itself on its fidelity to
traditional African values, including respect for family and tribal
elders. But this week many Swazis were jolted into realising they were
in danger of losing this part of their heritage.

Real estate developers in the upscale suburb Ezulwini, on the eastern
edge of the capital, Mbabane, unveiled plans for Swaziland's first
retirement community. Although intended for unusually affluent retired
people, the gated housing estate struck many people as unSwazi and
somehow threatening to a national way of life.

"This place is apartheid for the aged. It is for foreign countries
where they want to shut off their old people. We love and honour our
elders, and we want them with us in our family circle every day," said
James Mhlongo, a handicraft vendor at one of Ezulwini's tourist
hotels. "But, maybe if this place makes us think about our old folks
we will do more to keep them with us."


http://www.plusnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=76423
___________________________


2. 100 workers locked in mine. Ackel Zwane, The Swazi Observer,
January 25, 2008

About a 100 mineworkers are said to have been locked inside the shaft
of Maloma Colliery since Wednesday midnight.

Selby Mtshali, President of the Mining Quarrying and Allied Workers
Union of Swaziland (MQAWUS) has alleged that they have been locked in
there in the aftermath of the general lockout following a strike
action that was to start at midnight on Wednesday. Surprisingly the
Mine Manager J. Breytenbach says there are about 78 underground
workers who are refusing to come out to the surface as a form of
protest.

Mtshali said the workers were in the Wednesday 6pm shift and were to
knock off at 4am yesterday. However because of the strike action the
workers allege that management decided to lock those inside the shaft
there while others were locked out and as a result those in the
morning shift were not allowed in. Mtshali said the only food ration
they had was two packets of 100 grams of Movite energy food.

When we visited the mine the premises were locked and guarded by both
security and police. 78 underground workers are refusing to come out
to the surface as a form of protest, but talks are underway to
persuade them to abandon this action for safety reasons, says
Breytenbach in a media communiqué.

The workers interviewed on site yesterday said they feared for their
colleagues because of the explosives inside the shaft and any other
eventualities. It is disturbing, though, to hear that there are two
conflicting reports of what is happening at the mine.
Labour inspectors from Big Bend declined to talk to our reporters
because they said they were still consulting.

The bone of contention is parity on remuneration. They argue that
their counterparts working for the same establishment in South Africa
earned far higher wages than them yet the coal from Swaziland is of
higher quality and fetches more in the market.

It was gathered from the workers that after salary negotiation failed
the union invoked Clause 7.2.1 whereby it was agreed to refer the
dispute to voluntary conciliation. This, they say, was after two
months of discussions. They claim that both parties approached the
labour commissioner who advised that he could only intervene after the
law had been breached. He advised them to exhaust the Conciliation,
Mediation and Arbitration Commission (CMAC) route. ?It was then that
we declared a dispute and obtained a certificate of unresolved dispute
on December 12, said Mtshali.

The demand was that of the wages and conditions of employment. The
workers claim they wanted parity with other Xstrata alloys (mother
company) employees. They further say management receives SA salary
scales while the ordinary mineworker receives peanuts. They want
this (parity) to apply to all staff. They further allege that some
senior managers were offered 25 percent salary raise while junior
staff got only six percent. They say management has been hosting
lavish parties of late instead of paying them well.

Then the matter went through balloting by invoking Section 86 (2) of
the Industrial Relations Act of 2005 as amended. CMAC conducted the
balloting which favoured the workers by 99.12 votes, they say. Only
two were against the strike action out of 440 employees.

?After the results of the balloting, we returned to the employer to
reiterate our position that we did not want to resort to a strike but
wanted to negotiate salary increments, but he told us that he had no
alternative because he could not meet out demands, says Mtshali. He
says the workers then invoked Section 86 (7) of the Act on Monday,
January 21.

A notice was issued to the employer which he duly signed: In terms
of Section 86 (7) of the Industrial Relations Act No1. of 2000 as
amended in 2005 notice of our members to engage in a strike on the 24
January, 2008 under the employ of Maloma Colliery Pty (Ltd) is hereby
given?.

The strike action is a result of the dispute that was declared
unresolved by the Commission (Unresolved Dispute Certificate 695107)
issued on the 12 December, 2007. Kindly be advised of our all time
commitment in resolving this matter. Signed by Mtshali.

However, the union argues that management did not give them any notice
of lockout as required by law. When the workers were to leave the
shaft yesterday morning (midnight) it was locked. There were no buses
to ferry the workers from the shaft.

We asked the boss and he told us that he had made a legal lockout. We
still do not have the letter informing us of the lockout as required
by Section 86 (8) of the Act, says Mtshali.

By late yesterday they were going for more talks at Nisela Safaris,
further away from the mine premises. Earlier in the day the workers
had requested them not to attend talks so far away without the rest of
the workers being given a constant feedback.

________________________________


3. Swaziland: Too rich for aid. Swazi Media Commentary -
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/ Richard Rooney, January 23, 2008.

Did you know that Swaziland is too rich to receive development aid
even though about 70 percent of the kingdom?s population lives on less
than one US dollar a day?

Did you know that the unemployment rate in Swaziland is 40 percent,
and more than four out of ten Swazis depend on some form of food
assistance to stay alive?

Did you also know that about 20 percent of the Swazi population
controls more than 80 percent of the kingdom?s wealth?

If you answered yes to the questions above you have been reading the
foreign press. If you have no clue as to what I am talking about, do not
worry, you are no different from all the people in Swaziland who have
to rely on Swazi journalists for their information.

I was prompted to ask the questions after reading both the Times of
Swaziland and the Swazi Observer last Thursday (17 January 2007).

They both carried reports about the European Union Commissioner to
Lesotho and Swaziland, Peter Beck Christiansen, who signed an
agreement to hand over to Swaziland up to E630 million (about 100
million US dollars). He also gave a wide-ranging speech about
development needs in Swaziland, which included some comments about how
the Swazi government was using money previously donated.

I do not think the Swazi journalists quite understood what was being
said, since the headlines they put on their reports contradict one
another.

The Times had this headline: EU warns government on spending
The Observer had this headline: EC boss pleased with government

The Times reported that during his speech Christiansen said, Social
inequalities are increasingly leaving Swaziland with one of the most
skewed income distributions.

I think it is a particular responsibility of the country to ensure
that every citizen receives a fair share of the national wealth.

Christiansen did not elaborate on this point of view and true to form
the Swazi journalists did´not think to ask him what he meant.

I have written before about the capacities of Swazi journalists and how
they lack asking questions.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is cultural: people in
Swaziland are not encouraged to ask questions, especially of people in
authority. The second is more practical: the journalists do not have
the capacity to understand and interpret what is being said to them
and therefore they only reproduce in their newspapers the words of
speeches and press handouts.

That is why it took an overseas news agency, the Inter Press Service
(IPS) from Johannesburg, South Africa, (17 January 2008) to fill in
the gaps for us.

IPS followed up on the Christiansen presentation and was able to
reveal to its readers the facts.

Its report went on.

The economy is performing poorly, especially in comparison with the
other nations of the region, said Richard Ndwandwe, an investment
advisor with an Mbabane bank, told IPS.

We have not achieved 3.0 percent economic growth in a decade, and the
central bank says an annual growth rate of 3.6 percent is required
just to keep up with population growth, Ndwandwe said, stressing that
the, net result has been a deterioration in the standard of living
for almost all Swazis.

It is the rich minority that is skewing the statistical picture, and
making the country appear better off than it is for most people,
explained Ndwandwe.

?Social inequalities are increasingly leaving Swaziland with one of
the world's most-skewered income distributions,? noted Peter Beck
Christiansen, the European Union?s (EU) ambassador to Swaziland.

Colonial-era landholders and business people who did not have their
properties compromised when Swaziland gained its independence 40 years
ago, government leaders, and a small - but well-off - clique of Swazi
entrepreneurs have amassed wealth that has raised the nation?s gross
domestic product (GDP).

Less than twenty percent of the population controls eighty percent of
the nation's wealth, according to the World Bank. But, the World Bank
- using GDP to classify the country's state of economic development -
has placed Swaziland in the low-middle income category of nations.

We are far from being a middle income country, but we are not
considered a low income country, and this makes a world of difference
when it comes to accessing development funding,said Ndwandwe.

It is not a fair rating, Abdoulaye Balde, the country director for
the WFP, told IPS from his Mbabane office that coordinates the world?s
response to Swaziland's food shortage crisis. It does not take into
consideration that way most people are living. We are always telling
this to our donors, he stressed.

The director of another humanitarian relief NGO - which receives World
Bank logistical assistance - said, There is so much need in the world
and so many peoples competing for limited resources that it is easy
for an NGO to go by World Bank guidelines to decline assistance to a
country like Swaziland. It?s not necessarily fair.

Several times this past year, Prime Minister Themba Dlamini and Majozi
Sithole, his finance minister, reminded the country that Swaziland
does not qualify for low-interest loans or interest-free grants
awarded to countries classified as low income although a large
majority of Swazis live in absolute poverty.

Denied developmental funds, the government's response has been to
encourage economic growth by boosting the private sector, with the
hope of increased tax revenue from businesses.

While foreign direct investment (FDI) is sought by globetrotting teams
of government officials, ordinary Swazis are encouraged to become
small entrepreneurs.

Christiansen signed a treaty with Swazi leadership for a 100 million
US dollar aid package, Wednesday.

I think that it is a particular responsibility of the country to
ensure that every citizen receives a fair share of the national
wealth, Christiansen said.

However, not even the small - and by law nonexistent -
opposition groups who speak about countering the ruling monarchy?s
grip on governance, have called for wealth redistribution.

The rich are not going away, and that's the only way to make
Swaziland statistically a low income country, Anthony Simelane, an
attorney based in the central commercial hub Manzini, told IPS.

There is not going to be wealth redistribution that would benefit the
poor. The country is denied development funds to help the poor, so all
government can hope to do is boost the economy and reap taxes,
Simelane said.

The impediment to this plan is government corruption. Sithole has
estimated that the amount of government money lost to various forms of
corruption annually equals the national debt.

Christiansen touched on corruption when he signed the EU's
developmental agreement. I have learned in my three years in
Swaziland that no amount of funding or donor assistance can lead to
development if the right conditions are not in place.

Deficiencies in the areas of governance have and will continue to
seriously limit your development progress, with or without the
HIV/AIDS threat, he told his Swazi hosts.

The EU's aid package is contingent upon the implementation of what
Christensen called ?an ambitious governance reform programme to enable
Swaziland to reach at least the level of other Southern African
countries.
_________________________________

4. South Africa could review energy deals with neighbours. SABC News,
January 23, 2008.

Several SADC countries including Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho,
Mozambique and Swaziland face a dark future, unless they find
alternative power sources soon. Eskom says due to the increasing
domestic demand for electricity here at home, it might have to review
its energy exports to these countries. Botswana imports 75% of its
electricity from Eskom.

Meanwhile, the energy crisis is receiving top government attention,
and some intervention is expected soon. Eskom briefed Cabinet
yesterday and called on government to invest more in energy
infrastructure.

The government says the black-outs are a crisis. The supply crisis is
now being discussed by the extended Cabinet Lekgotla which ends
tomorrow. A Cabinet response is expected later this week.

__________________________________

5. Swaziland wants to buy power from Mozambique. MacauHub (Maputo,
Mozambique), January 24, 2008.

An official from Swaziland electricity company said Wednesday in
Mbabane that the company was considering importing electricity from
Mozambique after South Africa Eskom suspended exports.

Sikhumbuzo Tsabedze, director of the customer services department of
the Swaziland Electricity Board (SEB), said that Swaziland had to find
alternative suppliers as South Africa has a lack of electricity.

Speaking to Radio Swaziland, Tsabedze said that after the news that
Eskom would reduce the amount of power it supplied to neighboring
countries the company planned to speak to Mozambique in order to buy
power.

At the end of last week, Eskom said it would stop exporting to
neighboring countries as blackouts were occurring in South Africa.

Thus far, Swaziland has received 80 percent of its electricity from
South Africa and the remaining 20 percent from Mozambique.

MacauHub (Maputo, Mozambique) www.macauhub.com.mo/en/news.php

________________________________

6. Today the Hawk Takes One Chick Year: 2007 Director: Jane Gillool.
The Center for Independent Documentary, 23 January 2008. The Center
for Independent Documentary - http://documentaries.wordpress.com

This is a poignant and beautifully perceptive portrait of three
extraordinarily dynamic grandmothers (gogos), resolutely holding their
families together in the wake of the Swaziland Aids crisis. Director
Jane Gillooly respect for her film subjects, her sensitive camera
and seamless editing create a delicate balance between the culturally
specific aspects of the gogos lives and the universality of their
tragedies.

In Swaziland, the circle of life has been turned on its head.
Grandmothers or Gogo, as they are called in SiSwati and many
southern African languages watch their adult children die of AIDS
and are forced to raise their many grandchildren on their own.
Great documentaries have the power to personalize seemingly
incomprehensible world issues, breaking barriers of distance and
language to present the human condition across cultures. Few achieve
that feat as well as Jane Gillooly Today the Hawk Takes One Chick,
which presents the stories of three African Gogos living in a society
at the threshold of simultaneous collapse and reinvention, organizing
into communities at an age when they expected that their adult
children would be taking care of them.

Gillooly direction shines light on the individual suffering and
perseverance of those afflicted by AIDS. For 73 minutes, Gillooly?s
work invites the audience to live in world where HIV affects everyone,
and forces us to ponder the fate of its people. The cinematography and
sound recording is sensitive, observant, and mesmerizing; we feel
drawn in as participants, overwhelmed and inspired by the challenges
the Gogos? face, with not enough support.

And so this documentary film was made to support the Gogo Project, a
consortium of international aid organizations working to provide seeds
and fertilizers for gardens, shoes and school uniforms for the
children, and profitable trade skills to the Gogo so that they can
support their expanding households.

Center for Independent Documentary 680 South Main Street Sharon, MA
02067 phone:781.784.3627 fax:781-784-8254. http://documentaries.wordpress.com

_____________________________________

7. Africa at large: Doha round stuck on issues of development (again).
Aileen Kwa, Inter Press Service (IPS) , January 21, 2008.

African negotiators are concerned that their development concerns have
been sidelined in the much vaunted Doha Development Round of
negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Whether the round,
which has missed two previous deadlines, will be concluded this year
or not depends on several issues.

All of these are about the power tussle between rich and poor
countries over countries' prerogative to use national policies to
safeguard development. On the process of the negotiations, African
delegations are fearful that they might be completely marginalized
from what could possibly be the closing phase of negotiations this
year. Referring to the WTO General Council session on December 18, an
East African negotiator remarked, "in every other developing country
statement, the message to (WTO Director General) Pascal Lamy was that
he should not take the revised texts from the chairpersons (of the
negotiations) straight to the Green Room." The Green Room refers to
closed door negotiations held among a limited number of delegations.

There are also concerns regarding the issue of rural livelihoods.
Import surges, as a result of liberalization, have wrecked havoc and
destroyed thousands of farm jobs across the developing world. G33
countries have specifically asked for a mechanism, the special
safeguard mechanism (SSM), which would allow developing country
members to raise their tariffs in response to these surges. The G33 is
a group of developing countries organised around the issue of rural
livelihoods and food security. An African G33 negotiator told IPS, "We
are completely stuck on the SSM. There is no agreement on a whole
range of issues".

On product coverage, proponents want all agricultural products to be
covered by the mechanism, but exporting members want to limit the SSM
to a much smaller number of products. On how the SSM can be triggered,
proponents have been told that a much higher import volume is needed
before they can avail of the SSM. On the remedy, G33 members want to
be able to go beyond the Uruguay Round bound tariff rate, but are also
facing opposition there. This rate refers to the maximum tariff rate
that countries can charge on imports, rates which they legally bound
themselves to in the Uruguay Round of negotiations which were
concluded in 1994.

The G33 negotiator added, "The chairperson (of the agriculture
negotiations) also wants us to check whether or not consumers are
benefiting from lower prices. If they are, the SSM should not be
triggered. He also wants to limit the number of times the SSM can be
invoked." "There are layers and layers of restrictions being
introduced in the SSM negotiations. At the end of the day, the
mechanism will not be effective. These discussions are going the wrong
way," is his conclusion. Regarding the NAMA negotiations, South
Africa's representative Faizel Ismail made a statement on behalf of
the NAMA 11 at the last meeting of the General Council last year. The
statement was aimed at averting another draft text that disregards
their position. The NAMA 11 is a coalition of 10 developing countries.

He told the WTO membership on December 18 that "the NAMA chair's July
text excluded the views of NAMA 11 completely. The revised text must
redress this and expand the range of coefficients to include our
position. "Excluding our views again will prejudice the negotiating
position of NAMA 11 developing countries and skew the negotiations in
favour of developed countries once again. This will not result in a
fair process, nor facilitate balanced outcomes in the negotiations."

Coefficients refer to the numbers to be negotiated for insertion into
the tariff cutting formula. The higher the coefficient, the smaller
the tariff cut a country has to make. Yet another area of deep
contention is in services liberalization. Here the demanders are
mainly the U.S. and the EU, as well as India. Both the U.S. and the EU
want to speed up the liberalization of services trade through
"benchmarking" -- adoption of a formula that would obligate members to
liberalise a certain portion of their services trade.
The Africa Group and the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific)
countries are completely opposed to this. Even in the trade
facilitation negotiations, a West African negotiator remarked, "we are
not seeing the developed countries deliver on the commitments they
undertook to provide technical assistance and capacity building to
enable developing countries to implement obligations in trade
facilitation".

________________________________________


8. Dysfunctional leadership at the University of Swaziland: a symptom
of a failing state. Dr. Jabulane Matsebula PUDEMO Representative
Australia, Asia and the South Pacific Region, January 27, 2008

Over the past weeks there have been numerous reports about the
conflict between students and the administration at the University of
Swaziland (UNISWA). This conflict stems from the so-called
semisterisation or academic restructuring designed from the ivory
tower and imposed on students. When students expressed concerns about
these changes, the university authority responded, as it always has
done, with threats, intimidation and violence. Regrettably, these
hostile tactics have arrested development at the university.

In December 2006, the administration closed down the university after
a student protest against the contentious academic structure. When the
university reopened on January 2007, the administration failed to
provide leadership and resolve the impasse. Instead, it insisted on
implementing the restructuring program through threats, intimidation
and violent tactics. Reminiscent of the township siege during the
apartheid reign of terror in South Africa, the administration called
in armed paramilitary police units to occupy university grounds.
Members of the academic staff were threatened with dismissal from
their jobs when they protested against the presence of armed
paramilitary units.

Such behaviour by a university administration is abhorrent. Resorting
to the barrel of a gun and threats rather than appealing to
intellectual reasoning reflects a serious failure of leadership. It
clearly demonstrates the dysfunction in this bureaucracy and its
extreme irresponsibility. The way in which the administration has
handled this situation has done serious harm to the reputation of the
university as an institution responsible for producing the country's
intellectual resources. If the people at the helm of the institution
are incapable of providing role models, how does the university hope
to achieve its mission?

It is obvious that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the
restructuring process and that these changes have not been thought
through by the university administration. The current conflict
suggests that the administration does not have an effective plan to
manage the restructuring process, but instead relies heavily on
bullying tactics. There are strong indications that the administration
did not endeavour to effectively communicate and negotiate the reasons
for the structuring process and its implementation with students. For
example, did the administration consider other means of achieving its
goals?

A staged implementation programme allowing a smooth transition from
the current to the new structure would have avoided the conflict.
Under this approach, the restructuring process could have been
introduced to first year academic programmes allowing students in
current programmes to continue uninterrupted. A well-thought through
restructuring process would have an inbuilt sunset clause. In this
case it would mean that schools across the university will continue to
offer the old programme to current students and the new programme to a
fresh intake. The old programme would then be phased out after the
last cohort of current students had graduated.

We wonder if the administration has a plan to evaluate the impact of
the changes on teaching, learning and academic outcomes. If the
changes are implanted along the dual academic structuring process, it
would require the development of a compatible evaluation programme
with clearly established performance indicators. We would suggest a
two-staged evaluation process - internal evaluation and external
evaluation. The internal evaluation will assess the effectiveness of
the changes on different areas of scholarship and will require a high
level of leadership capable of responding to periodic evaluation
outcomes.

Evaluation should be conducted at the end of each semester, focusing
mainly on student and academic staff assessment of teaching and
learning under the new programme. One would assume that under the new
programme, the university and different schools will develop new
graduate attributes. The external evaluation should therefore, as a
principle, measure the benefits of the programme to society after its
first "birthday". It should cover graduate and industry evaluation.
For example, to what extent has the new academic programme improved
employment opportunities for graduates and how has it contributed to
better outcomes in various industries and public service? That is, are
graduates of this programme more or less equipped to offer the human
resources the country needs for future development?

As an organisation committed to good governance, democracy, service
delivery and effective leadership, we call upon the university
authority to reconsider its approach to the administration of this
very important institution. PUDEMO supports calls from student and
academic staff bodies for the withdrawal of armed paramilitary units
from university grounds. Whilst we welcome the suspension of the
implementation of the restructuring process pending the court outcome,
we remain concerned about the failure of the university administration
and the ministry of education to deal with the situation.

This is a shambled job characteristic of bad management. Bad managers
are incapable of managing conflicts without resorting to heavy-handed
tactics. A functioning leadership would think carefully about the
implications of restructuring processes and it would endeavour to
discuss and negotiate aspects of these processes with all
stakeholders. Conflicts are inevitable in processes of change and they
can be constructive or destructive depending on the way in which they
are managed.

While the university's behaviour is indubitably appalling, it is
unfortunately little more than the latest visible lesion in the
diseased body of Swaziland's administration. The university's
heavy-handed approach reveals the poverty of its leadership and it is
utterly consistent with the way business is usually conducted at the
highest levels of authority in Swaziland. Unfortunately, the royal
family has entrenched a culture of dictatorship in which peaceful
debate is responded to with state violence against citizens.

The national administration has a well-established record of
incompetence and aggression which has brought Swaziland into the
realms of failing statehood. Year by year, we see severe crises in the
core social institutions of the country. The administration of law and
order, of health care and of education is never far from collapse in
Swaziland and lurches from crisis to crisis. The ongoing marginal
functioning of these institutions and the recurrent crises are due to
poor leadership and the dictatorial way of doing business in Swaziland.

The university has, regrettably, become the latest visible symptom of
this political malaise, but it has always aped and aided the
monarchy's dictatorial practices. From the days of the notorious
Liqoqo regime in the early 1980s to the current period, the university
has had no visionary leadership independent of the ruling royal
family's political influence. Over the years, the administration has
established a strong McCarthyist culture determined to purge the
state's "enemies" from the university.

From the early 1980s, generations of university students have opposed
the authoritarian royal family rule and called for the introduction of
a democratic system of governance. Consequently, the administration
and the government see students as a hostile constituency. In many
ways, this has contributed to the failure of leadership at the
university to respond effectively to genuine concerns of students.

In our view, the way in which the university is managed has rendered
the institution dysfunctional. This is an old fashioned style of
higher education management and has generated disharmony between the
student body and the administration. In the 21st century, universities
around the world have pensioned off the authoritarian ivory tower
management style and crafted a new identity as student-centred
institutions. Serving the interests of the student population is a
primary goal of 21st century universities. Swaziland University is
profoundly outdated and this compromises the international standing of
its educational programmes and devalues the qualifications of its
students. If students are to be fit to take their place as
intellectuals and society leaders, the university will have to teach
them something beyond bully tactics and intimidation.

Why should students bother to attend a university which has nothing to
offer beyond bullying ? this kind of knowledge will not help them to
influence society in a positive way although it might of course
prepare them well for a high-ranking government post under the current
regime. Students might well ask themselves whether an institution
which acts as a dictatorship and uses paramilitary forces to silence
peaceful debate is really a university at all. It is a failing
institution in a failing state and has little to offer students who
wish to make a difference in Swaziland and beyond. Thus, there is an
urgent need for far-sweeping changes in this deeply dysfunctional
culture at the University of Swaziland and other Swazi institutions.
_________________________________________________

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Support the democratic movement in Swaziland: MANDELA FUND: BG Bank,
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Registration Number: 0274. Account Number: 3327000. The MANDELA FUND
is a registered national collection in Denmark.







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