Repression by the anti-democratic, corrupt monarchy and resultant popular resistance continues to mark a Swaziland political scene deeply impacted by a closely related socio-economic crisis. From time to time, the regime appears to make concessions but continued protests and growing possibilities of wider solidarity and international sanctions could force a showdown if such pressure is intensified.
Current crisis and background
That the regime has failed to transform people's lives is evident in deteriorating standards of living: 63% of people live below the poverty line; a 0.51 Gini co-efficient which is ‘one of the highest in the world, indicating wide disparities in household income’; a high unemployment rate of 17.8%; a low Human Development Index of 0.53 exacerbated by high HIV/AIDS prevalence (26% among 15–49 year-olds, highest in the world, driving down life expectancy to only 40.9 years). Economic growth slowed in 2014 to 2.5% with exports likely to decline given loss of preferential trading agreements (Kariuki and Leigh 2015).
Swaziland remains the only Southern African Development Community (SADC) country that ‘excludes political parties from participation in elections and representation in elective state structures’ (EISA 2008, 1). The country has become an open-air prison, a militarised society and a royal farm in which people become mere farmworkers for an individual and his family. The autocratic system parasitically feeds off the labour of the poor, whose primary reason for existence is to work for the royal family and reproduce future workers of the same.
The impact of misrule is evident in an education system characterised by decline in tertiary scholarships and very low numbers of students attaining the high school certificate; the 2015–2016 budget reveals only 6% of high school graduates continue to tertiary education in Swaziland. The aim appears to be to deny wider education opportunities and discourage various forms of critical thinking and action so that more and more people see success tied to the mercy of the king, whose propaganda is pushed on state-owned radio and exploited in cultural spheres. Many rural areas lack basic services such as clean water, health facilities, schools and roads whilst the royal family and its politicians enjoy lavish lifestyles.
Foundations of tyranny
The monarchy exercises absolute power through the charade of a neo-patrimonial system of governance known as tinkhundla (‘gathering places’: Levin 1997). Royal hegemony is entrenched in every sphere of Swazi society. The royal family controls key economic sectors and has its ‘footstools’ in the form of chiefs at community level (Anonymous 2015a).1 Sections 64(1), 64(4d) and 106(a) of the Swazi constitution guarantee the king super-ordinate power over the executive, judiciary and legislature, respectively. This narrows the line dividing public and private, compromising the integrity of government and rendering it fertile ground for corruption and administrative paralysis. Despite cosmetic constitutional ‘reforms’, appointments to key positions of power are exclusively the king's prerogative. He appoints the prime minister, chief justice, principal secretaries and political commissions. State legal immunity, absence of political parties and suppression of media and civil society undermine the rule of law and accountability.
The demise of limited postcolonial liberal democracy in 1973 saw King Sobhuza II destroy the constitution, dismiss Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties were banned. A 60-day detention without trial law echoed apartheid legislation across the border. Although the end of apartheid suggested parallel transformations in Swaziland, it was not to be.
To bolster a repressive state apparatus, the ruling class manufactured a political mythology exploiting culture and history. Swazi state legitimacy was claimed to reside in a vague ‘Swazi tradition’ enabling democratic elections to be substituted by government-manipulated tinkhundla meetings.
Levin's (1997) penetrating analysis of land tenure and (re)-invention of ‘tradition’, the fluctuating fortunes of Swazi royalty and popular responses to autocracy theorised the underlying abuse of tradition and centrality of land in Swazi society, linking political repression directly to development of a comprador neo-colonialist class but also noting inequality in pre-colonial Swazi lands. Significant has been the close correlation between state power and capital accumulation ‘from above'. The repressive nature of the tinkhundla system and forced removals of peasants contributed to a crisis of royal hegemony.
The tinkhundla system is neo-patrimonial; it guarantees royal supremacy over all aspects of society. To access national benefits, one must position oneself to appeal to royalty. Since the armed forces’ power rests on the king, recruitment favours the royal family, chiefs, regiments and all those loyal to the regime. The traditional legal system in many cases takes precedence over the rational legal system. The king has, in a number of instances, rescued loyal politicians and his business companies from suits going against the interests of Parliament. In 2011, a case against the prime minister, who bought land in a manner described as corrupt, was discussed by Parliament and the case eventually found its way to court. However the king, using royal privilege, directed that the matter be no longer discussed by court or Parliament. Such power creates an environment of legal uncertainty. The denial of democracy and its submergence beneath royal privilege is evident from the regime's own inner workings, which constrict political and administrative processes to fiat from above and consultations with chiefs (Swaziland 2015).
What is lacking is ongoing research to chart recent patterns of elite accumulation, data on which are closely guarded by state and corporation (increasingly the same forces). Moreover, the climate of political and intellectual intolerance serves to dissuade critical research. What is the level of South African corporate investment in Swaziland? What kinds of police and military cooperation exist? British investment in Swaziland remains high, yet activists in that country have been slow to mount the sort of campaign successfully waged against Barclays in the 1970s–1980s. Whereas scholars have spilt much ink on the wide-ranging forms of popular resistance in neighbouring South Africa and Zimbabwe, Swaziland continues to suffer from a ‘small country’ syndrome of neglect. In the short space of a briefing we cannot cover all these fields but we can point to these gaps and the need for both research and action to proceed hand in hand.
The Swazi state leadership's relationship with the South African liberation struggle was exaggerated to try to undermine the legitimacy of protest. There was some material/political solidarity ranging from initial direct political involvement in the African National Congress (ANC) of the 1910s by Prince Malunge and financial support of Queen Regent Labotsibeni, to the complex role of King Sobhuza II in later decades (Lowe 2012). However, by the 1980s, Swazi state collaboration with the apartheid regime intensified to the extent of complicity with that regime in elimination of ANC cadres, though there were divisions within ruling strata (Daniel and Vilane 1986; Dlamini 2014; Levin 1997; Simpson 2013; Simelane, Dlamini, and Sithole 2015). After 1990, ANC solidarity with democratic forces inside Swaziland has been lukewarm, and Pretoria's willingness to take action even milder (Levin 1992, 1997), but with strong and continuing solidarity evident from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and elements of civil society (Wood, Dibben, and Klerck 2013).
Continued repression has always sparked resistance that periodically drove the regime to tinker with small compromises. In 1978, in fear of free elections, Sobhuza II created the tinkhundla system. His death in 1982 prompted an ‘unseemly power struggle, and popular perception of endemic corruption, dissipated the aura that Sobhuza had built up’ (EISA 2008, 2). In 1983 a coalition of popular organisations, the People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), formed and, despite facing trumped-up charges of treason in 1990, has increased its support and militancy. The regime, now led (from 1986 until today) by King Mswati III, eventually conceded some minor reforms to the tinkhundla system and in 1993 pseudo-legal parliamentary elections were run by a supposedly independent authority. A Constitutional Review Commission achieved nothing, and, following the refusal of the government to follow their orders, judges resigned in 2002, a crisis only partially resolved in 2006 when the Court of Appeal was reconstituted (EISA 2008; Zeilig and Dwyer 2012, 167).
A new constitution of 2006 introduced merely cosmetic changes although it modified the king's right to govern by decree and introduced a bill of rights that was not, however, enforced. Repression continued, with police beatings of striking workers, treason trials and torture. Mass protests took place in September 2008 with unsuccessful solidarity attempts to blockade border posts (EISA 2008). Elections in 2003 and 2008 were denounced by a range of respected international bodies as a sham: ‘the entire process could not be deemed credible, due to major democratic deficits’ (Commonwealth Observer Mission 2014, 22). The latest election in 2013 was judged similarly by a mission headed by former Malawi president Bakili Muluzi, which recommended that the government legislate to allow political parties (Ibid.).
Given this situation, it is clear any constitution to be promulgated by the regime would seek nothing other than to legitimise the system. The 2006 constitution re-asserted the ban on political parties, continued to vest all powers of the three arms of government in the king and became a silent, passive document in the face of overwhelming human rights violations by the state itself. To ensure total suppression of civil freedom, other laws are made and old ones amended, such as the 1963 Public Order Act and the Suppression of Terrorism Act, which have received major criticism within the country and by the international community.
Many of these political trends were also analysed (up to the mid 1990s) by Levin (1997). His path-breaking account of ANC–Swazi relations and the rise of PUDEMO even found a readership inside the ANC (Levin 1992). He argues cogently that the failure of PUDEMO or the 1990s strikes to destroy the monarchy was due to their need to confront complex land issues. More controversial is his assertion (1997, 236) that PUDEMO is trapped in a liberal paradigm, somewhat contradicted by his detailing of the growth of its working-class constituency and membership. Since his work, there has been relatively little elaboration of Swaziland's complex political economy in academic or ANC circles, though PUDEMO itself (2014a, 2014b) has led the way in policy documents that have incorporated and adapted such critiques for realpolitik.
Recent events
A bill of rights technically providing freedom of association, assembly, expression and conscience remains a silent observer of the violation of these rights by the state. Political parties remain banned. Harsh and cruel repression of dissenting voices fighting for democracy continues. Atrocities take the form of beatings, torture and lengthy detention without trial.
Several recent cases have gained widespread condemnation. Bheki Makhubu, journalist of the Nation Magazine, Thulani Maseko, a renowned human rights lawyer, Mario Masuku, PUDEMO president, and Maxwell Dlamini, Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) secretary general, have all been put behind bars for voicing their views. On 1 May 2014, as reported by the Swazi Observer and Times of Swaziland on 2 May, Masuku and Dlamini were arrested and charged with sedition after addressing a Workers’ Day rally. Masuku's crime was to shout ‘Viva PUDEMO!’; Maxwell's was singing a song which, in the view of the police, was disrespectful to and undermining the authorities. The duo twice were denied bail. Maxwell, then a student and president of the Students’ Representative Council at the University of Swaziland, was also denied the opportunity to sit for his exams. Masuku, a diabetic, fell ill and his health condition deteriorated day by day in the harsh prison conditions. He was even denied an opportunity to bury relatives he lost while in prison, including his mother. On 21 April 2015, the Swaziland Democracy Campaign coordinating team reported that the two men had been transferred to a maximum-security prison and placed in solitary confinement. Their lawyers reported highly unhealthy jail conditions. Thulani Maseko and Bheki Makhubu were arrested merely for writing articles critical of the judicial system and sentenced to two years in prison by a judge cited in their articles. The veracity of their views was confirmed when the country's newspapers reported the arrest of four judges, including the judge who presided over their case, on charges of corruption and subverting justice.
Political prisoners in Swaziland face dire conditions. After more than a year of imprisonment, Dlamini and Masuku, charged with terrorism, sedition and subversion after they called for democratic reforms, had not been granted bail or convicted, and were denied access to reading materials, their food was restricted and they were denied exercise. Legal protests by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) saw some conditions improve but SALC reported that Masuku's family suffered and his health continued to deteriorate. Appeals failed when none other than the Chief Justice, Michael Ramodibedi, fled the country facing arrest. Lawyer Caroline James states:
The African Union Commission and the United Nations rapporteur on freedom of expression are both aware of Dlamini and Masuku's case. Cosatu has also been vocal on their detention. But drumming up support for their cause is not easy, partly because the activist community in Swaziland is small, thanks to the political climate. The last time the ANC condemned the detention of political prisoners in Swaziland was in 2013. At the time, the Swazi government issued a rebuke, saying it did not know of any political prisoners being held in the country and saying that the ANC should allow the law to take its course. (Evans 2015)
The limits of Pretoria's occasional mild scolding of the regime currently show little apparent sign of being breached either from within the ANC itself, or by alliance partners or wider civil society action. The limits of Cosatu's previous solidarity campaigns have also been analysed (Wood, Dibben, and Klerck 2013). From the perspective of state sovereignty, the issue remains complex, particularly for attempts to encourage other states to take a firmer line. The ANC has recently, in an international symposium for ANC political partners, stated that Swaziland is a police state needing help, and the secretary general has made critical comments. However one must assume the ANC has not been able to take a firmer stand because it has to respect territorial integrity. Furthermore, the ANC has taken a rather ‘cautious’ and ‘silent’ approach when it comes to issues pertaining to countries in the region because of its ambition to play a larger role in Africa and in this agenda it needs the support of African governments. There has always been a thin line between the ANC as party/liberation movement and the ANC as government. The ANC as a liberation movement has made some pronouncements on the Swazi case and supported the Swazi liberation movement, albeit minimally, but at government level there has been no concrete action. Its partners in the tripartite alliance, Cosatu and SACP, have given much practical support to the Swazi liberation movement. The ANC government has previously refused to financially bail out the Swaziland government unless there were some political reforms. This was seen as a message by Pretoria regarding its stance on the democratisation of Swaziland.
Pretoria's ‘softly-softly’ diplomacy within the African Union on Sudan and Zimbabwe, or in SADC on Swaziland, further underlines this timid pattern of ‘constructive engagement’ with no substantial sanctions. There are several reasons for Pretoria's inaction: the above-mentioned considerations of territorial integrity; unwillingness of corporate–government forces to ‘rock the boat’; a concession to Mbabane that Swaziland played some kind of role in South Africa's national liberation struggle – but turning a blind eye to well-documented (even by the ANC) cases of lethal repression by the Swazi state in the 1980s; and the now-entrenched manufactured version of nationalist/Pan-African tradition that privileges shared anti-colonial history over contemporary liberation struggles for democracy and class/gender equality.
However, these are precisely the arenas in which praxis needs applying. Debate over Swaziland needs to be reignited within the ANC and SACP, and advanced within other political formations. Intensified solidarity, demonstrations, protest letters and people's sanctions, and pressure on both governments are needed to break the deadlock and bring greater pressure on Pretoria to act. Journalists, teachers and activists, as well as filmmakers and cartoonists, need to expose repression and raise the profile of Swaziland in the media and across civil society. Intellectuals need to firmly, if delicately, debunk the mystique around the monarchy's alleged anti-apartheid credentials so as to channel, rather than antagonise, feelings of national pride. Whilst (and in a different context) in the 1980s scholars could point to the ‘special’ nature of Swazi politics (Bischoff 1988), the sort of regional anti-apartheid solidarity then prevalent also needs reigniting in SADC countries. Swazi democratic resistance, both inside the country and in exile, is sorely under-resourced and under-staffed, with many of its leaders jailed on trumped-up treason charges, and labour and student movements under constant police surveillance, hence greater solidarity urgently needs to be extended to it from within South Africa and abroad.
The Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN), banned in Swaziland, also has denounced the regime: ‘The country has no democracy at all. All power is vested in the monarchy, which rules by decree.’ Comparing the regime to apartheid, SSN noted how it had victimised democrats: ‘Sipho Jele was arrested in 1 May 2010 for merely wearing a T-shirt inscribed with the name of one proscribed entity, PUDEMO. He never lived to see his day in court as he died in custody’ (Swazi Media Commentary 2015b).
The king and prime minister have failed to condemn violent acts by police against the people. The Swazi Observer on 7 August 2014 reported the prime minister told members of parliament to strangle union leaders who attended the US–Africa summit in Washington to testify on the lack of adherence of Swaziland to African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) benchmarks. The king has never condemned these wild utterances of his prime minister (Anonymous 2015b). The bastions of the system, the royal family and their appointed politicians, keep this repressive and undemocratic system alive.
Resistance and international solidarity
Despite the hostility Swazi freedom fighters have faced over the years, they continue to intensify the momentum of the struggle by protesting and organising. There were large-scale protests in 2000 over royal land grabs that interestingly combined ‘traditional’ forms of protests such as women baring their buttocks, with labour and student demonstrations (Simelane 2012). In April 2011, online media tools began to be used to mobilise a widening youth involvement (Kenworthy 2011). Groups at the forefront of resistance include labour unions, faith-based organisations, the student movement, wider civil society and the banned political parties. They also seek support from the international community. This has yielded some positive results. The voices of the people, through labour unions, civil society and the Swaziland Democracy Campaign and SSN, have successfully drawn the attention of international human rights and democracy-loving organisations in the region and beyond. They have helped in advancing the struggle through further raising international consciousness of the situation, condemning injustices and calling for sanctions.
The European Union, the United States, Amnesty International and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have questioned the state of human rights in the country. In May 2015, the European Parliament voted 579 to only 6 opposed to send a clear call to the Swaziland regime to immediately and unconditionally release political prisoners. The European Parliament also urged the European Commission to ‘monitor Swaziland's adherence to human rights and to labour and environmental conventions’ and mandated an investigation into Swaziland's ‘serious and systematic violation of labour rights’ (L. Simelane 2015). This was reported locally as a possible ‘first step toward international censuring or even trade sanctions toward sub-Saharan Africa's only unelected national leader' (Ibid.). The EU Parliament stated it:
considers the imprisonment of political activists to be in clear contravention of commitments made by Swaziland under the Cotonou Agreement [on EU trade and economic aid from the EU] to respect democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and also under the sustainable development chapter of the (SADC) Economic Partnership Agreement, for which Parliament's support will depend on respect for the commitments made (L. Simelane 2015).
This move challenges Mswati's efforts to expand trade with the EU after the US in 2014 suspended AGOA trade benefits, citing systematic violations of fundamental worker rights (Ibid.).
In March 2015, Amnesty International similarly condemned the repression of fundamental freedoms by Swaziland authorities, called for release of the four political prisoners and condemned the Suppression of Terrorism Act of 2008, stating its provisions are incompatible with Swaziland's human rights obligations. The Act failed to restrict definition of ‘terrorist act’ to threatened or actual use of violence against civilians, and failed to meet various requirements of legality (accessibility, precision, applicability to counter-terrorism alone, non-discrimination and non-retroactivity, and offences defined with such imprecision that they place excessive restrictions on a wide range of human rights, including the right to hold opinions). Amnesty International stated it was ‘deeply concerned about the continued persecution of peaceful political opponents and critics by the Swaziland authorities’ (Amnesty International 2015).
Other recent accounts also testify to the importance of international solidarity. Tanele Maseko, wife of Thulani Maseko, co-founder of Lawyers for Human Rights, Swaziland, jailed for two years for questioning the fairness of Swaziland's judicial system, underlines that:
I greatly appreciate the support of the international community. The fact that I know that there are people who are working on my husband's case around the clock is really amazing. Thulani calls all these people ‘angels from humanity'. (Maseko 2015; M. Masuku 2015)
Support from the international community has therefore yielded positive results but has not yet reached the intended purpose of changing the fundamental situation. The call for total isolation of the regime has been met with a deaf ear by some organisations and states in the region and beyond. Despite the fact that SADC's Declaration Treaty, Article 4(c) upholds the principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, it has not taken a serious stand on the situation. Regime officials still walk in to SADC summits with their heads held up high and without being held to account on the grave situation happening in the country. Other states such as Taiwan and Equatorial Guinea even show interest in consolidating economic ties with the regime.
Events continue to break, even in the cultural sphere. In May, SSN called on South African soccer teams Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates to boycott a tournament honouring Mswati, ‘a political event meant to legitimise a despot who has lost credibility in the eyes of the world' (Swazi Media Commentary 2015b). Continued strong local and international pressure is forcing the regime to compromise a little, something evident particularly in the labour arena.
Since the 1960s, union federations have been banned and union activities violently repressed. In March 2015 police threatened to squash the Workers’ Day celebration of unrecognised unions and beat the secretary general of the Swaziland National Union of Teachers (SNAT):
While preparing to convene our meeting, the police came and ordered us out of the boardroom. They told us that we cannot proceed with the meeting. They then drove us out of the boardroom. We moved out and got inside our bus and locked ourselves inside. While inside, police surrounded the bus. They then moved to the back of the SNAT bus and forcefully opened its back side. That is when they grabbed me and pulled me out of the vehicle. They then dragged me for about 20 metres from the bus before they started kicking me all over the body. While sprawled on the turf, someone kicked me in the mouth. (L. Masuku 2015)
Unions were banned from holding May Day celebrations but finally, on 13 May 2015, Times of Swaziland announced (re-)registration of the Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), after three years of struggle. The ILO had earlier ruled de-registration was against Swaziland's ILO obligations (ACTSA 2015; Cosatu 2015). The announcement was just days before the arrival of a delegation led by Wellington Chibebe, International Trade Union Confederation deputy general secretary, and including Cosatu and American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) officials. The delegation was not, however, impressed with mere re-registration, and called on the regime to guarantee rights of workers freely to form unions and exercise freedom of speech and assembly, and to end police repression of unions. How little had changed was evident days later, when TUCOSWA secretary general Vincent Ncongwane denounced continued police intimidation (Swazi Media Commentary 2015a).
In conclusion, it is now more than evident, after decades of protests, that the success of the struggle for democracy in Swaziland cannot be won without sincere and coordinated international players who are friends of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Therefore, Swaziland needs support from SADC, the African Union, UN, international labour and other institutions, and the world at large. In the face of an intractable regime, sanctions offer one solution. As a journalist observes:
The US, the EU and South Africa could shut the regime down in a matter of days if they really wanted to. Over 90% of Swaziland's imports and 60% of its exports are with South Africa, and the US and EU are also significant trading partners. … Coca Cola … have a huge concentration plant in Swaziland because of the kingdom's substantial sugar cane production. (Kenworthy 2011)
As this article went through the review process, further dramatic events unfolded. Solidarity groups and unions in Swaziland and South Africa protested, together with scholarly activist groups such as the Association of Concerned African Scholars and North Eastern Workshop on Southern Africa, plus embassies and international bodies. In July 2015, some political prisoners were suddenly released on bail, underlining the value of ongoing protest.
Thulani Maseko and Bheki Makhubu were released on bail, as were PUDEMO president Mario Masuku and SWAYOCO secretary general Maxwell Dlamini, after spending over 13 months in jail with bail denied. The Supreme Court of Appeals finally gave in after a growing local and international campaign for release of all political prisoners. Masuku told Swazi News on 18 July, ‘I am prepared to die’ for the political conviction of achieving a free Swaziland. He continued to defy the bail condition that he must not address public gatherings, pronouncing to his church congregation that he would continue to side with the poor and oppressed (Times of Swaziland 2015). Dlamini, arrested three times in the past four years, assured the nation and the world he was continuing with the cause for democracy:
I refuse to allow the state to break me whether through jail, intimidation, harassment and persecution. I hope I can inspire others to rise out of their fear and challenge this backward and archaic system of royal supremacy not through desktop activism and boardroom activism but through open defiance and swelling the picket lines. Only then will the world know we don't just need pity but practical solidarity because we are our own liberators prepared to confront the enemy and sacrifice our own lives if need be (Ibid.).
Dlamini clarified the question of the monarchy, saying PUDEMO was not against the king but wanted him insulated from politics to allow multiparty democracy. He called for political dialogue to resolve the impasse (Swazi News, 18 July 2015).
On the other hand, the regime has played this ‘cat and mouse’ game for decades, arresting or banning, then temporarily loosening its grip. Indeed, ‘terrorism’ charges against those released have not been dropped; they remain forbidden from addressing rallies. The hope is that activists will be deceived that prisoners are now ‘free’, not just on bail, and stop protesting.
It is also clear that, despite severe repression, PUDEMO not only survives, but has formulated draft policies to guide it and prepare for future governance with a clear focus on what a new democratic Swaziland would look like. The movement's February 2014 Congress confidently charted a programme towards people's power (PUDEMO 2014a, 2014b). People's and state sanctions would hit the soft underbelly of the regime, sugar, its largest export, and, combined with European and US sanctions, and internal resistance, push forward to the endgame of Africa's final autocracy.