THULANI MTHETHWA, Mbabane | Thursday
SWAZILAND’S royal advisory council warned that it would forcibly close the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) branch if it persisted in publicly criticising the kingdom’s political system.
Misa’s Swaziland national director Comfort Mabuza said members of the Swaziland National Committee appeared to be annoyed with a prominent article in the latest issue of the Misa periodical, FreePress, which is distributed in 11 southern African countries.
“They said they may close our office [in Mbabane] because of the article. We are taking the warning very seriously,” said Mabuza.
Misa is southern Africa’s largest media freedom and development organisation with active representation in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Malawi, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The offending article, entitled ‘The beautiful land I rule,’ argues that Swaziland absolute monarch King Mswati III’s policies have seen the kingdom “retrogressing at full speed – adopting a deaf and dumb attitude to calls for democratic reform”.
The Swaziland National Council has sweeping executive powers and is accountable only to King Mswati.
The council recently arbitrary amended an Industrial Relations Bill passed by the parliament – prompting the United States to contemplate withdrawing duty-free treatment accorded to imports from Swaziland to the US under the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
Swaziland National Committee secretary general, Mpopoli Mkhombe, declined to comment on the Misa warning, except to say: “It looks like people want trouble even when there is no need for any. We have at no stage threatened Misa, and only made the observation that the article would embarass the country”.
Information Minister Mntonzima Dlamini last week publicly allayed fears at Misa’s annual general meeting in Swaziland that government would arbitrary legislate media controls, saying it would let journalists regulate themselves.
“As we strive for the promotion of greater press freedom, it is my conviction that we should strive to set up structures to check and balance such media freedom,” Dlamini said.
“Considering the nature of the media industry, I believe that to be most effective, the structures would have to be independent and self-regulating, so that they can retain the respect and objectivity required of them.”
Swaziland’s human rights record has repeatedly been criticised by international watchdogs in recent years, largely as a result of perceived abuses of the media.
Last year, the authorities arrested and detained a prominent national newspaper editor for allegedly defaming a fiance of King Mswati. This year, it closed down one of the kingdom’s only two daily newspapers after journalists refused to disclose sources, and sacked 33 employees of the state-run broadcaster for staging an irregular strike. – African Eye News Service