SWAZILAND FETCHES THE STICK

THE Swaziland government said this week it would reintroduce a law which allows detention for 60 days without trial to counter labour union plans for a mass anti-monarch strike next week. The law – nicknamed ‘makhundu’ – was first introduced in Swaziland in 1983 between the death of King Sobhuza II and the installation of King Mswati III. A makhundu is a Swazi term for a fighting stick. Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini slammed calls by the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) for a convention to elect an interim government in defiance of the monarchy. Political parties have been banned in the landlocked kingdom since 1973, when King Mswati III’s father King Sobhuza II suspended a 1968 constitution that had allowed multi-party politics. – Reuters