SWAZI and South African pro-democracy groups on Monday condemned a repressive new decree which reinforces King Mswati III’s powers over the judiciary, allowing him to bypass recent judgments challenging the monarchy.
“This barbaric decree … has served to reinforce the legalised and institutionalised reign of political terror in the kingdom under the tyrannical rule of the king,” the Swaziland Solidarity Network, an umbrella body of groups fighting for democracy in Swaziland, said in a statement.
The decree, published on Saturday, allows the absolute monarch to ban newspapers, jail those ridiculing him and overturn court rulings in his troubled southern African kingdom.
South Africa’s powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which has about 1.7-million members, also attacked the decree and urged the rest of the world to isolate the Swazi regime.
Political parties in Swaziland, whose population of one million is sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique, have been banned since 1973 and the decree reinforces the 1973 act invoking a state of emergency.
But Swaziland’s attorney general Phesheya Dlamini told South Africa’s state radio SABC on Monday the decree did not amount to a state of emergency.
He said it was necessary to clarify “topical issues” such as the role of the Judicial Services Commission in appointing judges or recent court judgments on the banning of publications.
For its part, the Swaziland Solidarity Network said the people of Swaziland had been “living under a perpetual state of emergency for 28 years”.
The organisation strongly condemned the decree as a “war against the media, the judiciary and the country’s citizens”.
The president of the Swaziland Human Rights’ Association, Joshua Mzizi, told SABC the decree boosted the king’s powers and reduced the independence of the judiciary.
He said it was time the Swazi regime stopped “making laws by decree”.
“If there is … anything of concern to the state, one would have expected that to go directly to parliament and be debated there,” Mzizi said.
Cosatu representative Patrick Craven said the decree implied “the king is always right and is not subject to criticism … (and) all matters which are before the king are therefore unchallengeable”.
“Cosatu wishes to condemn this arbitrary, irregular and illegal manner of governance and therefore calls on all our people in Swaziland, South Africa and the world to isolate the Swazi regime,” Craven said.
Cosatu is an ally of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, which has led a series of protests, including nationwide strikes and border blockades, in a bid to force the government to heed its calls for reform. – AFP
ZA *NOW:
Swazi king declares state of emergency June 25, 2001
New ban on two Swazi newspapers May 24, 2001
Swazi police grill reporter May 4, 2001