This year will bring payoffs for a number of simmering controversies that have drawn the world’s attention to Swaziland, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy.
Matters to be resolved include a new Constitution, workers’ dissatisfaction with the government, the power of the courts vis-Ã -vis traditional authorities, the purchase of a $45-million private jet for the king, and the country’s continuing participation in trade treaties with the United States and European Union.
“The days when Swazis remain silent in the face of poor leadership are over,” says Africa Magongo, president of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU).
Allied with the Swaziland Federation of Labour, and with a combined membership of 84 000 from 23 affiliated unions, the SFTU has called for mass action on January 23 and 24. Organisers promise the protest will shut down the country to draw attention to workers’ desire for political reform.
The tactic will be used for the first time since the mid-1990s, when a series of worker stayaways brought Swaziland to a standstill — though with little success in moving traditional leadership toward democracy.
Since then the SFTU has formed alliances with strategic partners such as the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation and the US workers federation, the AFL-CIO.
The groups have threatened to press for economic sanctions against Swaziland and end the kingdom’s trade privileges with the US and EU, which allow Swazi goods to enter the US market duty free and provide in the EU a guaranteed customer for the country’s sugar, often at higher than prevailing world-market prices. The trade benefits have prompted an expansion of the export sector and made sugar Swaziland’s top export.
Economic threats from the SFTU allies have prompted the government to rewrite an Industrial Relations Act that limited union activities and led the palace to drop a royal decree that violated press freedom and prohibited lawsuits against government officials.
Western envoys last year were active in reminding the government of its treaty obligations to democratise the country.
“The sugar protocol is tied to good governance,” says British ambassador David Reader.
No-nonsense US Ambassador James McGee has told the government that Swaziland’s continued participation in his country’s African Growth and
Opportunities Act, which has jump-started the kingdom’s industrial sector, is up for periodic review.
Much attention will be focused in the months ahead on a new Constitution.
According to a preliminary report by Prince Mangaliso Dlamini, the new Constitution, which was commissioned by King Mswati III in 1996 with an original due date of 1998, will continue a 30-year-old ban on political opposition to royal rule, while strengthening traditional structures.
The king has handed the report to Prince David Dlamini for the constitutional drafting process.
From the start of the constitutional exercise, the Swaziland Democratic Alliance, an umbrella organisation of banned political and human rights groups and labour unions, has rejected what an alliance member calls “the palace Constitution”.
An appeal court ruling in December that the king has no authority to promulgate laws by decree has given the alliance a legal justification to challenge the Constitution when it is presented to the nation.
The ruling pertained to a law that prohibited bail for certain criminal suspects, but the principle will hold true for other royal decrees if they were to be contested in court.
The constitutional exercise was initiated by royal decree, says Paul Shilubane, president of the Swaziland Law Society, which intends to challenge the resulting Constitution.
After the ruling Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini, who was appointed by Mswati in 1996, said the government would ignore the appeal court ruling against the king’s power to decree laws. “Chaos would result,” he said.
His remarks led the six South African magistrates who made up the appeal court to resign in protest.
With no operative appeal court, the kingdom’s highest judicial body, the High Court, declared it would not handle government cases until the prime minister issued an apology and the government agreed to abide by court decisions in future.
“A government that publicly and unabashedly declares that it will defy court orders, whatever the purported justifications, must be ashamed to stand in the community of nations,” High Court Justices Thomas Masuku, Josiah Matsebula and Stanley Maphalala said in a statement.
“The decision of the government of Swaziland to ignore the judgements of its highest court is in effect a declaration that the government does not respect the role of the judiciary and does not consider itself to be bound by law. Citizens are no longer protected by the law and there is a grave risk of lawlessness,” the judges said.
Political observers say the government will certainly not agree to abide by the court’s ruling that limits Mswati’s powers. The prime minister is now biding time, saying all governance matters will be sorted out in the new Constitution.
But the government has little time if it wants a ruling on its request that the High Court issue an injunction stopping the planned mass protest. The court refuses to hear the matter until it is assured of the government’s commitment to the “rule of law”.
The court is only permitting Director of Public Prosecutions Lincoln Ng’arua to proceed with criminal matters.
Ng’arua, a Kenyan, is himself caught up in the “rule of law” contretemps. He was told by the prime minister and palace counsellors to drop his contempt of court charge against the attorney general or be fired. Ng’arua resigned pending settlement of his contract.
The Attorney General, Phesheya Dlamini, was charged after he told a full bench of High Court judges, in the presence of the chiefs of the police and army, that they had to make a case go away or be fired. The case involved a mother who sought the return of a teenage girl taken from her school by palace aides to become Mswati’s 10th wife.
“Of all the crises that rocked Swaziland in 2002, none drew more attention than the abduction case of that girl,” says Lucas Maziya, who represented the mother, an Mbabane businesswoman who opted to suspend the case.
Another goal of the planned worker stayaway is to put pressure on the government to drop plans to purchase a $45-million private jet for Mswati.
“The jet symbolises [the] government’s misplaced priorities and insensitivity to the people’s needs,” says SFTU secretary general Jan Sithole.
A total of 38,6% of Swazi adults are HIV-positive or living with Aids, and a quarter of the population are without food owing to crop failures. Famine has been averted by the timely intervention of the World Food Programme and other donors.
Success of the mass action is not assured. A December 19 and 20 preview was poorly observed by workers.
“That effort failed,” a palace source says. “The message was clear: real Swazis don’t strike. They honour their king.”
Political reformers counter that they too honour their king, but prefer him as a symbol of cultural unity within a democratic constitutional framework.