South Africa’s agreement to take seriously Swaziland’s claim to its national territory has implications for all of Africa, and the pledges African countries have made to honour boundaries drawn up during the colonial era, diplomats have said.
But the depth of South Africa’s commitment to the process remains unknown.
On a visit to the small landlocked kingdom of Swaziland recently, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the foreign minister of South Africa, met with Mabili Dlamini, her Swazi counterpart, and said her government would look into the border adjustment issue.
This came as a surprise to international observers, who noted that South Africa had never taken seriously Swaziland’s claim to large swatches of the giant country that surrounds her on three sides.
”The principals of the (defunct) Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which were adopted by the African Union member states, is that however faulty and objectionable they were, the colonial-era boundaries would be respected as inviolate. This was seen as necessary to circumvent endless haggling and even warfare between countries,” said a Western diplomat.
But while Swaziland is an African Union member, the country’s leadership has historically bristled at the way British colonial authorities gave half the nation’s territory away to Britain’s Indian Ocean Natal colony and the Boer Republics (both in present-day South Africa) in the late 19th century.
”This is Swazi land, historically and culturally,” said Prince Khuzulwandle, brother to the king of Swaziland, Mswati III.
Mswati appointed Khuzulwandle as chairman of the government’s Border Adjustment Committee in 1994. In his yearly State of the Kingdom speech, given when he opens parliament, Mswati often expresses his aspiration that all Swazis be reunited.
Because of colonial-era territorial gerrymandering, more Swazis live outside Swaziland than in the small country left behind within diminished borders.
The territory Swaziland wants back is divided into three sections. Located in South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province to the west, KaNgwane extends up to 40km from Swaziland’s west to northeast border, fitting like a cap over the country’s northern area.
To the east, also in present-day South Africa, Ngavuma, if reacquired by Swaziland, would once again reunite geographically the kingdom with the Indian Ocean. Swaziland would no longer be a landlocked country, but would encompass what is now South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, south from the Mozambique border to Lake Sibaya.
A final 65km by30 km curved strip of land, the Nsikazi Area, is not contiguous with Swaziland or the other disputed lands. Described by one diplomat as ”floating like an island of Swazidom”, the strip extends north from the White River in South Africa’s Mpumalanga Province. ”This land rightfully belongs to Swazis,” Khuzulwandle said. ”We have waited over a century to bring our brothers and sisters back into the fold under their king.”
An official with the South African foreign ministry said last year, ”Several tribes and countries are making claims to South African territory, not just the Swazis. Some have more legitimate arguments than the Swazis. But if we were to make concessions to the Swazis, it would not end there because of the other people’s claims.”
So, why the apparent change of policy? The South African mission to Swaziland commented no further than to say that no committee has yet been set up and the idea of doing so is in the preliminary stage.
One suggestion raised by foreign observers is that South Africa, for purposes of bilateral friendship, wishes to be seen by Mswati as seriously considering a matter the Swazi leadership has considered critical for decades.
South Africa is important to Swaziland, a tiny kingdom with a population of 1,1-million. Sixty percent of Swazi exports including all of its coal are sold to South Africa and Swaziland imports 80% of its goods and services, including all petroleum products, from South Africa.
In a rare display of public pique for royal diplomats, who are usually noted for their discretion, Khuzulwandle two years ago expressed his disappointment with South African President Thabo Mbeki for ignoring his committee.
Subsequent behind the scenes complaints, which persisted during high level bi-lateral meetings, may have prompted South Africa’s foreign minister to bring the Swazi government the news they wished to hear on her recent state visit to the kingdom.
Whether the pledge will lead to actual border adjustment negotiations remains to be seen.
Millions of South Africans would become Swazi citizens if the disputed territories are returned to Swaziland.
The Border Adjustment Committee has not yet had government-to-government talks, but has met with Swazi chiefs in South Africa who still retain their traditional roles. Khuzulwandle told the Swazi press that the South African chiefs were receptive to the re-incorporation idea.
During the 19th century, Swazis never militarily confronted the British colonialists. Instead, Swazi warriors assisted the British to defeat ethnic groups like the Pedi who were troubling the colonialists. Consequently, the British did not dismantle Swazi leadership, the way they subjugated the Zulu under the Natal Colonial government. Swaziland became a British protectorate, and Swazis retained their national identity in tact until independence in 1968.
But individual British miners and Boer farmers (Dutch settlers) laid claim to Swazi territory in the late 19th century. Paul Kruger, president of the Boer Republics, even claimed that he was the rightful ”King of the Swazis” because he could transform the territory by laying a rail line from Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, to the Indian Ocean, after annexing Swaziland first.
From the time of his coronation in 1921, King Sobhuza, Mswati’s father, continuously sought territorial reunification. He found an unlikely ally in South Africa’s apartheid regime. Desirous to show the world it had an ally in a black African state, Pretoria cooperated in the border adjustment issue. The plan was to make Swaziland a kind of ”Bantustan”; a ”homeland” where all South African Swazis would become citizens, wherever they lived in South Africa.
As was the case with other tribal homelands of the time (which were never recognised by the international community), this would have made South African Swazis legal aliens in the country of their birth, and would have made it easier for authorities to control their travel, employment and residency.
By 1982, an agreement had been finalised, but resistance from South Africa’s KwaZulu legislature scuttled the deal. King Sobhuza died weeks later. His life’s dream now may have been resuscitated by the Mbeki administration’s decision to consider Swaziland’s border adjustment claim. — IPS