There is a disturbing sameness about the way South Africa’s two most vexatious neighbours negotiate their way up the proverbial creek with nary a sign of a paddle.
Swaziland’s King Mswati III appears to be emulating President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. In the finest Austin Powers tradition, the mini-me king is attempting a Murambatsvina-style slum clearance of his own. Irin News Services reported earlier this month that the bull-dozers are set to move in to clear a string of informal urban settle-ments as the Swazi government and local authorities clamp down on unplanned housing.
Forty homes have been earmarked for demolition in the Madonsa settlement, a tract of peri-urban land bordering the central commercial town of Manzini, 35km outside the capital, Mbabane. A further 100 homes at Ludzidzini royal village, 20km east of Mbabane, also face destruction to make way for an extension of King Mswati’s home to accommodate his 13 wives and their children.
The Mail & Guardian understands that the clearout operation has temporarily been placed on ice, a move the leader of the banned opposition, the People United for Democracy (Pudemo), Mario Masuku claims was because of the international outcry raised by his party.
According to Masuku, the king’s strategy was to get local chiefs to carry out the evictions that would target his members, particularly the 16 currently behind bars on charges related to a spate of bombings of government buildings. Pudemo has denied any involvement in the bombings.
One of the detainees, Brian Shaw, who was allegedly shot in the shoulder when he was arrested two weeks ago, has been placed under police guard in the Mbabane hospital.
”Police are denying his family access. Not even his lawyer is allowed to see him,” said Masuku. ”It’s an old apartheid-era police trick to hold a suspect who has been wounded and possibly tortured for a long time to allow him to recover from injuries before letting people see the result of their handiwork.” The opposition members are expected to appear in court for a bail hearing on March 7.
Last week, members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s central executive committee joined a picket at the Swazi consulate in Johannesburg to press for democracy and human rights in the kingdom. Further protests and a border blockade are also in the pipeline.
The South African government had been urging patience on Mswati’s critics while he worked on a new Constitution. But, like Mugabe, the king has tinkered with the basic laws to ensure untrammelled power. The result of nearly a decade of labour, published this month, leaves Mswati sharing the dubious title with Morocco’s Mohammed VI of one of the last two absolute monarchs in Africa. His power to hire and fire parliamentarians has remained unchecked and there is no mention of allowing opposition parties, banned by Mswati’s father 33 years ago, the legal right to operate.