Swaziland’s oldest opposition group, the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC), will register as a political party to test the kingdom’s controversial new Constitution. The new basic law, endorsed by King Mswati III earlier this year, makes provision for freedom of assembly, but remains mum on whether it is legal for political parties to contest seats in Parliament. In 1973, Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza II, issued an edict that suspended the old constitution and banned political parties.
Ngwane president Obed Dlamini, who served as prime minister of Swaziland from 1989 to 1993, told the Mail & Guardian this week: ‘The current Constitution provides for freedom of assembly. That right should be exercised to its fullest.â€
But the person behind the constitutional review process, the king’s brother, Prince Mangaliso Dlamini, is adamant that only individuals rather than political parties may be elected to public office, prompting a ‘we would challenge this in the courts†response from the Ngwane president.
‘The Constitution says nothing about participation of political parties. If they are going to contest, how will this be done? Electoral laws must be put in place. The Constitution has made no provision for that at all,†Prince David Dlamini, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional affairs told the M&G. ‘Parties are not banned, strictly speaking. We just don’t recognise them.†The minister said he didn’t know when electoral laws would be instituted.
‘We cannot accept the fiction of being told that political parties are free to operate with such a [royal] decree in place. To allow the myth that individual merit is the only path to Parliament, in a multiparty era, is to deny the existence of parties,†said Vincent Ncongwane, secretary general of the Swaziland Federation of Labour.
At a meeting at the end of last month the labour body and civil society groups urged Ngwane to put the new Constitution to the test.
The more militant opposition group, the People United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), has indicated that it has no intention of joining Ngwane in its action. It has also dismissed the new Constitution as lacking legitimacy. ‘We don’t respect the new Constitution because we were not involved in its making. We won’t accept to be governed by a Constitution that Mswati can overrule,†Mario Masuku, the Pudemo president, fumed. ‘We are not going to go and beg for freedom. If they have a stiff-necked position we will meet them head-on,†he said, speaking to the M&G from the courts where 17 of his members were applying for bail. They were arrested for a spate of bombings that targeted government buildings. The party has consistently denied any involvement. — Additional reporting by Irin News Agency