Time is running out for cash-strapped Swaziland as its fiscal crisis continues to deepen, threatening the local currency’s peg with the South African rand and putting services and salaries at risk.
There are fears that civil servants will not receive their salaries this month. It is understood that, since March, the government has been paying only net salaries and has not been making pension or other insurance contributions.
Failure to pay public wages could to trigger mass public protests, sharpening the focus on absolute monarch King Mswati III, who is coming under increasing pressure to accept democratic reform.
The 43-year-old monarch has temporarily withdrawn from public life in preparation for the annual Incwala (kingship) ceremony. This period of seclusion, during which Mswati takes part in cleansing, prayers and rituals, can last for two months.
Rights groups such as the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa have likened Mswati’s actions to those of Roman emperor Nero, who is famously said to have fiddled while Rome burned in 64AD.
Swaziland’s financial problems stem from a sudden fall in revenue payments from the Southern African Customs Union, but critics of the regime also blame poor economic management and widespread corruption because of the power wielded by Mswati and his inner circle.
In a country where two-thirds of the population live in poverty and one in four adults are HIV-positive, it is extremely vulnerable to the financial squeeze, which has had a large impact on basic health and education services.
It has been more than a year since the International Monetary Fund first advised Africa’s last absolute monarchy to slash its public wage bill and overhaul its poorly Âmanaged economy.
Labour unions have joined forces with pro-democracy campaigns and since the beginning of the year have been staging frequent and noisy public protests, objecting to retrenchments and calling for political change.
The ongoing strikes seem to have paralysed the government, which has failed to meet the IMF target to cut jobs and, as a result, cannot access emergency donor funding.
A plan announced by South Africa in August to lend its landlocked neighbour R2.4-billion appears to be on ice following resistance by Mswati to agree to conditions such as the unbanning of political parties and open dialogue about democratic reform.
Other reported possible bailouts coming from royal families in Kuwait and Qatar also seem to be either on hold or shelved indefinitely.
Secretary general of the Swaziland Federation of Labour Vincent Ncongwane said: “We do not know what is going to happen come payday later this month.
“They … [are] trying to find the money but their backs are up against the wall. I think this could be the end of this current system of governance because they really have no other option apart from the loan from South Africa and the political conditions that come with that.”
Agence France-Presse quoted Finance Minister Majozi Sithole as saying on Wednesday that the government would do their best to pay civil servants’ salaries at the end of November, but that the kingdom had “serious fiscal challenges”.
Ncongwane said that there was a growing acceptance among government members and some traditional authorities that reform was the only option but he said no one “had the guts” to stand up to the king.
Swazi pro-democracy campaigÂner and businessman Mandla Hlatshwayo, a former adviser to Mswati now exiled in South Africa, told the Mail & Guardian that he did not believe the government had any plan to resolve its problems. “From what we can see, they are doing nothing. “And the longer this continues, the harder they are making it for investors to have any confidence in the economy, which is damaging it even further,” Hlatshwayo said.