At what point is a civil war declared? Anyone looking from the outside would find it hard to believe that there is a civil war going on in peaceful little eSwatini, especially since King Mswati III and his large entourage are circling the globe, sweet investors to invest in their fiefdom.
Yet every day, even the major state-controlled media outlets report on the increasing incidents of politically motivated assassinations and bombings. There are reports that members of the Royal Swaziland Police and Army are being attacked by pro-democracy activists, and that many police officers are trying to resign, but the king’s government denies their resignations. Unorganized Swazis are moving to remove the absolute monarch in the hope that democracy will free them from poverty.
Organic change, uprisings and revolutions ignite uniquely in each country. In 2010, when the Arab Spring saw a change of governments in Tunisia and Egypt, there was hope that the same spirit of democratic change would find its way in sub-Saharan Africa, but it did not. The time was not ripe. Is eSwatini now ripe, ruled by the last absolute monarch in Africa?
And while the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union and most of the world have apparently not paid much attention to the daily political bombings, violence and deaths in eSwatini, and have continued to provide support for the absolute monarchy, the country is a good case study in how sustained poverty and oppression eventually spawns generations who feel they have everything to gain by fighting for change.
It can be argued that most of Africa is not governed by the will of the people, but the will of the people will eventually define itself; the people will find their voice and their power.
No one could have predicted the igniting of what now clearly appears to be an unstoppable call for change in the Kingdom of eSwatini. Calls for democracy have been ringing out since the 1970s and have gained momentum since the early 2000s when King Mswati III took over more of the economy, amassing wealth while sinking more of the population in intolerable poverty.
Since mid-2021, when massive protests calling for democracy broke out in the small country of 1.2 million people, Mswati has not had a peaceful night. The 2021 protests shocked everyone in eSwatini amid Covid-related lockdowns and restrictions. They caught the royal regime, its government and political parties off guard.
For years, those calling for democracy inside and outside of eSwatini have been waiting for such a response. For decades, the call for democracy was strongest outside the country; for the first time this has changed. It is clear that the protests will continue, even without external assistance and support. When the time has come for an idea, it is unstoppable.
I remember talking to my grandmother in the late 1990s. I would ask her why the Swazis weren’t pushing for democracy, didn’t they want it? I was in my late teens, naive in my belief that true democracy is easy to achieve. At the time, I was hopeful that democracy would end poverty and inequality in South Africa; the euphoria of Thabo Mbeki’s “African Renaissance” really had me captivated.
My grandmother told me that democracy brings war and instability. This is a view that state-owned media, the only type of media allowed in eSwatini, has pierced the consciousness of the people so that the majority have rejected democracy. Mswati and her propaganda machine did a good job of making people believe that the high crime and violence rates in South Africa are the result of democracy. Mswati and his regime did not foresee that generations born into extreme poverty would be different from previous generations; generations who bought into the narrative of elevating fake peace over total freedom.
Since colonial times, Queen Gwamile and later King Sobhuza II navigated the hostile political terrain, avoiding costly wars and maintaining as peaceful a state as possible and preventing eSwatini from being usurped by apartheid South Africa. eSwatini imagined itself as the “Switzerland of Africa”, but there has always been a false peace here.
King Mswati III knows that the only way to keep the people subjugated in the long term is through the use of armed forces. He has used culture, religion, and the economy as tools of oppression, and they have worked well in past generations, but clearly not anymore.
It has used the army from time to time to quell protests, but now it cannot use the army directly, because to the rest of the world, it is still pretending that eSwatini is a democracy. eSwatini is far from being a democracy. So, there is a war going on in eSwatini, while the rest of the world pretends it isn’t, and because Mswati continues to deny this fact. And yet even your state-controlled media has to report on the daily violence.
For the first time, the police and soldiers in Mswati are afraid of the people, because the people are shelling the houses and property of any police or military, regardless of whether that policeman or soldier has been involved in stopping the pro-democracy protests. .
For the past two decades, Mswati has been bold in taking over the entire economy of eSwatini. He has one of the toughest tax regimes for his subjects, who are supposed to be his citizens. Mswati taxes Swazi companies even before they break even, yet offers huge tax breaks to foreign companies, in which he is always a shareholder.
The number of foreign-owned companies has increased tenfold in the last two decades, but they do not benefit the people: they mistreat and underpay the workers, and they are protected by the government. It is a despicable situation, designed to keep Swazis out of economic activity, clearly with the thought that economic repression maintains Mswati’s greedy grip on power. And yet, this has been the trigger for the change that is coming.
eSwatini has been classified as a middle-income country, but the high levels of poverty experienced by the majority of the population belies this. Most of the revenue goes to the monarch’s coffers, while the public treasury and public services receive none of that revenue, resulting in the current situation where public health, social services and education are in trouble.
Hospitals have gone years without adequate funding, even for basic drugs like paracetamol. Social and public services such as health and welfare are heavily dependent on donor funding, with Mswati pocketing huge amounts that she does not have to account for.
The younger generations, whose psyche is configured differently than the older generations, who will not tolerate engineered poverty, growing inequality, and lack of access to basic public goods and services, will turn violent in their struggle for freedom, equality and equal access.
Perhaps this is what will prompt multinational organizations, including SADC and the AU, to act more decisively in advancing democracy and prosperity for all, at least denying membership to countries and regimes that are corrupt and undemocratic. .
Calls for SADC and AU to act against Mswati have come from all corners of the world and have gone unheeded. Mswati has been aided in his corruption, oppression and absolutism.
