CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF BAD GOVERNANCE?

THE tragedy of our time is the ever widening schism between the haves and the have-nots – the wealthy and indigent in other words - in an otherwise potentially rich country that has been accepted as a new normal in the absence and or silence of critical voices.

Causal to these extreme positions – wealth and grinding poverty – is the farcical body politic of the Kingdom of Eswatini, on one hand, and the enforced conspiracy of silence by the people that has manifestly deprived society of civil society activism to influence the direction the nation state ought to take to realise its potential.

While the nation’s body politic is positioned to serve the best interests of the political elite, by remaining silent in the face of bad policies and decisions coupled with a massive wastage of resources on projects that are far from being economically viable, or even sustainable, become complicit to the resultant dysfunctional nation state of two extremes.

Just how effective an active civil society can be was illustrated during the 1990s decade when, led by labour unions, the people tabled 27 demands to government. The few humane policies and programmes, such as elderly grants, that are operational today were derived from the 27 demands. Were it not for civil society these policies and programmes would not be there since it is not in the nature of the government of the Tinkhundla political system to prioritise the people and their needs but to serve the political elite.

While the leadership always lip mouthfuls in support of and on the virtues of being wealthy at just about every public platform that avails itself, very little is said of and about the plight of the ever increasing population of the indigent, the people who are slaves to the twin tyrannies of poverty and disease largely occasioned by widespread unemployment.

If anything, it is the government’s – never mind the cyclical elections because even though the people in political positions may change the government remains the same – insatiable appetite to create crises instead of opportunities for the people in its pursuit of megalomania inspired projects for the enjoyment of the political elite. One of these is the crisis of foreign direct investment ostensibly because investors are chased away by demands of free shareholdings in their ventures.

Yes, what fills one with anarchic anger is that while a majority of the people remain slaves to ever worsening grinding poverty, disease and wide scale unemployment, with no meaningful intervention from a government fixated on the leadership, the Kingdom of Eswatini should be up there alongside the giant economies of the world as opined by former Israel ambassador Arthur Lenk earlier this year.
Ambassador Lenk pointedly noted that the kingdom had only one million people to train, and if government concentrated on the right things, developed new skills (especially in technology) the kingdom would become an economic giant. Ambassador Lenk reasoned that the one positive attribute essential to achieving greatness that is common between the kingdom and Israel was the physical size of the two countries, noting that the two countries were small, which was an advantage compared to bigger countries.

Using the example of Israel of what he was talking about, the diplomat was not in cuckoo land since that country is rated amongst the most developed economies in the world. Poignantly, former European Union Ambassador Nicola Bellomo earlier this year candidly observed that without external interventions, the kingdom would have long been in crisis since over 70 per cent of development funding, not to speak of humanitarian interventions, comes from external sources. With a government that is not directly responsible and answerable to the people traditional inability to resolve any problems, even when they are of its own making, often challenges are left to run themselves out of steam. Occasionally government, when it pretends to be concerned, would appoint a task team or a commission of enquiry to investigate the obvious.
As I see it, that every academic year is punctuated by strikes by students from tertiary institutions is but one small example of government’s failures to deliver effective leadership. As it were, had government properly prioritised national development imperatives such perennial strikes by tertiary students would never be a feature of our national life simply because education, and not the military, would be government’s priority. In fact education should be free from pre-school to tertiary level if national resources were exploited for the benefit of the nation and not the leadership. Yes, given the mineral wealth of the kingdom coupled with a conducive political system, which the Tinkhundla political system cannot provide, it is not only education that should be free but even basic services like electricity, water, health, etc. After all we are talking about a small population in an equally small country whose management should be a walk in the park and the envy of the world had the political status quo derived its legitimacy from the people.
Next year the Kingdom of Eswatini will be celebrating 50 years of independence yet an increasing majority of the people remains slaves to poverty, disease and unemployment. So what is there to celebrate?  

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