YOU’RE WRONG MR PM!

IT had not been my wish to enter into any dialogue with the prime minister consequent to his public vitriol apropos my last column but have been thrust into this untenable position because of factual inaccuracies and omissions I had articulated when I was interviewed in response to the former’s virulent attack on my person.

Had it not been for the need to, in particular, put issues that were deliberately misinformed by factual inaccuracies into perspective coupled with omissions of fact in my comprehensive response to the PM’s toxic outpourings, I would have chosen to put a lid on the subject to not further confuse the reading public on who exactly between the two of us is evil.

It is unfortunate that on a matter that should have been private and personal to him, which I believe his autobiography to be, the PM chose to bring government into the epicentre while also using government space to ventilate his personal anger at and dislike for yours truly. But then again it is the trademark of this PM to abuse his position and office in furtherance of personal objectives.

I should count myself lucky that I am still standing and able to check-mate those with a tenuous relationship with the truth. About six of my former colleagues died within a short period after the abrupt shutdown of the Swazi Observer newspaper I was editing then. We were informed that the shock, trauma, anxiety, etc, occasioned by the sudden loss of employment and livelihoods were causal to these deaths. The shutdown of the newspaper, whatever the circumstances, is therefore neither a laughing matter nor a subject of sarcasm!

It is therefore not true that I was fired from the newspaper - I was wrongly quoted to have confirmed this in my response - as the PM would have the world believe, again contradicting himself with what is insinuated in his autobiography. Yes, he had attempted but was unsuccessful in trying to get me fired ostensibly because there never was a valid reason for what he desired since at the time the newspaper was performing better than at any other time since its launch in 1982. 
As for the issue of my participation in and losing elections, I found that to be as desperate as a man trying to postpone his inevitable fate of drowning by holding onto straws while being washed away by a heavy current.

That was quite puerile and laughable – but his audience could not dare even chuckle since they owe their positions and livelihoods to him. Like any citizen, I reserve the right to participate or not either as a voter or as a candidate in elections. And there are two constants in any elections; winning or losing with the former easily achievable by either getting voters drunk or simply buying their votes. Besides winning, there also are a host of other reasons - especially to a proponent of multiparty democracy that I am - that may well be beyond the PM’s comprehension on why I would contest an election in the circumstances. But I won’t bore him with the details.

But what I can share is the wealth of knowledge apropos the shortcomings and flaws of elections under the obtaining political hegemony. While these flaws are challengeable in courts but one can never win – not necessarily because one has no case – but to protect a system that is devoid of any integrity whatsoever. I also know that outsiders, being those who are adverse to the obtaining political hegemony can never win since the whole thing is manipulated to ensure that only candidates of choice are successful.

Those outsiders who are proponents of a pluralistic body politic, such as Jan Sithole, the leader of the Swaziland Democratic Party, occasionally win not because there were no attempts to sabotage them but because they were a step ahead of the manipulative machinations of the EBC whose primary mandate is to deliver to Parliament people whose focus is on their stomachs and not on real politics. So yes, I achieved that experience which I set out to when I participated as a candidate, a privilege the PM may never enjoy in his lifetime.

The PM’s sensitivities on my criticising government can only be a manifestation of someone with a short memory. This criticism was adequately if not excessively ventilated at Sibaya when people also called for his and the Cabinet’s heads to roll. People further sought to reclaim the political power to elect their PM. Had government been performing to expectations and satisfaction of the people it would not have come to that. Therefore, my criticism of government is merely echoing Sibaya.

Additionally, it is not the role of journalists to sing government’s praises. That role is for public relations (PR) practitioners and propagandists. A journalist’s primary responsibility is to the truth twinned with the role of oversight and holding government to account and not to use the profession to curry favours from politicians. And that is not being evil but being true to the silent majority who look up to journalists to get their government to act and behave in their best interests.

It would be a disservice to the nation to praise government for the widespread poverty and the ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots; a crumbling public health delivery system manifested by a chronic shortage of drugs; wide scale unemployment particularly among the youth; spiraling criminal activity; nepotism and exploitation of mineral resources with no benefit to the people whatsoever; swathes of rich farmland held by government lying fallow while the nation is starving; mismanagement of the fiscus including appropriating taxpayers’ Emalangeni on uneconomical vanity projects to present a false picture of a First World nation; closure of iconic companies such as Usutu Pulp; monopolising of the economy by an elite minority; loss of AGOA, etc.
No, you are wrong Mr PM! Furthermore, your puerile posturing does not befit a person of your stature?  

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