MEDIOCRITY AS A MEASURE OF SUCCESS

The Kingdom of Eswatini is strategically positioned, both physically and historically, to have avoided the pitfalls that have befallen and ruined a majority of post-colonial African nations and, therefore, ought to be the contemporary leading example of how to get it right the first time.

But sadly this appears not to be the case in what seems to be a fixation of following the well trodden ruinous road to oblivion. The singular advantage of this country over others is its small physical size, which, relative to its two neighbouring countries South Africa and Mozambique, is the size of a small village. Coupled with this is the equally small population of approximately 1.2 million – the smallest of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) member States. In all its 51 years of independence, Eswatini has never been at war either within or externally while she has been witness to two drawn out liberation wars on either side of her borders; South Africa and Mozambique. In the case of Mozambique, independence was followed by one of the longest civil wars on the continent between the ruling Frelimo government and Renamo opposition backed by the then apartheid regime in South Africa. 

Realities

As I see it, given this history and physical realities Eswatini should be far ahead in development terms than her two giant neighbours. After all not only are emaSwati a homogenous society – at least until the last 20 years or so before the Asian migration floodgates opened – which had insulated the nation from tribal-based strife, the kingdom is host to sizable mineral resources which, if had they been prudently exploited, would have speeded industrialisation and, therefore, economic development. Developmental issues such as electrification, proper water reticulation and sanitation, not to speak of decent houses for the populace, would be no longer on the agenda since these would be universal by now.

Population

Sadly, electricity and water reticulation and sanitation are far from covering the entire nation, a whole 51 years since independence even when one can traverse this country North-South and East-West in just one day. The larger population is living below the international poverty datum line, which means a majority of the people can hardly afford one decent meal a day, and their abodes are not fit for human habitation. The vision borne of the National Development Strategy adopted in 1997 that speaks of Eswatini being among the top 10 developing nations by 2022 would have been obsolete since by the time it was authored, the kingdom would have probably surpassed the status of a developing to the first developed country in Africa.

Realistically, the United Nations classifies Eswatini as a middle income country. This, in real terms, means that the majority of the people are living within the middle class bracket with a negligible percentage falling into the poverty trap. Salient factors informing this categorisation include the physical size of the country, size of the population and literacy levels as well as natural resources, including minerals. In fact one UN specialist once opined that Eswatini, given her unique attributes, was probably the only country in the world that could afford to gift each citizen a million Emalangeni every budgeting cycle without negatively impacting on her national development imperatives. That today the majority of the people remain enslaved by poverty means there is something terribly wrong in the way this country is governed. To put it bluntly, the high poverty levels are a manifestation of poor leadership, period.  

Until thus far, Vision 2022 will remain a pipe dream ostensibly because the powers that be truncated and refused to holistically implement its parent, the NDS, whose only sin was identifying the obtaining polity as an obstacle and stumbling block to achieving its objectives apropos economic development and delivering a better life for all. The NDS identified political transformation as a turnkey to achieving the national economic and development imperatives. While our leadership and its kow-towing phalanx of praise singers, bootlickers, sycophants, etc are fond of pointing at and criticizing multiparty democracies elsewhere, especially in South Africa, the irony is that the obtaining domestic political system is far from being sustainable in the long haul. This is because it has no foundation in terms of popular support except lies and fabrication simply because political power is not resident with the people.

Democracy

To be pointing fingers at and bemoaning multiparty democracy at our two neighbouring countries and beyond is self-defeating and remains a hindrance to this country achieving its full potential. To be cognisant of that obviously begins with unshackling and liberating our minds from being influenced and limited by space, which I refer to as the bee-hive mentality in which thinking is confined to within or relative to one’s existential space and is thus mediocre. Hence we often celebrate mediocrity in the name of success. Just imagine after 51 years we still cannot generate enough electricity to be self-sufficient to the point of exporting it; we still do not have no universal water reticulation and sanitation for a paltry population of about 1.2 million; all our primary and secondary roads network has still not been upgraded into highways in a country you can literally traverse in a day; we still have in place an education system not synced to the developmental imperatives of the nation; the majority of emaSwati remain captives to poverty and disease and; we have a non-existent health delivery system. Yet over the years government has poured tens of billions of Emalangeni into the military while cynically boasting of a peaceful nation.    

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