SADC IS A DEAD END

Government’s knack for brewing crises was abroad once more last week when on the same day it emerged that 150 students enrolled with the University of Botswana would have to return home because government had only awarded 25 scholarships out of 178 applicants, Prime Minister Cleopas Sipho Dlamini was proudly telling senators that government was proceeding with the construction of the E1.6 billion Parliament precinct during the current financial year.

Project

Yet this controversial project was a common feature in the petitions to Members of Parliament (MPs) by constituencies that triggered civil unrest just over a year ago culminating with the massacre of dozens of protestors by security forces. Additionally, the parliamentary precinct project also does not enjoy the universal support of the people’s elected representatives, MPs, with some calling for its canning. But that obviously is a cry in the wild as government is steaming ahead with the project financed via a loan from India.

Typically, under the tinkhundla political system the people have no say on setting the national agenda, an exclusive preserve of the leadership. In the wake of a raised crescendo of voices calling for political transformation, an educated emaSwati youth – at least those not politically comatose – have become a threat to the obtaining hegemony. Apparently government’s faulty reasoning is, if it is not to neutralise the rebellious youth, to make it impossible for emaSwati youth to pursue tertiary education. A perfect lesson on how to create a crisis, an art that government and the leadership have perfected.

Development

While on the subject of education, the pillar of development, I am reminded of a conversation a select few journalists and I once had with an expert from the United Nations (UN) whom we had asked to explain why Eswatini was classified a medium income country when at the time almost 70 per cent of the population was living well below the international poverty datum line. Having explained the methodology of how this classification was derived, he explained that if the kingdom did not live up to this classification that could mean one thing, and one thing only, bad governance.

Features

He went on to rationalise that given the kingdom’s peculiar features, it should be the lodestar of development on the continent from which would have accrued free universal education from the cradle to the grave thus installing Eswatini to the twin positions of intellectual and academic leadership of the continent, free and perhaps the best health services to drive medical tourism and economic development equal to none. Above all, he shared that it was one country that could offload at least a million Emalangeni to every liSwati each financial year without derailing its economic and developmental imperatives. Thus the much hyped up, but evidently puerile, First World dream would probably have been an organic outcome of the kingdom’s focused development trajectory motored by good governance other than what it is, a pipe dream.    

Contrary

But contrary to this optimistic picture that was being painted, the tinkhundla political system, given its excesses coupled to a lack of checks and balances, has managed to manufacture poverty at such a grand scale that Eswatini is considered one of the worst poverty stricken countries on the continent. That is all thanks to bad governance occasioned by an untenable political system serving the interests of the political elites. But for the fact that the truth is anathema under the prevailing polity, it is this state of affairs that, over the years, has brewed toxic anger, especially among the youth, that has been latent until government, in its convoluted wisdom, banned the people from petitioning their MPs with their grievances that exploded in political turmoil and civil unrest last year.

Mediation

This brings me to the question of the intervention and mediation by the Southern African Development Community (SADC). After two summits of Heads of State and government of member countries, there is no solution in sight to the kingdom’s political imbroglio. This even after government, except to pay lip service, had shown its hand and hostility towards a national dialogue. The communique at the conclusion of the 42nd Ordinary Summit of SADC Heads of State and government in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, had no take home in terms of outcomes except mandating the new Chairman of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation Namibia President Hage Geingob, to convene an Extra-ordinary Summit of the Organ Troika plus Eswatini on the securing situation in the country.

This after receiving a brief report from government on the security situation. It would appear that SADC had no prior information or intelligence of its own on the situation in the country even though President Cyril Ramaphosa, as the immediate former Chairman of the Organ Troika, ought to have reported on progress or lack thereof on his engagement with stakeholders. Consequently there was no reference to the murders of pro-multiparty protestors by the security forces and ensuring covert internecine war of attrition to neutralise tinkhundla opponents.

  Challenges

As I see it, the Organ Troika has its work cut out for it since it appears it will confine itself to the security situation tabled by government and not the political challenges facing the kingdom. Also of note is that President Geingob will be the third Chairman of the Organ Troika since the political upheavals convulsed the kingdom yet there is little or no political will and commitment to resolving the impasse by the SADC leadership collective. You would swear they have all been bewitched! But at this juncture, nothing is surprising because SADC’s inaction is providing empirical evidence once more that it- is serving the interests of the leaders and not the peoples of member States. In the circumstances, constituents of the pro-multiparty movement ought to look elsewhere, certainly beyond SADC, for positive intervention to resolve Eswatini’s political stand-off.    

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