Home | Feature | TINKHUNDLA SHOULD GUARD AGAINST POLITICAL ‘PARACHUTING’

TINKHUNDLA SHOULD GUARD AGAINST POLITICAL ‘PARACHUTING’

10/06/2023 06:53:00 Welcome Dlamini

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We have always been made to believe that the crafters of the Tinkhundla System of Government excluded the involvement of political parties in contesting an election and ultimately forming a government because they wanted to avoid a situation where constituents would find themselves being represented by people who are unknown to them.

This though has been undermined by the provisions of the Voters Registration Act, which allows for a person who has been a resident of an area for a period of three months to stand for the national elections. This qualifies the person to contest for the position of either Member of Parliament, Indvuna Yenkhundla (Constituency Headman) or Bucopho (Constituency Councillor). The Executive is now seeking to amend the three months into six months through the Voters Registration (Amendment) Bill. The amendment, to me, still does not satisfy the spirit of the Tinkhundla system in that I consider the six months to be still too little a time for one to be known by the people of that area. No one can claim to know a person after only six months; three months is even worse.

I fully support the argument by senators that the period must be made longer than the six months. Alternatively, the six months should qualify the person to only be eligible to vote but not to contest or stand for the election. The statement made by Senator Cethuka Sigombeni Dlamini summed up such sentiments, when he said: “Ngumhlolo wakusihlwa to allow a person who stayed a lousy six months to be elected. Where would the electorate have obtained the confidence to vote for that person?”

Warn

The senator went on to warn that a person who would want to stand for an election in such a short period of time might have ulterior motives and emaSwati needed to be extra careful of such individuals. I fully agree. Why doesn’t this parson contest the election under the constituency they have been living in for the past years of their lives? If you would go the constituency where this person has been living, chances are you would find a not-so-good history about them.

The individual merit principle on which a person has to be voted for is the cornerstone of the Tinkhundla System and stands to be polluted if the six months period is not reviewed. I say this because there is a danger of money being used to replace the meritocracy part of the system. This will lead to constituents being represented by people who are less known to them and who have little interest in developing those constituencies. This will lead us back to what is common in party politics.

We will see what was witnessed in neighbouring South Africa this past week when politician Mzwanele Manyi was sworn in as a Member of Parliament for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). This happened hardly a months after joining the EFF. Rightly so, there have been concerns on why he has been elevated into Parliament to represent the EFF yet he is not known by the party’s members, at least as a red beret activist. Manyi was an ANC member for about 30 years before he joined the African Transformation Movement (ATM), where he spent almost four years as a leader in the party. He joins the EFF less than a year ahead of the general elections in 2024.

Groundwork

Similarly, he left the ANC just before the 2019 general elections. After leaving the ATM, Manyi hailed the EFF, saying the party was the right home for him. But what does he know about the EFF and what do the EFF members know about him so much that he could be their representive in the legislature. No wonder ActionSA Gauteng Executive Committee Member Siyanda Makhubo suggested the move was unfair to other EFF members. “Barely a month as a member of the EFF, with no credibility or groundwork as an activist, Mzwanele Manyi will be sworn in to parliament as an MP without leading an EFF branch. If I was an EFF Member, I’d be mad,” Makhubo said. Some other people on social media shared the same sentiment, saying Manyi was ‘parachuted into parliament’ by the party. Others defended the party’s decision, saying he was well experienced in politics.

Reasonable

In an apparent attempt to fend of criticism of his joining the EFF and being parachuted into the august House, Manyi said the top leadership of the EFF were reasonable people, some of whom he’d worked with over the years, long before the EFF was even conceived. “So, I know that we shall find common ground and move on in a united manner. I join the EFF as a rank-and-file member and will make my contribution in that capacity,” he said.
The case of Manyi has reminded me of Thandaza Silolo, the Spokesperson of the Swaziland Liberation Movement (SWALIMO). Silolo was for a long time a member of the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) and he went to jail, on terrorism charges, as a member for this party. After having served his sentence, he came out, dumped PUDEMO and formed his own party, which he called the People’s Front. To this day, no other member of this party has ever been known, save for Silolo.

When questions began being asked about the membership, Silolo dissolved the party and said the reason for doing so was because he wanted to pursue a career in journalism. He was soon announced as a reporter for the Swaziland News. The manner in which the party was dissolved left me totally convinced that it had no members. If it did, Silolo would have simply quit and left his deputy and the other executive members to continue leading the organisation. At Swaziland News, his journalism career appears to have not taken off at all. In April of 2022, he was unveiled as a member of SWALIMO.

The then SWALIMO Secretary General (SG) Dr Siphetfo Dlamini and his then deputy Gift Dlamini were the ones who presented Silolo to the media. It was apparent that in SWALIMO’s books, they had made a big catch. Not long after that, Silolo was announced as SWALIMO’s Spokesperson. He became the face of the organisation. What did he know about SWALIMO? I don’t know.

Defected

Were there no other capable members within the organisation capable of taking up this position? I don’t know. What I know, however, is that he was parachuted into the position. He now had to speak and be the face of an organisation he had joined only a few months back. Some of the people within SWALIMO did not know him but now he had to speak on their behalf and be their face. Now that SWALIMO has lost most of its leaders, some of whom defected to form their own party, and their president in self-exile in the UK, Silolo is now the only visible leader.

What do you make of that?
The six months period provided for in the Voters Registration legislation has the same potential of parachuting people into positions they shouldn’t otherwise have occupied. The concept of ‘parachuting’, as explained by French publication Le Monde, is a political metaphor that comes from war. It means sending an outsider officer to the electoral front. In the United States, the publication further states, this concept is known to some as ‘carpetbagging’.

“For the legislative elections, far-right pundit Eric Zemmour decided to campaign in Saint-Tropez, Mélenchon Deputy Manuel Bompard in Marseille, and former Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in the Loiret department – for which they all been accused of illegitimacy. Last-minute landings most often incite ‘ethical disapproval’ for pitting ‘the little guy against the big guy, the country against the capital, the people from below against the people from above, common sense against ideology’,” Political Scientist Michel Hastings writes in the book Le Parachutage Politique (2003, “Political Parachuting”). While this ‘parachuting’ is allowed in other countries, It has to be frowned upon in Eswatini because no politician should represent a constituency he has no long-term ties with. That’s not the spirit of Tinkhundla.