ELECTIONS: IS IT ORGANISED CHAOS?

The wheels are coming off the Tinkhundla election juggernaut with the emergence of a highly flawed voters roll that speaks to an apparently flawed registration process, leading to claims that even the dead have suddenly resurrected and are registered to vote in the forthcoming elections. Or could it be the hiccups are just a diversion deliberately created as a smokescreen for a deeper clandestine mission of pre-empting the outcome of the elections.

It is an open secret that government and the leadership are smarting from the events of and post June 2021 when the kingdom was convulsed by pro-multiparty democracy protests. The protests attracted the worst of the governing elites culminating in the State unleashing its brutality by slaughtering tens of protestors that an inspection by the Human Rights and Integrity Commission put at a conservative 46.

Ascertain

There never was a follow-up inquiry as recommended by the commission to ascertain the exact number of those killed and maimed and to certify under whose hand though its preliminary inspection pointed the finger at the police. But leaders of the mass democratic movement (MDM) claimed that not tens but hundreds of their members were martyred. Will emaSwati ever get to the bottom of what happened and how many were killed and maimed and by whom? The State holds the key to unlocking that door into the abyss. Until the June 2021 protests, the last time the Tinkhundla political system, that had initially encroached into our lives as an experiment was shaken to its core was during the 1996 mass stay-away to press home 27 workers demands under the auspices of the then Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU). The national constitution was itself part of the SFTU’s 27 demands, many of which were later embraced by government, as its own, and formulated into policies or enacted into laws.

But while the SFTU-led mass stay-away paralysed the kingdom to a virtual standstill, for a variety of reasons, it is not comparable to the June 2021 protests and the devastation it wrought, not to speak of the brutal and violent response of the State culminating in the mass slaughter of an unknown number of protesters. That government has, to date, resisted calls for an enquiry into the killings could well be tacit admission of culpability.

Covering

Not only has the government refused to get to the bottom of the killings but has also shown no interest in convening a national dialogue. Government has manufactured excuses after excuses for not convening the promised national dialogue. What has become patently obvious is that the governing elites do not have the appetite for dialoguing with political opponents over the much sought after political reforms. It is on this backdrop that the nation will be proceeding to the polls to elect a new Parliament in the forthcoming elections. As previously alluded to, these elections are unlike any other previous elections but are, from the governing elites’ perspective, a test of and a defining moment for the Tinkhundla political system as a de facto referendum between their beloved political system and multiparty democracy except that proponents of the former will not be participating.

The ultimate objective is to deliver a Parliament that will be 100 per cent loyal to the obtaining polity in order to quash any lingering doubt about the so-called credibility and legitimacy of the Tinkhundla political system. This would also make the idea of convening a national dialogue redundant. Alternatively, if holding such a dialogue is unavoidable, it would be organised on such terms that its outcomes are predetermined to rubber stamp the Tinkhundla political system as the popular choice of emaSwati and thus kill off, once and for all, competing political interests.

As I see it, it is unlikely that the demand by the exiting Parliament, the House of Assembly to be precise, for the EBC to start the voter registration afresh will win the day. Were that to happen it could scupper well laid out plans of managing a process designed to ensure that no one who does not subscribe to the political status quo will get elected in line with the narrative of patrons and supporters of the political system. The arrests and subsequent convictions of two members of parliament (MPs), Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza (Hosea) and Mthandeni Dube (Ngwempisi) are testimony of the State’s desire to sanitise Parliament of all elements opposed to the obtaining political system and is proof of the extent to which government would go to in ensuring that the much desired political changes do not happen now or in the foreseeable future. But from where is all this coming, you may wondering. It is borne of the distrust of the government and the leadership by upstanding citizens given their track record of a tenuous relationship with the truth.

Practice

The inherent subculture that has been honed to perfection is the forked tongue lingua franca that only the gullible and the phalanx of hangers on and apologists leeching off the system believe. What they say or tell the nation to do or not do is not exactly what they practice in real time. Added to this are the extreme measures that have been taken to exterminate political opponents of the status quo since the June 2021 protests. As I see it, considering what is at stake - legitimacy and credibility of Tinkhundla political system - it would not be amiss that new MPs already been anointed ahead of their confirmation in the upcoming elections. That is perhaps why even the long deceased and children are in the voters roll, ready to or having already cast their ballots while those who fit the profile of those considered to be enemies of the system are not appearing in the voters roll. You blink you lose should be the modus operandi of the forthcoming elections.

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