A POLITICAL HIATUS!

THE past year has been a downward spiral in the political space in the country. There was so much uproar over how the people want to be governed versus the set laws in Eswatini, especially the provisions of the Constitution. It was refreshing to see young people, back in 2021, take an interest and want to have a say about leadership and governance.

I have worked for civil society organisations for a while and being in the communities, one of the setbacks to development that traditional leaders always pointed out was the disinterest of young people in politics, and as a result they hardly ever attended community meetings. So, it was quite nice to see them suddenly grow interest in community and national affairs.

Aggressive

The young people came in with a fierce and an almost aggressive take on the political state of affairs. This was good; this is good any time there needs to be a change. The aggressiveness, the drive to want to see change is what is needed to move mountains. No country, not even one country, has ever achieved anything worthy by simply ‘negotiating’. Of course the process starts there, but eventually it progresses to more convincing ways of getting the will of the people. As a result of this momentum, TROIKA had to be involved, this should be an indication of how eye-opening these gestures were. A few months later, we hit a brick wall. I do not know what changed but the aggression, the fierceness; the ‘we want change NOW’ attitude was taken over by a nonchalant outlook on political and social issues.

Threatening

Besides the fact that our government can lead by threatening those who dare demand answers, the political environment became too toxic for any positive idea to strive. So it seems.
This brings me to my question, have we reached a political hiatus? There were so many areas of improvement in terms of engagements, I saw and still see opportunity for political education and awareness. When young people are hungry, they need to be fed. They are hungry for information, hungry for change and they desire to be used to drive that change. That is where the opportunity is. That is exactly what our political leaders should have used to their advantage.

This is the time we could have tapped into that potential of young people and used them to achieve the long-term dream of taking Eswatini into a first world status. This is such a missed opportunity, but I believe not all is lost here. There is still hope. Of course, tapping into this potential meant a large mountain of responsibility awaits everyone of us, but especially our government. It meant including changes to policies, laws, and all the things that the youth was demanding into yearly budgeting.

Effort

It meant literally getting off their bums and putting in the effort. If we want to see the country move forward in terms of politics, technology and catching up with the rest of the world, we need to put in the work! Once the momentum gets rolling, the only way is forward, we cannot afford breaks or setbacks. This looming hiatus is worrying and scaring me at the same time because we need young people as charged as they can be. My Bahai Faith background taught me that ‘The youth can move the world’ and I strongly believe that is exactly where we have been headed since 2021. The thing with this awakening, everybody knew all along that it had to happen eventually, but no one wanted to say it out loud, not even the politically inclined. But this ‘hot and cold’ approach cannot be sustained.

That is why as soon as the ball started rolling, as a country we should have cushioned that with laws and policies, so that the move forward and the change being called for is cemented and solid. Everything is governed by law, even in the most democratic countries. Perhaps, it is worth our time to sit down and go back to the drawing board. Find ways to sustainably have dialogues and emerge victorious from all ends of the spectrum.

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