TROUBLED KINGDOM: Eswatini opposition rejects King Mswati’s offer of a national dialogue

Eswatini’s political and civil society opposition has firmly rejected King Mswati’s offer — which followed his meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s special envoy on Thursday — to hold a national dialogue to discuss the troubled country’s political future.

He added that as Mswati had accepted the need for national dialogue, “I appeal for calm, restraint, the respect for the rule of law and human rights on all sides to enable the process to commence.” Activists have claimed that security forces have killed more than 80 protesters, mostly with live ammunition, since pro-democracy demonstrations began in June and resumed over the past few weeks, mainly through protests at schools and strikes by transport workers. One of the demands is for the release of two pro-democracy MPs who were recently arrested and charged under the Suppression of Terrorism Act for allegedly stoking the June protests and violence.

Pudemo president Mlungisi Makhanya also said, at a press conference on Sunday, that the party rejected a Sibaya as a platform for meaningful dialogue. For one thing, those at the Sibaya would be expressing their individual views and since the venue could hold only 3,000 people they could not possibly represent three million Swazis.

Makhanya vowed that the opposition would resume its political activism, such as industrial protests and strikes by trade unions, protests by learners calling for the reopening of schools and also attention to the problems which sparked the protests in the first place. And there would be more community protests on broader issues of democratic reform and the “struggle for emancipation”.

“On the ground here there’s a lot of illegitimacy taking place. And one has one’s Parliament which is fully democratically put in place, the House of Assembly. And theoretically if it was the people needing to say something, it should come through legitimate platforms. The platforms it’s coming from are illegitimate platforms. And it makes it awkward, constitutionally, to deal with.”

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