Africa-Press – Eswatini. “The struggle continues” was not a rhetorical slogan or mere political banter for Cde. Thulani Rudolf Maseko. It was a discipline. It was a moral compass.
It was a refusal to surrender clarity in the face of intimidation, persecution, and ultimately, assassination. Until his life was brutally taken on 21 January 2023, Maseko understood that liberation is not a moment but a process – one that demands courage, patience, and unwavering purpose as well as great intentionality.
He understood, as many patriots before him did, the true character of the national question and the historical grievance of the people of Eswatini. At its core lies a protracted and convoluted injustice: the systematic dispossession of the people, enforced through royal absolutism, entrenched privilege, and a manufactured sense of entitlement over the nation-state. This is not merely a governance failure but it is a structural denial of the collective sovereignty of EmaSwati. That sovereignty is not negotiable. It is not a concession to be granted by a monarch, nor a favour bestowed through benevolence. The right of a people to govern themselves democratically is inalienable. It exists independently of royal approval. It is a right that must be realised through organised, conscious, and sustained struggle.
Yet, as history teaches us, no liberation struggle proceeds in a straight line. Periods of advance are often followed by moments of doubt. Over the past few years, despondency has crept into sections of the mass democratic movement. Some voices – confused, fearful, or compromised – have begun to suggest that the regime emerged stronger after the 2021 uprising, that the King is invincible, and that resistance is futile. This argument is not only wrong, but also dangerous and defeatist. It mistakes repression for strength. It confuses survival with legitimacy. The Eswatini regime knows and understands that the unfinished business of the revolution endures.
Authoritarian systems often appear most powerful when they are, in fact, most fragile. The militarization of the state, the capture of the media, the imprisonment and exile of dissenting voices, the investment in intense surveillance infrastructure and social media propaganda – these are not signs of confidence. They are admissions of fear. A system that enjoys genuine consent would not need to rule through bullets, bans, and propaganda. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
The claim that the revolution has failed rests on a shallow understanding of history. No serious freedom project is defeated because it encounters setbacks. If that were the case, apartheid would still exist in South Africa, colonialism would still dominate Africa, and absolutism would still reign across Europe. Revolutions fail only when their adherents abandon principle, lose discipline, or fracture into competing egos and agendas. Revolutions fail when those who lead them abandon the clarity of vision and purpose that is required to execute them. This is precisely why mission focus is now more critical than ever.
The regime, acutely aware that it cannot win the battle of ideas, has invested heavily in state-driven propaganda to engineer widespread confusion. Through captured media platforms and regime-friendly commentators, false equivalences are advanced. The moral clarity of the revolutionary project is blurred. Victims are equated with oppressors. The demand for democracy is framed as chaos. Stability is defined as submission. We must reject this narrative outright.
There is nothing morally ambiguous about the demand for democratic rule. There is nothing reckless about insisting that no individual, family, or institution should own a country and its people. There is nothing extreme about demanding accountability, the rule of law, and popular sovereignty. What is dangerous is normalizing absolute rule. What is reckless is surrendering the future of generations to an unaccountable elite. What is extremist is the belief that one man can stand above the law, above the people, and above history.
Cde. Thulani Maseko understood that clarity is a weapon. It sustains movements when repression intensifies. It anchors activists when opportunism beckons. It reminds us that the struggle is not about personalities, positions, or proximity to power, but about restoring dignity to the people. The revolutionary forces must therefore resist fragmentation. Ideological differences, organisational diversity, and tactical debates are natural in any broad movement. But they must never override the central objective: ending absolute royal rule and establishing a democratic, people-centred state in Eswatini. Unity does not mean uniformity. It means a shared destination.
At this juncture, the call to action is clear. The pro-democracy camp must recommit to political education, mass mobilisation, and disciplined underground organisation. We must speak with clarity to our people about the costs of freedom, the length of the struggle, and the inevitability of victory if we remain steadfast. We must build bridges across formations, generations, and geographies. We must protect the integrity of the struggle from infiltration, co-option, and despair.
Above all, we must restore hope – not as naive optimism, but as a rational conclusion drawn from history. No unjust system has survived indefinitely. None. The arc of history does not bend on its own. It is bent by those who refuse to bow. And it always bends towards justice. The assassination of Thulani Maseko was meant to silence a voice. Instead, it amplified a truth: that ideas cannot be killed, and that a people awakened cannot be permanently subdued.
The struggle continues not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. It is an existential necessity. Not because victory is guaranteed tomorrow, but because surrender guarantees defeat forever. The task before us is urgent. The mission is clear. History is watching. We must not allow wanton voices to have us believe that the Tinkhundla regime cannot be defeated – it can and it shall. Our political objectives must remain clear at all times: to dislodge the royal regime from power. All other actions must flow from these objectives. We must remain mission focused. There is no third way – there is the way of the revolution. It is time.
