Africa-Press – Eswatini. As one watched emaSwati going about their business and celebrating the return to a peaceful stint, one couldn’t stop thinking back to the time of the June/July 2021 unrest; a terrible era as never seen in the recent history of our nation.
We have always been a peace-loving nation, which had never experienced open violence nationwide. In my many years on this earth, I saw a different calibre of emaSwati and their capacity for violence I never thought existed. The usually respectful nation displayed such anger and hate, filled with open violence. The hate and anger was directed towards our monarchy and everything associated with it. It became taboo to be seen associating with royalty and our culture; for the first time in our history. Social media was openly criticising His Majesty the King to the extent of insulting him. Some chiefs and loyalists were attacked, some killed in cold blood and imiphakatsi burnt to the ground. We saw the cold-blooded killing of a prominent human rights lawyer at his home and in front of his wife and children. How we seem to easily forget.
Have we done enough?
I don’t mean to dwell in the past and I am happy that we seem to have moved on as a nation, but I have a few burning questions that have to be asked: Have we done enough as a collective nation including our leaders to ensure that the unrest never happens again? Do royalty and the nation at large truly understand the root cause of the unrest in the first place? I can’t answer these two questions but I will try, having the explicit confession that I am a concerned citizen, conservative patriot, and loyalist who has the success of the royal family and my country at heart. As a columnist, we also have the duty to try and speak to concerns that emaSwati, who don’t have this platform, might have. It is without a doubt that the loyalists have won this battle, but have they won the war or it is just the retreating of the sea that will come back as a tsunami? The success of national events, starting from the double 55/55 celebration to the traditional ceremonies and more recently the national elections, can easily portray a rosy picture when in fact hate and resentment continue to fester underneath.
EmaSwati who attended Sibaya can’t be a true reflection of the citizens as a whole. Even worse was the fact that we had only three minutes to express a lifetime of dissatisfaction in an environment that demanded a great deal of respect and not conducive to free speech for the ordinary liSwati. Having said that, I remain impressed with the way emaSwati spoke their mind. To the extent that a submission asking the King to pardon Bacede and Mthandeni got resounding applause such that it took time to bring the crowd to order again. This told me something interesting about the core of the unrest. The fire is not yet out, it is still smothering.
Choice of prime minister
I feel His Majesty the King’s answer to why the 2021 unrest happened was poverty. Thus he set out to look for a person who could fight poverty to the extent of calling it a national disaster. One cannot agree with him more. His choice, in terms of qualifications and experience in dealing with the administrative and academic nature of this problem, is perfect. Our new prime minister has all the qualifications needed to fight poverty.
Ignoring political experience
Unfortunately, His Majesty and Labadzala have continued to ignore political experience as a valuable tool in leadership. Career politicians are used and discarded by the system, exposing the monarchy to more danger. Ninety per cent of the new faces that come in every five years in Parliament is not good for the collective political experience. They continue to throw inexperienced, but highly qualified professionals into the deep end of a pool that requires highly experienced politicians. The fact that our PM is a pastor tells me that he is a nice guy who has no business in dirty politics. The King needs a defender who will take the bull by its horns, take a bullet for the King and cover him at every attack without question.
This, unfortunately, will require that at times he even suspends his Christian values to defend his King. It means he will be forced to make unpopular decisions for the good of the country. Honestly speaking, there has not been a PM after the late Dr Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini, who has been able to do that. They have all tended to hide behind the King and the fact that all of them have not been career politicians means that they simply did not even have the skill to maneuver within the political cycles. King Sobhuza II used pure bantfwa’benkhosi who knew all there was to know about royalty.
The PMs that later came in were and are far removed from royalty and their influence and power remained at Hospital Hill in Mbabane, and were not known by emabutfo, emabandla or the royal family movers and shakers. To make things worse, they were/are not elected members of both Houses, but come fresh from the corporate world with a lot of boardroom experience but zero traditional politics. It is my hope that when the PM puts together his Cabinet (the few he is allowed to nominate) it will be members with political experience to balance him. The Eswatini traditional space can be very brutal and intimidating; and the royal space is even worse. Simple traditional attire poses challenges and may need traditional consultants who take pleasure in putting you in your place. They make it clear that your degrees and corporate experience don’t mean anything there, they are in charge.
Finally, may I say that, maybe this is not a mistake by Labadzala or a shortcoming of emabandla but it is by design. A PM who is not directly elected and not a career politician, but well educated might be easy to control and would not develop any political ideas of their own. It is still a dangerous game in that the people soon realise that the real power is with the King and if they want to change things they will go for the King and the unrest will return. I hope I am wrong.
Source: times
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