Africa-Press – Eswatini. Government Spokesperson, Alpheous Nxumalo has said African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General, Fikile Mbalula is confused in saying Eswatini is not a democratic State.
Nxumalo was commenting on the statement made by Mbalula during an ANC press briefing, where the former said the ANC would fight for the democratisation of the country.
Nxumalo said despite the country’s system of governance being unpopular, Eswatini was in fact a democratised State.
“To begin with, the Kingdom of Eswatini in terms of our national Constitution; is a fully-fledged democratised State.
The kingdom’s National Constitution embraces all international democratic norms, standards and practices such as enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which allows freedom of association, assembly, and movement and of holding and propagating a different political opinion regardless of how unpopular it might be,” he said.
Nxumalo called out Mbalula, accusing him of trying to influence the political decision of the country without affording the kingdom the opportunity to engage with them.
“Fikile Mbalula, just like Senator Christopher Coons of the USA Congress, are but victims of narrow and biased political lobbying to the extent that they are taking political positions against the Kingdom of Eswatini without affording us the right and opportunity to engage them,” he said
The spokesperson said this lobbying by Mbalula was not fair to Eswatini.
“Such practices go against natural justice, which demands that you afford somebody audience before you pronounce final judgment against them.
Democratisation
What Fikile Mbalula might be referring to as ‘democratisation’ of Eswatini may be that Eswatini should adopt multi-party political party system. If that be the case, one wonders as to why and how is he embracing and propagating the defeat of the basic definition of democracy itself,” Nxumalo said.
In driving his point across, Nxumalo defined democracy as the rule of the people, by the people and for the people. “Therefore, democracy isn’t the rule of political parties for the people.
In Eswatini, we embrace the constituency based democratic system (Tinkhundla) which allows the people’s preferred voted candidates to go directly to Parliament,” he further stated.
He said this in response to what Mbabula regards as democracy.
“We do not use deploy committees, which unfortunately, have a tendency and reputation to deploy their friends to Parliament and thereafter compel every Member of Parliament to the whims of Chief Whip, who tells them on what to or not to vote for or against during parliamentary sittings irrespective of their political convictions.
Hence the adage, ‘you must toe the political line!’ Failure to do so may result in the expulsion of the concerned Members of Parliament,” he said.
Nxumalo said although this was the standard practice all over the world, it was a bullying culture.
“In almost of all stages of parliamentary processes, it acts to stifle debate, limit scrutiny of policy, rights and values as they close down avenues of accountability and responsibility and reduce independent thought just to strengthen the power of the political party,” he said.
Nxumalo concluded by saying Mbalula should not confuse democracy with multiparty form of governance.
“Democracy isn’t a straight cut jacket that is cut and fashioned in South Africa and gets parachuted in all SADC countries with the expectations that it would fit all of them. Democracy is located in a context , embracing the culture, experience and the expectations of a particular nation,” he said.
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