Africa-Press – Eswatini. The political moment in Swaziland is nothing short of precarious, an embattled monarchy teetering on the edge of irrelevance, a fragmented opposition, and a people suspended in the despair of systemic neglect. As an aspiring student of Marxist theory observing and playing an integral part in the struggle for liberation in our country, I write with urgency and principle to unravel the contradictions animating this phase of our struggle.
We find ourselves in a moment pregnant with contradiction; the moment we are currently facing in the tiny fiefdom is fraught with contradiction. The Dlamini royal dynasty is clinging to an exhausted legitimacy; its rule, despite justifications cloaked in tradition and fear, now survives through violence, co-optation and inertia.
There seems to be a growing consensus even amongst the conservative regional and global actors; the royal tinkhundla apartheid project is no longer tenable. The Tinkhundla project is burdened by a dual crisis: one is of legitimacy and one of history. The archaic scaffolding of monarchical absolutism has outlived its historical function and persists only through coercion, clientelism, and patronage.
The regime’s legitimacy is not only questioned by revolutionaries, but even by those forces in international finance and diplomacy that once preferred stability over justice. From a Marxist standpoint, the superstructure (traditional political institutions, ideologies, and laws) is no longer aligned with the productive base: the working masses whose labor sustains the country.
This misalignment signals a moment of dialectical rupture. The old world is dying; the new struggles to be born. Yet amidst this political decay, we seem to have not found ourselves (progressive camp) a coherent and united alternative yet the real and deeper quagmire lies not only in the decay of the old but the confusion of the antithesis itself.
The question that is lurking in the shadows and confronting us, echoing Rosa Luxembourg’s revolutionary challenge simple yet urgent: Reform or Revolution? In the progressive camp, there exists what I would term a profound ideological bifurcation. One faction proposes a cautious transition: power sharing, opening the political space and constitutional reforms: democracy in slow motion.
Another bloc insists on a complete structural overhaul. A true rupture from feudal monarchy, state capture and elite rule. They speak of a People’s Republic, economic democracy, and participatory governance. This divergence, however, is not just theoretical; it is strategic and existential. What is unclear and dangerously so is whether these positions arise from honest ideological convictions or from material class interests.
Are reformists simply attempting to reconfigure the bourgeois order to accommodate their ascent? Are revolutionaries acting from principled theory or political desperation? Has there been an in depth analysis of the balance of forces? Have we been able to clarify ourselves on what shall come after the royal aristocracy crumbles? Because, if we at this particular moment and phase of our struggle have not been able to successfully have ideologically clarified ourselves, fatigue will creep in and opportunists will fill the vacuum.
As we wrestle to answer these profound yet necessary questions, a more dangerous threat exists. This threat unfortunately does not come from the “enemy camp” but the wolves wearing sheep skins in the “people’s camp”. The internal rot of the MDM compounds the problem. What began as a people’s movement is being infiltrated by forces of business populism, who appropriate revolutionary language but practice class betrayal behind closed doors.
The result is a semi-captured movement, one whose trajectory is no longer shaped entirely by the will of the oppressed but by aspiring elites positioning for post-monarch spoils. We all agree that our struggle is waged at an era of heightened neoliberal disorientation and this ideological and strategic incoherence has catalysed a level of fragmentation in the Mass Democratic Movement.
We have genuine localised but disconnected struggles; the centre is not holding. If it is not internal factional squabbling, it is lack of programmatic cohesion. In some formations, possible solutions on the way forward are sabotaged to not either see the door of important conferences if not systematically sidelined from conference programs.
The fragmentation cannot though be discussed in isolation of the absence or lack of a disciplined vanguard party; grounded in theory, rooted in the masses and prepared to wield both ideology and organisation. This therefore renders the revolution vulnerable to manipulation. It is through Lenin where we get to learn “without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement”. Even within the trade union movement, clarity is lacking.
The May Day celebrations, once a symbol of militant class power, now reflect organisational drift. The movement has not collapsed, but it is adrift without ideological anchoring. Could the MDM be suffering from political or structural fatigue? Many of its leaders have carried the burden of struggle for years, some in exile, some imprisoned, and others under constant surveillance.
Their sacrifices are unquestionable. Yet we must avoid the danger of entitlement. Past suffering does not justify present stagnation. Every revolution demands ideological renewal and strategic adaptability. We must move beyond the comfort of repetition of slogans masquerading as strategy. The violent repression of the regime is real.
But so was the repression of apartheid South Africa under the national party. So is the daily brutality in occupied Palestine by the Israeli apartheid regime. Repression does not justify retreat from revolutionary clarity. Have we reached a political cul-de-sac? I argue not. Rather, we are witnessing contradiction at its highest point a moment demanding qualitative transformation.
It is a test of whether the revolution can reconstitute itself by shedding opportunism, clarifying its ideological program, and anchoring itself once again in the working masses. This cal-de sac moment is not an end, but I believe Marxists would see, characterise and view it as a contradiction at its highest point. Therefore the urgent need to qualitatively transform the struggle, decisively deal with political opportunism and tap in the potential of the mass power.
History is on our side. Marx gives us an indictment when he says “Philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it”. Our future depends not on fate but clarity of the analysis, strength of our organisation and our willingness to struggle.
Mswati and his cronies have failed, the material conditions mean we have reached to a tipping point, only leadership with foresight and and organisation can ignite the spark. The rupture is nigh!!! Let’s awaken the sleeping grass. Reform is seduction. Revolution is necessity.
swazibridge
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