The difficulty with Swaziland is to take it seriously. The country has become a sort of African royal theme park in the eyes of the world, mostly projected as picturesque, ridiculous or absurd.
So there were the usual guffaws recently when King Mswati III announced he had had a vision during an unseasonal electrical storm that the country’s political system – a form of traditional absolute monarchy called tinkhundla – should henceforth be known as a “monarchical democracy”.
But one person who thought that might just be a sign of something a bit more serious was Alex Vines, the head of the Africa programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs – aka Chatham House – in London.
Vines and two of his colleagues have just published a report titled “Swaziland: Southern Africa’s Forgotten Crisis”.
It laments the fact that Swaziland is not taken more seriously, warning that the country is on a downward spiral economically, socially and politically, and that unless reforms are introduced very soon, the crisis could spin out of control.
Swaziland already has the highest rate of HIV/Aids (31 percent) in the world, an average life expectancy of 48 years and 66 percent of its people live below the poverty line, while Mswati’s personal fortune has been estimated at about $200 million (about R2 billion).
And poverty is increasing. Government mismanagement of the economy is making Swaziland increasingly dependent on shared revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) and a sugar industry largely controlled by the royal family, while being threatened by the impending loss of its vital EU quota.
The country almost went bust in 2011 in the wake of the global economic crisis.
The IMF and the South African government offered bailouts, but these were conditional on Swaziland offering at least some deference to democracy and certainly better economic governance. This included less spending on the royal household and on the ever-expanding public service, whose wages consume more than 14 percent of the GDP.
But then Swaziland got an unexpectedly high windfall payout from the Sacu last year which enabled its government to turn down the loans.
Yet the report warns that this reprieve was only temporary, and that a crash remains inevitable unless the country undertakes real democratic and economic reform.
Swaziland holds parliamentary elections on September 30 which many opposition parties are boycotting as a sham.
It is true that although political parties are not banned outright in Swaziland, they may not participate in elections and politicians have to stand for parliament as individuals.
But Vines said when presenting the Chatham House report at the SA Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg on Friday that there might nevertheless be a little democratic space for the opposition to exploit in the elections.
He wondered whether Mswati’s account of his vision of “monarchical democracy” might not after all have been an indication that the king was starting to feel the pressure for change.
Vines said he disagreed with the main opposition party Pudemo’s boycott, saying some candidates in the election had discreet links to other political parties and had reformist agendas.
It was possible that Mswati might feel pressure to include some of them in his government after the polls, Vines said.
And this, along with external pressure, could contribute to change, he suggested.
Inevitably, perhaps, the pro-boycott opposition has now rounded on Vines.
The Swaziland Communist Party (CPS) has accused Vines of “soft-selling the sham elections”, and supporting Mswati.
But the Chatham House report is very clear about the need for Swaziland to move to democracy, perhaps as a constitutional monarchy.
The report itself is, if anything, rather gloomy about that prospect. Vines, in his remarks on Friday, was merely exploring whatever possibilities might exist for change in a country that has so far seemed completely immune to it.
That is constructive and the CPS and their ilk should remember who the real enemy is.
They have once again unwittingly illustrated the truth of a point which this report makes, that those pushing for democracy in Swaziland should set aside their differences to achieve that objective. – Daily News Foreign Service