SWAZILAND-POLITICS: One Country, Two Worlds

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Gumisai Mutume

MBABANE, Feb 13 1996 (IPS) - When Swaziland’s trade union federation staged a general strike in late January, its demands ranged from an end to police brutality against street vendors to the recognition of Labour Day.

But the real issue was the repeal of a 1973 ban on political parties, and, by extension, the monarchy.

Once again the battle between traditionalists bent on maintaining the kingship and modernists tired of the royal rule was propelled to the forefront. And as has always happened, tradition won the day.

Since independence from Britain in 1968, the monarchy has battled to maintain its hold on this nation of about one million people.

In 1973 the then king, Sobhuza II, suspended the country’s Westminister-style constitution, largely designed by the British. The action was meant to bar all political activity and forbid freedom of association.

“With the banning of political parties went the aspirations of the people to move out of the dark ages into a progressive form of governance,” says a lecturer at the University of Swaziland who opted for anonimity. ‘Now political parties exist as underground movements and we all live in fear of the unkown.”

Such is the power of the monarchy that the majority of modernists dare not publicly denounce the status quo. However a growing educated middle class is fast questioning the authority of a monarch in place of a popularly elected parliament.

Swaziland, one of Africa’s few remaining monarchies, is a land of contracts where the Western and the traditional live side by side. Everywhere you look, there is evidence of its dual nature. Modern shopping malls are just a stone’s throw from kraals and fields, while people garbed in traditional attire rub shoulders with teenagers dressed in U.S. fashion in the city centre.

Even the judicial system reflects Swaziland’s duality: some courts operate under Roman Dutch Law while others, called the Swaziland national courts, function according to customary law, with everything done orally.

“The major difference between the two is that in the Swazi National Court system no representation by a legal practioner is allowed,” explains the Swaziland Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender.

“Little evidence is required … This has the effect of speeding up the process considerably as well as easing the police job of collecting evidence.”

But modernity is clamouring to take over in Swaziland, as is evidenced by the growing number of strikes and protests in the kingdom.

Government and trade unions are currently holding discussions over the political situation in the country following last month’s strike, which paralysed the economy for eight days. Another strike is scheduled for Feb. 19.

“The problem with the young ones is that they go abroad and bring back alien ideas into our peace-loving country,” notes peasant farmer Mandlenkosi Matsebula. “All along we have lived here happily with the monarchy because it is part of what we as a people believe in.”

Rituals remain an integral part of Swazi life, the most colourful being the annual Reed dance, performed around September, in which hundreds of bare-breasted maidens pay homage to the king. Tradition obliges him to choose a wife from among them.

The late Sobhuza had more than 100 recognised wives and more than 200 sons. His death in 1986 paved the way for king Mswati III to become, at the age of 18, the youngest ruler of the former British protectorate.

Richard Cornwell of the Pretoria-based Africa Institute of South Africa says although it would make little sense to the rest of the modern world, to most of the leadership here the rituals and authority of kingship are real.

Under the current arrangement, the king is all supreme with legislative and executive powers vested in him. He has a National Council comprising a prime minister, who is also a member of the royal family, and cabinet ministers mostly appointed by the monarch.

The king’s rulings are enacted by parliament, whose members are chosen through a system of indirect non-party elections in local authorities, each of them grouping a small number of chieftaincies.

That system was introduced in 1978 to replace the elected parliament dissolved in 1973.