The first big thing that Swaziland’s absolute monarch
decided to do shortly after his discredited tinkhundla elections was to detain
a journalist. Yesterday, Wednesday 7 November 2018, the royal Swaziland
police's Organised Crime Unit detained seasoned journalist Musa Ndlangamandla
in Mbabane, accusing him of aligning himself with organisations that call for
democracy. They harassed, intimidated and threatened him, and are already
preparing documents for his prosecution.
This notorious police gang, also known as
“Tingculungculu”, accused Ndlangamandla of having engaged in acts of
collaboration with the democratic movement in 2011, when he was the Chief
Editor of the Swazi Observer newspaper. That was before he slipped out of the
country to preserve his life after word got out that Mswati wanted his head
delivered in a bowl, simply for covering news related to Swaziland’s
progressive forces. That year his office at the Swazi Observer premises was
raided by this police unit.
When the Organised Crime
Unit was introduced in 2009, after the enactment of the Suppression of
Terrorism Act of 2008, the then police commissioner declared that the unit
would deal with the “growing phenomenon of organised syndicated crime and terrorism.”
It is now a fact accepted by all that the Mswati regime regards all efforts
aimed at the democratisation of Swaziland as nothing but terrorist acts, thus
automatically falling within these categories. Hence Ndlangamandla’s good
journalism ethics are categorised by the Mswati autocracy as serious enough to
attract the attention of a specialised police unit like the Tingculungculu,
as terrorist acts.
This is not the first time the Mswati regime has
clamped down on journalists. In 2014, the Mswati regime arrested and
convicted The Nation magazine editor, Bheki Makhubu, together with human
rights lawyer, Thulani Maseko, for being critical of the system. In February this
year, members of Mswati’s Correctional Services (prison warders) attacked a
journalist when he took photographs of them travelling on the backs of
overcrowded vehicles. In September this year, police assaulted a journalist and
demanded he delete photographs he took of them attacking and shooting at
striking textile workers. In a report titled “Assessment of Media Development
in Swaziland”, seven in ten journalists interviewed by UNESCO in Swaziland said
they had faced attempts from politicians or advertisers to interfere with what
they were writing.
The detaining of journalist Musa Ndlangamandla should
therefore be openly condemned by all democracy loving people across the globe.
This should also be a wake-up call to those who were
slumbering under the illusion that things would be different under Mswati’s
newly appointed prime minister. Swaziland remains undemocratic. It is still
ruled by a dictator, sub-Saharan Africa’s last remaining absolute monarch. The
tinkhundla system is nothing but a dictatorship of the monarch. The 2018
tinkhundla elections were nothing but a sham, a wasteful game by Mswati, for his
benefit. Those elections, as previous ones, resulted in a puppet parliament for
the dictator to implement his anti-people decisions.
The journey towards freedom of the media in Swaziland
must at one and the same time be linked with the journey towards democracy.
There can never a free media in Swaziland as long as the tinkhundla system
prevails. Mswati tightly controls the media and punishes journalists and media
houses for publishing anything seen as critical of the royal family and his
government.
The regime must be overthrown! For this to happen, the
people must unite and isolate the absolute monarch!
Issued by the Communist Party of Swaziland
Contact:
Kenneth Kunene
General Secretary
+27 72 594 3971
Or
Njabulo Dlamini
International Organiser
Mobile: +2687 603 9844
Email: cpswa.org@gmail.com
Facebook: Communist Party Of
Swaziland – CPS
Twitter: @CPSwaziland
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