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Swazis are supposed to turn out to vote Friday 21 September for which of the absolute monarch’s hand-picked representatives is to join in with the rest of the autocracy in oppressing them for the next five years.

For the Communist Party of Swaziland the elections are nothing but crude window dressing.

“They are designed make the outside world – particularly elements of the international community (SADC, AU, EU, UN) – believe that the uniquely Swazi system of representation is free fair and democratic,” says CPS general secretary Kenneth Kunene. SADC and the AU have deployed election observers for the elections, but the EU and Commonwealth have not.

Political parties are banned from taking part in the elections, added to which media censorship and lack of freedom of assembly mean that the stranglehold of the monarchy is pretty much all-pervasive.

The CPS wants a complete end to the monarchy, and the feudal-capitalist system it runs, and its replacement by a socialist system based on direct democracy and social ownership of the resource-rich country by the 1,3 million-population.  

“The majority of our people live in abject poverty,” says Kunene. “The Mswati regime siphons off vast sums of revenue to keep the monarchy and the royal elite in luxury.

“It’s as simple as that: the only reason our people are dying of disease and poverty is because of the behaviour of the royal elite and the upper class.”
Swaziland has the world’s highest HIV and TB rates and some of the lowest levels of life expectancy.

“Given the small size of our population and Swaziland’s official middle-income status, it’s not rocket science to figure out that we could massively reduce this disease burden in quite a short period of time. But the Mswati  regime is intent on looting the country and letting the people die.”

Kunene says that opposition to the regime is increasing and that the elections have little support.

“People are very brow-beaten by the regime. Mswati uses violence, intimidation and bribery to get communities to show support for him. But things are slowly changing”, says Kunene.

Kunene points out that recent responses by the regime to peaceful protests by workers for better pay are increasingly more vicious and violent.

“The regime is showing signs of desperation. It knows that people are more and more seeing the regime for what it is – a brutal dictatorship. People have been bamboozled by Mswati’s use of traditional culture to impose his will. But once people stop believing in such things, or seeing how they are manipulated, Mswati has little to fall back on other than brute force.”

Kunene welcomes the call by South Africa’s Swaziland Solidarity Network for President Cyril Ramaphosa to condemn the elections.

“South Africa could play a major role in helping put an end to the terrible situation in Swaziland and assisting exiles who are unable to return home because of political persecution. We believe that such support will come eventually.”

Kunene hopes that greater numbers of people will stay away from the polls.
“Our message is: boycott, protest, burn your election card! We don’t expect people to put themselves at unnecessary risk, as the threat of state violence is all too real. But we know how frustrated our people feel, and under such brutal oppression it is only natural that they will continue to vent their anger.”

Issued by CPS Swaziland