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The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) totally rejects the Mswati autocracy’s nonsensical undertaking to investigate itself on the recent death of a university student, Thabani Nkomonye, attributed to the royal police. Mswati’s acting prime minister’s claims that the commission of inquiry will be independent and fair are not backed by current reality and the history of the regime’s autocratic rule over the country since its banning of all political activity in 1973.

As a sign of having lost all their basic humanity, the regime’s acting prime minister announced the decision to investigate its own police on the day when the very same police were brutalising students on the streets. The students were marching against the brutalities of the police, yesterday 17 May 2021, in Manzini. During the peaceful march, the police shot at the students in its attempt to quell the protest action, injuring many. One student was shot in the eye at close range. Consequent to the shooting, the student was admitted to hospital under the intensive care unit, and might permanently lose his eye.

The tinkhundla autocracy systematically uses violence to maintain its power, and such violence gets directed to the citizens whether they are in a protected action or not. The violence is imbued within the regime's strategy to keep its dictatorship. The police are indoctrinated to be absolutely loyal to the monarchy, and in that regard trained to unleash violence against the people who are seen as the enemy of the ruling elite. The regime does this with the full knowledge and comprehension of its brutal dictatorship, and thus is aware that the oppressed masses may revolt at any given moment. Instead, what must be investigated is the magnitude of the security threat posed by the police state of the present-day tinkhundla dictatorship under Mswati and his puppet government. The regime thus has no grounds to investigate its own atrocities. Thabani is only one of many who have been killed by the royal police over the years.

The CPS also warns the various countries that continue to supply the dictatorship with arms and other resources. These countries are complicit of the atrocities committed by the Mswati autocracy, by virtue of their military support to the regime.

The CPS calls for intensified mass action against the brutality of the police. The roots of police brutality in Swaziland is the tinkhundla system. As such, our unity in this fight must necessarily involve unity in the struggle for the total overthrow of the tinkhundla system, including the absolute monarchy, replaced by people’s power.

Issued by The Communist Party of Swaziland