The African National Congress (ANC) issued a statement earlier this month saying that ‘the democratization of Swaziland must preoccupy the work of the African National Congress’ and calling for the release of political prisoners, the return of exiles and free political activities in that country. The Swazi government reacted as it had before, patronizingly, by saying it would pray for South Africa’s ruling party: ‘We will continue to pray for it [ANC] as it battles its teething problems and disunity,’ government spokesman Percy Simelane told the Times of Swaziland.

He approvingly cited a recent article by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu as proof that the ANC is incapable of running its own country and therefore has no business questioning how Swaziland is ruled under sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. ‘Tutu said, “It does not seem to me now that a freedom fighting unit (ANC) can easily make the transition to becoming a political party,”’ Simelane said. He told the Times of Swaziland that Tutu confirmed the Swaziland government’s belief that the ANC must get its house in order. He denied there were any political exiles or political prisoners. Yet Swaziland’s democratic opponents mostly live in South Africa and recently several of them were arrested or detained on return to Swaziland.

Though the ANC reportedly found Swaziland’s divine intercession on its behalf hilarious, the last laugh was on Luthuli House as Mbabane’s prayers were in effect answered. South Africa’s new High Commissioner to Swaziland, Happy Mahlangu, told the Swazi press last week just what King Mswati’s government loves to hear: ‘It would be folly to force things on the people of Swaziland,’ the Times of Swaziland reported Mahlangu as saying. ‘It is the people of Swaziland who should decide whether they want multiparty democracy. I think South Africans believe that the best way of representation is multiparties yet that is not the case. They have to understand the different types of democracies of the world, in particular in the African continent.’

These sentiments pretty much echoed what Mswati told the World Economic Forum in Cape Town last week when he was asked, during a discussion about traditional African values, whether the best way to reconcile those values and modernity, would be to move to a constitutional monarchy. His answer was revealing. He did not claim his monarchy was constitutional – which his courtiers sometimes do on the basis that the country does have a constitution, which ostensibly even enshrines basic rights. He said – like Mahlangu – that it was up to the Swazi people to decide on the country’s style of government and they did not want a constitutional monarchy. They had revealed this at the iSibaya ‘People’s Parliament’ which he convenes every seven years or so.

Of course Swazis also vote – but not on whether they want a constitutional monarchy or a monarchy at all. They vote for parliamentary candidates, approved by the authorities and representing no political party.

When Mahlangu presented his diplomatic credentials to Mswati earlier this month he had expressed good wishes for the forthcoming elections and promised South Africa’s support for them. Cosatu and several Swazi pro-democracy organisations were outraged by all of Mahlangu’s statements, urging the government to recall Mahlangu to Pretoria to explain how he could oppose multiparty democracy, when that is so firmly his own government’s policy – and how he could express support for ‘sham’ elections.

There have been many signs of policy ambivalence by South Africa over Swaziland before. But the ANC’s statement and Mahlangu’s remarks coming so close together more clearly underscored the confusion. How was it possible for a seasoned diplomat like Mahlangu to arrive at his new post so poorly briefed by his superiors that he could make statements to the king and to the local press completely at odds with his own government’s policy? Did his superiors not sit him down before he left to explain exactly what Pretoria’s policy on Swaziland is? Or should we assume that the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) is deliberately overriding ANC policy in this case?

Or even that the government as a whole is pursuing a policy of  ‘strategic ambiguity,’ a variation of ‘quiet diplomacy’ in the Zimbabwe style, where the ANC plays the bad cop to get the essential message across and DIRCO plays the good cop, to save Mswati’s face? There have been suggestions that President Jacob Zuma himself puts the brakes on too much activism by his government in Swaziland, because of traditionalist empathies with Mswati’s style of government and because of some rather vague marital engagement of his own to a Swazi princess.

Yet Zuma’s own international relations adviser Lindiwe Zulu, who speaks both for the government and for the ANC, as an influential member of its National Executive sub-committee on international relations, betrays no ambivalence on Swaziland: ‘There is no confusion on Swaziland,’ she said forthrightly when asked about Mahlangu’s remarks, noting that both the government and the ANC had called for democraticisation and specifically for the unbanning of political parties – hence multiparty democracy. That was one of the conditions which Pretoria stipulated for the R2,4 billion loan it offered Swaziland two years ago, she recalled – and was the reason that the Swazi government did not accept the offer.

Zulu suggested that Mahlangu himself or DIRCO that employs him should be asked to explain his statements. DIRCO said it was not aware of Mahlangu’s statements at all. Maybe it’s time for all the arms of government to get together to agree what South Africa’s Swaziland policy is. And then to tell the rest of us – including the hapless Happy Mahlangu.

Written by Peter Fabricius, Foreign Editor, Independent Newspapers
First published on the Institute for Security Studies website