AGOA: OUR GOVT MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

GIVEN the snail’s pace and somewhat disinterested posture of government, it was to be expected that the Kingdom of eSwatini would remain an outcast and out of the warm embrace of AGOA until the next review. Government can create all sorts of excurses for failing to meet the balance of the original five benchmarks that got the kingdom kicked out of AGOA but this will not wash to the average citizens except to the knowledge-free and brain-dead blind loyalists of the system.

Any government sensitive to the well-being of and accountable to the people would have worked with God’s speed to address these benchmarks such that by the time the annual review came by, everything would have been in place.

As I see it, government’s reluctancy, because that is what it is, to get the country back into AGOA plays to the narrative that it deliberately refused to initially meet the five benchmarks so that the kingdom would be thrown out in the cold.
Illogical as it may seem, but this decision could have been fuelled by an insane desire by the leadership to hit back at the trade union movement for exposing the State’s intolerance for democratic values and practices within the Swazi polity. In its manic vengeance, the State probably sought to weaken the labour movement by orchestrating the country’s removal from AGOA since the workers that were immediately affected and subsequently lost their jobs were in the textile and apparel industry, a major stronghold of organised labour.

Many would argue against this line of thinking as being far-fetched, illogical and impractical. Of course that position would be understandable, particularly when approached from the sane premise that any government is in office to serve the interests of the people, such as improving their living conditions by embracing policies and positions that spur economic growth and national development. Unfortunately, while this may be true in open democracies wherein political power resides with the people, but that is not the case in this the Kingdom of eSwatini.

There is a catalogue of examples and evidence to support this school of thought, in fact reality. Indeed in recent years, this government has carved a niche for itself for doing the illogical and most often that which is contrary not just to conventional wisdom, but to the dreams and aspirations of the nation.
This applies in both actions and policy positions. A case in point is government’s somewhat lackadaisical disposition towards the devastating drought while firmly fixated with projects that create, to the outside world, the illusion of a wealthy and thriving nation ready for a quantum leap into the elite group of First World nations. What sane government can invest in a venture that has failed before taking off? That is exactly what this government is doing in resuscitating a failed national airline.
One can catalogue an infinite list of examples of government’s apparent disengagement from the people on the foot of the social and economic ladder to pursue agendas of the elite.

 One such example is government’s involvement in chasing away foreign direct investments with extra-legal demands on investors to surrender substantial and unreasonable shareholding without matching capital outlays. But this is an issue for another day.
As I see it, government’s hatred of and contempt for trade unionism, which is equal only to its hatred for multiparty democracy, has poisoned it such that it is not beyond setting up the country in flames while trying to exorcise it of what it considers a demon. Contrary to popular belief, government might have gleefully welcomed the forced exile from AGOA in spite of the accompanying losses of thousands of jobs in the textile and apparel industry.

Yet paradoxically, this government has largely strived on policies and programmes derived from the workers’ famous 27 demands. Grants for the elderly, free primary education, the national constitution, etc, are but products and by-products of the 27 demands, among a long list that government sought to domesticate as its own. Of course, we know better.  

So far, there is no discernible resolve from government or the leadership to get this country readmitted into AGOA and we have to wonder why if this is not part of an agenda to fix the unions.
Talk of cutting your face to spite your nose! Unavoidably, this speaks to the skewed exercise of political power whose intended or unintended consequence has been the curving out of a structured class society of the haves and have-nots.
As I see it, the nation should hold government responsible for depriving jobs to compatriots who were in gainful employment in the textile and apparel industry by acting against the national imperative of job creation and protection.     



  
   

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