FACT: LEGISLATURE IS JUST A RUBBER STAMP

I hate to say ‘I told you so’ to lawmakers - and everyone else who cares - apropos their initial rejection of the budget for wilting under the first pressure point and thereby contradicting themselves by approving the same budget they had thrown out earlier on.

In my last column I unequivocally stated that Members of Parliament (MPs) would approve, as is, the same budget they had initially rejected. This position was informed by a cursory comprehension of the workings of the obtaining Tinkhundla political system, in which all institutions but one are mere tokens devoid of any power or authority.

Notwithstanding, I still somewhat expected some heroic resistance from the MPs given the apparent wastages inherent in this and previous budgets coupled to the many humanitarian crises – poverty, disease, unemployment, etc - facing the nation that are routinely not properly resourced.
It does not require rocket science to pre-empt and comprehend the one strength of the Tinkhundla political system. The system’s fundamental strength is its capacity to divide and rule, hence its proponents’ dislike and hatred of pluralism and, therefore, multiparty democracy whose benchmark is the devolution of power to the people.

Given this scenario, it is easy to manipulate, threaten and coerce people if and when they are divided than if they were cohesive and glued together by a collective, such as a political organisation. It only requires reminding MPs individually and/or collectively in caucus that they were elected to Parliament in their individual capacities and that when push comes to a shove they would be individually called to account. That is enough to drive the fear of God into a majority of servile MPs who can hardly master their thought processes.
Perhaps MPs now have a better understanding of the political system they are serving – they are mere pawns.

Multiparty

As I see it, the motion to reject and call for the amendment of the Appropriation Bill 2017/18 could only sustain in a pluralistic and multiparty democracy. The reason for this is simple; in a multiparty democracy it is impossible to divide and isolate people from their political parties for the purposes of manipulating, threatening and coercing them into submission.

Additionally, in a multiparty democracy power resides with the people and is exercised on their behalf by their elected representatives. Under the current dispensation Parliament is powerless but only exists to legitimize the Tinkhundla system as viable to the international community. 
The ballot box or elections are merely there to appease and project the veneer that the people are active participants in designing and mapping their destiny.

As I see it, if the people were the vanguard of the political status quo, the question has to be asked; why spend so much on security forces instead of on health, education and food security, among others, to improve the lifestyle of the people? Is this the peace the leadership is apt to brag about that expensive to maintain? If so, that cannot be genuine since real peace is not just the absence of conflict but the presence of justice, a rare commodity in the prevailing system, hence it has to be shored up militarily.

Conversely, although the MPs failed as they were bound to, the point has been hammered home that indeed the people are at the bottom of the ladder in the national narrative. Government remains impervious to the plight of the majority of the people while hurtling at supersonic speed to the stated 2022 First World destination.

As I see it, futile and abortive as they may have been, the efforts of the MPs have not gone unnoticed. In fact they might have woken up the politically comatose of our compatriots to demystify the obtaining political as well as socio-economic order. Now they know that they, at least the poverty stricken majority, are on the margins fit for crumbs from the high table of those in the pound seats of Swazi polity and the inheritors of the First World largesse.

No wonder why in the eyes of government the people remain infants hence they are issued travel documents while international passports are privileged when we should all be eligible to one common passport. This serves to stamp the servile nature of the relationship between the people and the State while also cementing the Kingdom of eSwatini as the only surviving fiefdom in the 21st century.

Paradoxically, Parliament remains the one viable route towards political transformation if sufficient numbers of like-minded compatriots committed themselves to the cause.

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