CAN TUCOSWA EMULATE SFTU’S ’96 STAY-AWAY?

THE Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) is reportedly planning a protest march to deliver 16 demands to government a week before the kingdom’s leadership’s penchant for spare no expense multimillion Emalangeni party to celebrate 50 years of independence and His Majesty King Mswati III’s 50th birthday.

But will TUCOSWA action and its 16 demands change the course of history as did the mass stay away orchestrated and executed by its predecessor, the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) over its 27 demands, was the immediate question that came to mind upon reading about the former’s planned protest march this Friday the 13th.

The impact of SFTU’s mass protest was immeasurable and indeed left an indelible mark on the political and socio-economic landscape of the nation. Perhaps it still ranks as the biggest ever single event to have happened within the borders of the kingdom since independence in 1968.    

Not only did SFTU’s 1996 stay away paralyse the country but it probably also altered the political trajectory of the nation. Amid the ruins left by that exercise of power by ordinary people under the banner of organised labour, the social partners (government, workers, employers and other civic society organisations) were able to find each other to map a way forward and prepare the kingdom for the quantum leap into the 21st century four years later. The outcome of this interaction was the National Development Strategy (NDS), a home-brewed turnkey strategic plan that had it been given a chance and implemented would have speeded political and socio-economic development of emaSwati.

Among others the NDS mothered the now popularised Vision 2022, which was eventually hybridised as the end date for the Kingdom of eSwatini achieving First World status.
Notwithstanding its positive attributes, government nonetheless archived and pretended to forget the NDS – although it has occasionally been plagiarised in the formulation of short-term economic and social development policies such as ESRA and SPEED by the two successive prime ministers of the period.

The reason for a lack of appetite by the political elite to fully implement the NDS was that it fingered the obtaining political hegemony of not being fully democratic and thus a stumbling block in unlocking the economic and social development potential of the nation and had thus called for political reforms to kick-start the country’s trajectory into the new millennium.  

Although a process to write a new constitution was put in place, it lacked credibility from stakeholders on the ground but pandered to the whims of those in power. In the event the new constitution adopted in 2005 has not changed anything in the way the country is governed but served a useful purpose in satisfying the anxiety of the international community into believing that the kingdom had finally joined the league of modern and democratic states.

Thus pressure for political reforms has since eased and the ruling elite has exploited this by unleashing its security apparatus against the people while tightening its iron grip on power through enforcing a culture of silence and conformity.
The 1996 upheaval also forced government to adopt some of SFTU’s 27 demands into its body of policies and these include, among others, free primary education (enshrined in the constitution) and payment of grants to the elderly.

Paradoxically, while the 1996 mass stay-away became the yardstick with which to measure SFTU’s power and influence, it also was the turning point as the seeds of its demise were also planted at about the same time - its leader Jan Sithole became the most hated person within the corridors of power - as it was celebrating its success. Although SFTU, later disbanded to a single national workers congress, TUCOSWA, its legacy lives on to this day.

Now the question is can TUCOSWA come close to emulating the feats achieved by SFTU, in what I would term its maiden attempt at getting government’s attention come Friday?

The downside even before TUCOSWA hits the road is that it lacks the cohesion of workers who defined SFTU and which is key in getting government to sit up. Secondly, government has since become vicious in dealing with protests and any acts of discontent aimed against it hence it has invested massively in the security apparatus over the past two decades or so. Indeed when the incumbent Prime Minister, Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini, was recycled back to office in 2008 it was on the basis that he wielded makhundu, the vicious and violent government’s response to civil disobedience such as strikes by workers.

As I see it, TUCOSWA’s undoing appears to be the problem of hibernating for lengthy spells to the extent that it is often forgotten and thus becomes irrelevant even to its stakeholders.

However, its planned protest march could be a beginning of a new chapter because it can now rally around the 16 demands it will be presenting to government in the same way that the 27 demands made and defined SFTU.

And TUCOSWA’s 16 demands, albeit not exhaustive, are relevant as SFTU’s 27 demands were then to attract massive popular appeal to promote the cohesion of workers that is essential for a successful public campaign.  

Perhaps it could well have served to entrench TUCOSWA position as the voice of the voiceless to have included, in its list of demands, the annual convening of Sibaya as dictated by the national constitution.      

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