PEOPLE’S COMPLACENCY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECAY

THE US has issued an ominous warning to the leadership of the kingdom apropos its fixation with and reckless spending on luxury and expensive foreign trips.

US Ambassador Lisa Peterson, during her country’s independence anniversary celebrations recently, warned that her government’s continued assistance to the kingdom could no longer be justified given the bad spending decisions that were being made by government. In a no holds-barred speech, she invoked the words of King Sobhuza II; “The Roman Empire collapsed because of too much attachment to luxury and also because of the complacency of its people.”

As I see it, Ambassador Peterson’s warning was as much of an indictment of the leadership as it was of the people for essentially remaining politically comatose and doing nothing about the worsening state of affairs. Instead of sulking, as the leadership did when the US Government threw out the kingdom from AGOA, an American legislation allowing duty free imports from African nations, and take firm actions to correct what essentially is bad governance and apparent disregard of the people.

It should be recalled that at the wake of the AGOA expulsion of the kingdom, in an apparent puerile action of a spoilt child, government boycotted the US, an action that manifested itself when that year government officials abstained from attending a similar independence anniversary celebration at the ambassador’s residence in Mbabane.

That government caused its own fall from AGOA, through a host of bad laws, was lost to the leadership and, even worse, the negative impact this move would have on the textile industry.

That it has taken years for the kingdom to get its ducks in a row for readmission into AGOA, in order to get back to work the workers who had lost their jobs, is but yet another example of a government that does not put people first in its scheme of things.

Whatever the leadership’s disposition to Ambassador Peterson’s speech, the fact is what the US diplomat said is nothing new. It has long emerged that the First World status being motored by Vision 2022 is all about shiny buildings and luxury – one of the Achilles Heels of the Roman Empire that contributed to its collapse - hence the massive investments on projects, which have been enumerated on previously and need not be now, with no economic viability whatsoever.

And given the fact that a majority of the people are living below the international poverty datum line and in emadlokolo habitats that are not fit for human beings, the envisioned First World is not for everyone but a chosen few.

Nowadays the picture is blurred on whether the construction of the so-called First World projects is a necessity or merely to enrich the political oligarchy at the helm of the country’s construction industry. That is the extent of the rapture of the moral fibre of the Eswatini society wherein those entrusted with steering the ship of the State are fixated with enriching themselves and those close to them.

 
Then there is the matter of the unsustainable public service wage bill that is bleeding the economy, which too has been deliberately neglected by the powers that be. What is disturbing is that a huge chunk of the money is going towards militarising this country yet the leadership is wont to boast to anyone within earshot that we are a stable and peaceful nation.

Yet every year the army, police and Correctional Services are being inflated with loyalists of the system not out of need but ostensibly to create jobs for them as a reward. After all there never was and ever will be an external threat to this kingdom that justifies spending billions of Emalangeni annually on recruitment of personnel and purchasing of military hardware.

The complacency of the people, as an ingredient in the cocktail essential to collapse an empire as it did to the Roman Empire, needs no emphasis because it is well pronounced and visible even to the blind. Instead what needs interrogation is if the people ought to carry the blame for this apparent impairment that has degenerated the nation to the level it finds itself in.

Difficult as it may be to be unequivocal, while the people can influence the change that they want, emaSwati have been in political comatose for a very long time. Nothing much has changed to this day even when we welcomed a new dawn in 2005 when the Constitution was ushered in as the supreme law of the land.

Fear remains palpable and a disability to achieving this nation’s potential. The political system known as Tinkhundla, which was introduced as an experiment, has continued to imprison the people because real political power is not resident with them. We have been witness to how this system, that is based on divide-and-rule individual-based merit elections has been used to silence critical thinkers in Parliament and by so doing reducing the Legislature into nothing more than a rubber stamp to what has been decided elsewhere without the consultation of the people.
While it is healthy to remain hopeful even in the direst of circumstances, but hoping that the election will deliver a different government from previous ones under the current political dispensation is sincere and conscientious stupidity that Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) described as the most dangerous weakness to humankind. What happened to government unusual that ought to have stemmed the decline the country finds itself in today?
As I see it, the people ought to conquer the fear that is responsible for their complacency in order to regain their inalienable human rights and, by progression, reclaim their political power. It cannot be that after 50 years of independence the people are still not emancipated but remain in an infinite state of infancy.   

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: