ESWATINI LAND QUESTION CONUNDRUM PART 1

THE ongoing consultations over the methodologies of expropriating land without compensation in South Africa have, in an unlikely twist of fate, somewhat given credibility to the Kingdom of Eswatini’s claim to pockets of land in the neighbouring country and, by progression, justification for the existence of the Border Restoration Committee.

South African lawmakers and indeed the government never imagined that by resolving to expropriate land without compensation at the wake of an opportunistic motion by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of Julius Malema, they would be providing ammunition to the kingdom’s long-dragging land claim. The EFF’s motion was opportunistic ostensibly since the governing African National Congress (ANC) had resolved during its December elective conference to expropriate land without compensation. Therefore, the ANC as the majority party in parliament was unlikely to oppose the EFF motion.

During a parliamentary roadshow in Mpumalanga Province early last month, to solicit inputs from South Africans on the measure of expropriating land without compensation, the existence of the Border Restoration Committee (BRC) was somewhat legitimised when an Afrikaner political party, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), submitted that part of Mpumalanga Province belonged to the kingdom. All along the BRC has been referred to as a holding feeding trough for those whose political value was in decline.

Warner Weber, the FF+’s spokesman on land, told South African parliament’s Joint Constitutional Review Committee hearings that the land in Mpumalanga Province belonged to the kingdom. Of course this is nothing new but an historical fact. The salient issue here is why the FF+ would pull this card now when its members are facing the possible threat of being deprived without compensation, the land they had claimed ownership of that otherwise had been leased to them by King Mbandzeni for grazing purposes. They are afraid and probably hope they would get a better deal were the land to revert back to the kingdom.

I recall one of the last speeches, if not the last, by King Sobhuza II in 1982 when on the eve of the apartheid government handing over to the kingdom some of the land in question the ANC dispatched its then Secretary General Alfred Nzo from its Lusaka headquarters to beg the Sovereign to pull out of the transaction on the basis that the liberation of South Africa should take precedent, after which this matter could be concluded with a legitimate government. For one reason or the other the King was not pleased, no that is an understatement, he was angry, very angry.

Fond of speaking in parables, the King in his emotive laden speech that was akin to a declaration of war, spoke of the foolhardiness of one being made to beg or negotiate for what was rightfully his. He said something to the effect that it would be very stupid of emaSwati to maintain a peaceful exterior in the face of being ridiculed over what rightfully belonged to them. He made it clear that emaSwati were not after someone else’s land but after what belonged to them and should not be expected to be nice and diplomatic about it. That speech was to form a discussion point in every nook and cranny of the kingdom - ostensibly because the King had not been specific on the subject matter and people were wondering what it was that had angered him so much - until the King’s demise.

As I see it, it would not be advisable for the BRC to rope in the FF+ in its mission as this could derail whatever chance they might have in convincing the South African Government to, initially, get round a negotiating table to discuss the subject matter. As previously opined on this column, chances of getting the land back are very slim to the point of being impossible. In fact was the outcome to be otherwise, it could trigger a political tsunami the Swati leadership would live to regret.

The truism is that the land is not bare and is inhabited by emaSwati who while some of their traditional leadership still pay homage to Ingwenyama, King Mswati III, and easily discount the position espoused by the late chairman of the then Border Adjustment Committee, Prince Khuzulwandle that they were about land and not its present inhabitants, subscribe to a polity at variance with that obtaining in the kingdom.

The prince conveniently forgot that the people in occupation of the land in question were predominantly emaSwati,whose history is attached to and intertwined with that of emaSwatini in eSwatini. Therefore, the prince’s posture was likely to not only alienate emaSwati in South Africa but make them hostile as well. Additionally, EmaSwati in South Africa would not warm up to the idea of being incorporated to a larger Kingdom of eSwatini, given the vastly different polities existing between the two countries.

South Africa subscribes to a multiparty democracy anchored on a culture of human rights while in the Kingdom of eSwatini political power is a monopoly of the ruling class and human rights is an abomination. Consequently, in the unlikely event that the land in question were to revert back to the kingdom, of course inclusive of its present inhabitants – being fellow emaSwati – it is unlikely that they would want to give up their hard earned political emancipation in favour of a largely undemocratic dispensation.

In all intents and purposes they would most probably use their numerical might – they number about five times more than the population of eSwatini – to challenge and bring down the Byzantine and despotic Tinkhundla political system edifice and irreversibly transform the polity of the Kingdom of eSwatini. Of course that is not on the agenda of the Swati leadership in its pursuit of the kingdom’s former territory.

The complexity of the matter is further exacerbated by the possibility of other countries, such as Lesotho and Botswana, also claiming a piece of South Africa. In Lesotho a group calling itself ‘Basotho Petitioners’ has already written to the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, to facilitate the return of land taken from them in 1854.

That is not all; active and dormant kingdoms within South Africa itself may rise, demanding not just land but sovereignty as recently threatened by Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini when voicing out his opposition to the state’s expropriation of land without compensation in an apparent protection of his Ingonyama Trust, which administers traditional land in KwaZulu-Natal.

Thus the best outcome the Kingdom of eSwatini could ever wish for is in the form of reparations and levies on mineral resources being

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