ROAD MAP WELCOME BUT…

In a nation long starved of positive and good news – forget the superficial baloney spewed by praise singers, boot lickers, sycophants and such other moral degenerates and intellectual pygmies - it becomes attractive in a typically hopeless situation to elevate egoism, mediocrity and infamy into power just to create a false sense of hope as justification to live for yet another day.

This, I reflected as I was digesting the possible impact of the Eswatini Strategic Road Map: 2019 – 2023 launched last week with much fan-fare by Prime Minister Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini, coming as it did when there’s nothing much going for this kingdom. The economy is constricting, unemployment almost nudging closer to 30 per cent, deepening poverty (approximately 63 per cent of the people are living below the international poverty datum line) and disease ravaging emaSwati in the face of an almost non-existent health care system, a faltering and increasingly irrelevant education system – just about everything tearing at the seams.  Boom! in the midst of all this gloom comes what appears to be a serious attempt by government to resuscitate Eswatini incorporated into viable economic progression. And the timing could not have been any better if the reception of the road map is anything to go by.

The intention is not to dissect the road map per se; after all it, is a good and honest attempt at getting this country working. Save for the decision to drastically reduce corporate tax and in the process write-off about E800 million – one has to wonder if anyone had reflected on the five-year tax holiday that was eventually scrapped because it was not delivering - from the tax receipts of Eswatini Revenue Authority while burdening the individual taxpayer with a heavier tax load, the road map is a good attempt at kick-starting the economy. At the height of the five-year tax holiday unscrupulous companies changed identities and ownership every five years to dodge paying tax, hence it was eventually scrapped. Is there any assurance that cutting corporate tax will indeed attract more foreign direct investments (FDIs) not to leave out domestic investors? The jury is still out on that one.

That said, the Road Map still has many misses and omissions that, perhaps, have something to do with the customary skirting around the truth and the real issues owing to the defective nature of the Tinkhundla political system. Yes, the obtaining political hegemony has a tenuous relationship with the truth hence the truth is not popular currency in this country. Those who dare speak truth to power are maligned, isolated and branded enemies of the State.  Some of the salient issues the road map skirted around include the unwritten policies of nepotism and cronyism, which is why the civil service has the largest head count per capita than larger and more successful economies in the region and beyond. There is also no mention on how government will deal with costly uneconomical projects that end up draining the taxpayer apropos operational and maintenance costs. And while the PM has warned against demanding freebies from FDIs, he has rather skirted around the issue of the demand for free shareholding by the privileged of our society. In recent years, the demand for free shareholding in new and established companies by the political elites has been responsible for chasing away potential investors and disinvestment by domestic investors. This is one of the many truths no one, it seems, is prepared to face head-on yet it remains the number one nemesis of this country and the domestic economy.

As I see it, the issue of corruption is better left to its vices since much has been said about it yet there appears to be no political will and commitment to deal with it. This is nuanced by the apparent corruption of customary institutions that are now openly abused on appointed days to nurture and promote the scourge of corruption in public. There is also no mention of merging and reducing the number of State-owned enterprises and Cabinet portfolios in future, not to mention political reforms that would be catalytic in unlocking the full potential of this country. Is it not ironic that government had to draw on Rwanda’s success story, a country that has been brutalised by war and internal conflicts since independence in 1961 when we boast of 51 years of so-called peace and stability yet still no one has the perception that it is the Tinkhundla political system that is the elephant in the room?

Then there is the age-old question of land tenure whose absence has reduced the nation State into a fiefdom and emaSwati into squatters with no rights whatsoever to even a square metre of land in what they call their country. This is manifested by the daily evictions of people that have even drawn the ire of the otherwise docile African Union (AU).  The PM, when launching the road map, made reference to Singapore’s economic success but omitted to mention that the key to this was that country’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. He is famously quoted to have said; “There were two options for me: Either I get corrupted and I put my family in the Forbes list of the richest people in the world and leave my people with nothing; or I serve my country, my people and let my country be in the list of the best 10 economies in the world. I chose the second option.”

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