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EMASWATI ARE SMARTER!

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The intellectually disabled have found refuge from the recent judgment of South Africa’s apex court, the Constitutional Court (Concourt), allowing independent candidates to stand for and contest elections at all levels of state as somewhat validating the (un)democratic credentials of the Tinkhundla political system.

Unlike COVID-19, there is nothing novel about independent candidates participating in and contesting elections in multiparty dispensations because this has been happening in most democratic countries, including the United Kingdom and United States of America that are usually used as barometers and examples of resilient, open and robust democracies. In any event elections by themselves are not definitive of what is or is not democracy just as one swallow does not make a summer.

Beneficiaries

Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Pholile Shakantu joined the list of beneficiaries of the Tinkhundla political system duty-bound to praise it. As is common cause, Minister Shakantu is part of the privileged minority and first class citizens in the hierarchy of the class-structured Eswatini polity. She certainly has never had to think about mundane things such as where her next meal would come from, which is a daily ritual for the majority of emaSwati whom the Tinkhundla political system she is glorifying has denied social justice and driven to debilitating poverty thus earning Eswatini the rank of being one of the most unequal countries in the world.

As I see it, Minister Shakantu’s views and opinions versus any competing political system can only be jaundiced. She simply cannot bite the hand that feeds her hence she has a responsibility to praise and defend the Tinkhundla system. As it turns out, the truth is the nemesis of this system, which speaks to her spurious conclusion that the SA Concourt judgment was moving South Africa ‘away from a purely proportional representation system to make way for a model that brings constituencies to the fore, which we have long favoured here in Eswatini’. This narrative suggests that, consequent to the apex court’s judgment, there will be a paradigm shift in South Africa’s electoral system, which is a far-fetched conclusion and unlikely to happen. Casting the electoral net wider in order to accommodate and include independent candidates is the most plausible consequence, which can hardly be said constitutes a fundamental shift or a departure from one axis.

Alter

As I see it, the apex court judgment will not fundamentally alter the South African electoral landscape save to expand its catchment by extending and including candidacy to independent individuals. In fact this judgment has perhaps also opened an opportunity for SA to review the proportional representation electoral model that was meant to be a building foundation for a cohesive and united multicultural country – the so-called Rainbow Nation - an objective this has hardly achieved in the 26 years of independence if the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party retreating into the laager recently as epitomised by the reconfiguration of its top leadership in favour of the white minority is anything to go by.

The conclusion that the judgment in context will also enhance the visibility of and focus on constituencies is without any base because post-1994 elections have always been driven by constituencies – excepting that candidates were party appointees and did not necessarily have to be resident in their allocated constituencies - what in vernacular is called tinkhundla. In fact elections in a majority of multiparty democracies are constituency based, hence lawmakers who contest elections under the banner of their political parties are directly elected from their constituencies or tinkhundla. That, as it were, is grassroots democracy at work and is effective because the people’s elected representatives have real power as servants of the people, the custodians of political power.

Illusion

It is therefore an illusion and a falsity of Minister Shakantu to state, as a matter of fact, that there is anything like ‘bottom-up development planning and local service delivery’ in Eswatini. Indeed her narrative begs the question of which country she was talking about exactly because most of her assertions, such as the international community’s approval of the Tinkhundla political system, when just about after every election observer missions’ reports have all been damning about the absence of political parties and called for political reforms. She knows that there is nothing like bottom-up in the vocabulary of her beloved political system but top-down from which dissent is not tolerated. It is for this reason that successive Parliaments have called for the national budget to be driven by the people through direct consultations so that they have inputs on the nation’s development trajectory. Why else does she think the leadership frowns upon free speech?

As I see it, people like the minister are living a lie because they are either in denial or simply think emaSwati are not smart. The people are not fools and their silence and lack of action is but a manifestation of their powerlessness to do anything about their situation.      

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