NO POLITICAL WILL TO ADVANCE EMASWATI

While the kingdom remains in a state of confusion and paralysis occasioned by an apparent lack of leadership and foresight to get off the starting blocks, by contrast, Lesotho is already cruising at high speed in the exploitation of cannabis on its economic value chain to fast-track its development in the wake of one of its firms breaking into and becoming the first in Africa to be licenced, in April, to sell medical cannabis to the lucrative European Union (EU) market.

Lesotho’s top medical cannabis producer, MG Health, has met the EU’s good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards and is thus licenced to export cannabis flower, oil and extracts as an active pharmaceutical ingredient. The GMP are said to be the minimum requirements a manufacturer or producer must meet to ensure products are safe and of a consistent high quality. They are used to control the licensing for the sale of food, pharmaceutical and medical products.

Tragedy

Indeed the story of cannabis mirrors the tragedy of Eswatini in the 53 years of so-called independence. Apparently still riding on the motto ‘there’s no hurry in Eswatini’, government is unhurried, moving at a tortoise’s pace to create an enabling legal framework to decriminalise cannabis for medicinal and industrial exploitation. Last week, it emerged that a E2.1 billion investment in cannabis by Swaurora Organic Health Products was lost while the Eswatini leadership procrastinated if not prevaricated on the subject. Even more disturbing were accusations by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company, Leandra du Plessis, which has since reportedly taken its investment to another SADC country, that members of Parliament (MPs) had demanded bribes when she lobbied them to pass the amendments to the Opium and Habit Forming Drugs Act of 1922, which would have decriminalised cannabis for medicinal and research purposes.

Allegation

As I see it, the allegation that MPs demanded bribes is indeed an indictment on a political system that harbours and, indeed, is tolerant of corruption to the extent that the scourge has embedded itself as a subculture among emaSwati. Proof of this is the deliberate and systemic weakening of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) as attested to by the appointment, by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) that itself is not above the fray, in recent times of dubious characters long haunted by allegations of corruption to the extent that it has become a useful ornament to project the false façade, especially to bilateral and multilateral partners as well as the global community, that the political system and the leadership frown upon corruption when the reverse could be true if what is happening on the ground is anything to go by.

The JSC, besides recommending ill-fitting candidates, has further played a direct role in emasculating the ACC as attested to by one particular judgment of the High Court authored by Chief Justice Bheki Maphalala, who also chairs the JSC that practically removed any teeth that remained on the ACC. Under the circumstances, perennial political pronouncements and condemnations from every level of government have been nothing but posturing since they have not given effect in terms of political commitment and practical support from those who matter to fight the scourge of corruption that has become endemic in both the public and private sectors, such that it has generally become part of the ecosystem of emaSwati. Therefore, any suggestions that the ACC should investigate the accusations levelled at lawmakers for demanding bribes to do their work would be abortive and a waste of resources and, consequently, the rot should continue to fester in the hope that it may poison itself to death in the long-term.  

Also disturbing is the apt repeated narrative, which is yet to be contradicted, in and outside Parliament that failure to pass the amendment to the colonial legislation – God knows why we still have pieces of legislation from the colonial era a whole 53 years after so-called independence – was largely influenced by illegal dagga farmers. This may suggest a fair sprinkling of such illegal farmers within the hallowed halls of the Legislature, yet another plus to the Tinkhundla system of governance.

What has become crystal is that the political status quo is working in favour of the political elites and the privileged, who are extending their tentacles to every sector of the economy while emaSwati are watching helplessly on the sidelines. That is why things are as they are because the elites are in comfort zones in which they would rather have no competitors, but empty mouths of ordinary folk in which to occasionally drop crumbs through their so-called charitable work. In the meantime, the gulf between the rich and the poor, the haves and have-nots, the wielders of political power and the disenfranchised majority keeps on widening exponentially.
Cannabis could have been the catalyst with which to break the vicious cycles of poverty that are holding captive the majority of emaSwati.



 

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