Times Of Swaziland: TO GOVT PEOPLE A MEANS TO AN END

TO GOVT PEOPLE A MEANS TO AN END
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Vusi Sibisi on 26/09/2022 08:14:00


The British Government last week launched a six-month plan to rescue businesses
from imminent collapse as a result of rocketing prices – to pay about half of
their energy costs – announced Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Wholesale electricity and gas prices for businesses as well as charities,
hospitals and schools will be capped at half the expected cost on the open
market. This is part of a two-year household energy price freeze to stop
businesses collapsing, protect jobs and manage inflation. Faced with similar
circumstances, whose net impact was shrinking revenues and incomes thus wiping
out expendable income visited upon businesses and working class by the two-year
paralysis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Eswatini Government threw the
people under the bus by adding a further burden to the taxpayer, both business
and households, by introducing value added tax on electricity bills in respect
to the former and a special levy on the latter to fund rural electrification.
This is just scratching the surface of the myriad of insensitivities of
government and its leadership to the daily struggles of the people in pursuit of
an honest life.
Interests
As I see it, government, fuelled by a political system created to serve the
interests of the political elites and their phalanx of blind loyalists,
apologists and praise singers, et al, is locked in the mindset that it is in
exclusive possession of the proverbial hammer and consequently sees every
problem to be a nail. In this context the people, both business and households,
who constitute a small tax base fuelling government operations and the economy
given the rigours of poverty and wide scale unemployment, are the solution to
every government service delivery problem that requires cash injection.
Considering the impact and long-term effects of the pandemic, government should
have shelved VAT on electricity for businesses until such time that there is
full economic recovery. In turn this would have ensured economic stability of
businesses while at the same time protecting existing jobs in the short-term and
creating employment opportunities in the long-term.
But perhaps the most punitive of taxes to be added to an already overburdened
taxpayer is the levy on electricity to fund rural electrification, otherwise a
government service delivery issue that has now been abdicated to current
electricity consumers. This particular tax is intolerable in the face of the
Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) churning out hundreds of millions in profits
annually even though serving as a middleman sourcing its electricity from third
parties. The sum total of this is that the EEC is overcharging emaSwati, which
is tantamount to stealing from them at the urging of government whose
profit-driven motive is counterproductive to a developing country.
Premature
It was premature of government to allow an agent of development created by the
taxpayer to transform into a profit-driven entity now closing in on profits of a
billion Emalangeni yet failing to finance its infrastructure that it has
outsourced to current and future consumers. This shows a government that lacked
a blueprint for the development of this country post-independence. The question
begging for an answer is what happens to the hundreds of millions of Emalangeni
profits being generated by EEC. Probably to fill the bottomless hole created by
government funding ill-advised and uneconomical projects like the Sikhuphe
International Airport that has seen the budget of the Eswatini Civil Aviation
Authority balloon beyond one billion Emalangeni – obviously maintenance costs
of the airport.
It is amazing why, over half a century since independence, that this country of
a mere 17 363 square kilometres has still not achieved 100 per cent
electrification given its equally small population of just over a million
people. In fact given its attributes, this country should be boasting First
World infrastructure translating to a First World roads network, easily
accessible health facilities, world class free universal education from cradle
to the grave and a whole lot more. Poverty, joblessness and disease should be
anathema but are on the ascendancy, contrary to the kingdom’s classification
as a medium income country. All thanks to bad governance yet you have a class of
people orbiting the seat of power who have been conditioned to applaud
mediocrity as achievement.
Question
As I see it, in time we will need to address the question of whether emaSwati
are victims or accomplices to the misgovernance that is manifested by
institutional corruption, political excesses and thuggery, moral decadence, rape
and abuse of natural resources, lately the wanton murder and torture of emaSwati
opposed to the Tinkhundla Political System, the list of iniquities is endless.
Those rooting for this country and emaSwati but have thus far elected to remain
silent and anonymous, of course outside the dissolute circle of those who have
cultivated and perfected the cult of veneration of particular institutions and
individuals, ought to reflect on the import of the following quote by Plato:
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end
up being governed by your inferiors.”As it were this country is in a state of
moral emergency, if not something worse, if measured by the indifference to the
evils that are abroad and, therefore, there are no ‘innocent bystanders’ to
quote Martin Luther King Jr, whom he referred to as oxymorons, ‘for if you are
a bystander, you cannot be innocent’.
Last week, two poignant events thrust themselves into the public domain; the
bombing of the home of Mlungisi Makhanya, the president of the People’s United
Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), and the brutal assaults of Hosea and Ngwempisi
Members of Parliament (MPs), Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube
respectively, while under the custody of the State, have paralysed my senses the
same way the murder of dozens of pro-multiparty activists last year did. Perhaps
one would have recovered sufficiently enough next week to ventilate on these
matters in this column. In the meantime Makhanya and the two MPs must rest in
the knowledge that they are not alone and never will be.