Times Of Swaziland: BARACK OBAMA CRITICAL OF SWAZILAND

BARACK OBAMA CRITICAL OF SWAZILAND
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BY MFANUKHONA NKAMBULE on 12/01/2014 06:45:00


MBABANE – CNN, the world’s largest cable news network, says President Barack
Obama’s speech at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in Johannesburg hit very
hard on countries like Swaziland.
The service was held on December 10, 2013.
CNN, headquartered in Atlanta, USA, said even though Obama did not mention
names, it was apparent he was referring to countries that violated human rights
and did not uphold the rule of law.
Analysing the president’s speech, Frida Ghitis, the World Affairs columnist
for the Miami Herald and World Politics Review, cited Cuba first and later
Swaziland’s political system.
“Consider who was sitting in the stadium listening to this tribute to the rule
of law and democracy, to handing power to an elected successor.
“It wasn’t just Castro, who along with his older brother Fidel has ruled
Cuba for more than half a century without permitting a democratic election,
while engaging, according to human rights organisations, in “repression of
independent journalists, opposition leaders and human rights activists,” she
said.
“Along with (Rul) Castro in the VIP stand, ostensibly a honouring Mandela’s
legacy, sat countless dictators and their right-hand men.”
She then had a dig at Swaziland: “It included the likes of Swaziland’s Prime
Minister Sibusiso Dlamini, representing the small kingdom described by Freedom
House as ‘a failed state’.”
Ghitis said Dlamini sat in the VIP lounge representing a small kingdom with
shocking realities of oppression, abject poverty, hunger and disease.
The Times SUNDAY will not repeat everything she said about the country’s
leaders.
She referred to Freedom House’s report that Swazi people had been denied their
legitimate rights to have a say over how they should be governed and how the
country’s resources should be used – thus defying the very antithesis of
Mandela’s struggle.
She continued to say: “You can blame Obama for other things but don’t deny
this was a piercing speech, a full-throated defence of democracy and freedom.”
She said Obama did not leave his audience to unpack the condemnation of the
hypocrites that he brought thinly wrapped in praise for Mandela but he unpacked
it all himself and placed it in the center of the arena.
“There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for
freedom but do not tolerate dissent from their own people,” Ghitis quoted the
USA president’s speech.
She said it was a pity that many focused on Obama’s handshake with Raul
Castro, the Cuban president and forgot to dissect his speech.
She told CNN that many were missing the much more poignant events that unfolded
during Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa.
Ghitis is also a former CNN producer and correspondent.
“Sure, the handshake was noteworthy, maybe even meaningful. However, any
satisfaction Castro might have found in the gesture, any comfort authoritarian
regimes might have drawn from the moment of politeness toward a dictator,
dissolved in the far more powerful message of the entire event and of Obama’s
own resonant speech,” he told the CNN listeners and its website readers.
“But Obama came not only to praise a man but came to shine a light on the
values that made him worthy of admiration and the causes that made his struggle
reverberate the world over.
She said it was a moment for stony discomfort among those who travelled to South
Africa representing undemocratic and repressive regimes.
“Like America’s founding fathers,” Obama noted, “(Mandela) would erect a
constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations, a commitment to
democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his election, but by his
willingness to step down from power.”
She went on to say Mandela managed one more victory in death: subjecting a
who’s who of the world’s oppressors to the indignity of sitting through a
memorial service that overflowed with praise for the principles of democracy,
freedom and equality.
Shame
Another thing that made the VIPs cower in shame was Obama’s emphasis on
Mandela’s super-humanity demonstrated by his ability to forgive his former
enemies.
Obama quoted Mandela’s words during his 1964 trial, when he said, “I have
fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.”
Ghitis said citing those particular words was like unleashing daggers against
the likes of Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe since 1987, who sat in the
audience along with scores of celebrities and foreign dignitaries.
Like Mandela, she said, Mugabe led his country to victory over white rule.
However, unlike his neighbour, she added, Mugabe grasped power without letting
go and engaged in a vindictive campaign against white Zimbabweans, which wrought
misery for blacks and whites.
“You could list the men, the countries, the regimes, that should have felt
directly attacked by Obama’s words in a crowd that included envoys from China,
Saudi Arabia, Chad, Jordan and many other states whose leaders are not popularly
elected and the many others guilty of repression and human rights violations,”
she said.
SD is democratic – Percy
MBABANE –“We refuse to entertain ignorance; the CNN is one of the media
houses that made the world believe there were weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq and it turned out to be a blue lie,” said Percy Simelane, the Government
Press Secretary.
Simelane said the democracy that prevailed in Swaziland allowed for the populace
at all levels of life to choose their representation in Parliament as the
“dictates of true democracy.”
“Persons from communities where candidates are imposed on the electorate
should be the last to criticise us,” he said.
The government press secretary said Swaziland did not have torture cells around
the world and ‘there was no Guantanamo Bay prisoners’. He said there was no
Swazi in any refugee camp around the world, no coup d’etat and no civil war
since history.
“We have said time and again that we have a constitution that was adopted by
the people at the
cattle byre. The constitution contains the views of the people on how they must
be governed. It was not imposed on them,” he said.
Simelane said the country’s leaders ruled the country on the basis of public
views which were time to time submitted to them by the entire nation at the
cattle byre.
“We have a Parliament that is elected by the people. The constitution provides
that a certain percentage of ministers must come from the people,” he said.
He said the courts were independent and the media houses followed their policies
when reporting.
“As a country we don’t understand why we are perceived as an undemocratic
state when the will of the people determines the way we do things,” he said.
He said the person who analysed Obama’s speech missed the point.
“Swazis live in peace. We resolve disputes amicably because we are a
peace-loving nation. Tourists enjoy themselves here because it’s safe
everywhere you go,” he said.
He said Swaziland could be the only country that allowed her people to meet and
discuss issues of governance.
“In some countries the people are represented but everyone is allowed to have
a say in Swaziland, not through a representative,” he said.
What democracy? - TUCOSWA
MANZINI - Vincent Ncongwane, Secretary General of the Trade Union Congress of
Swaziland (TUCOSWA), said Swaziland should not pretend to be democratic.
He said the right to freedom of speech, assembly and association was being
violated with impunity.
He said the best thing government could do was to open up political space,
remove oppressive laws and unban political parties. Ncongwane said political
parties should have a right to form a government.
“We cannot claim to be democratic when other groups are not allowed to vote
and form a government but one can only vote on an individual basis. There are
many people in Swaziland who want to vote as a group advocating for a certain
thing and that is why we are calling for government to unban political
parties,” he said.