INSULT TO MINISTER WINNIE

 Sir,

A lot of people, myself included, were shocked by reading that a minister was kicked out of Parliament opening. I was totally shocked that it was the late Jerome Nxumalo’s daughter and Minister of Labour and Social Security Winile Khanyisile Magagula.

When I called her mobile phone and asked her what happened; were the headlines true, she said yes, but with quite a heavy heart which told me she was still crying. Once she had somehow recovered, she told me what had happened.

Out of the blue she was called by the deputy prime minister who then told her to  immediately leave the House and go home for two years as part of her ‘mourning period’ following the death of her husband last year. Quite shocked at this I asked; “Which husband for you divorced him 24 years ago? She slowly told me that it had to do with her late former husband and father of her children who died last year.

Divorce

That made me even angrier; don’t people know that Winnie had gone through that very acrimonious divorce in 1994 in Swaziland? Were any male who lost his wife going to be subjected to the same kind of humiliation Winnie was subjected to?
If not what then would be the message to our women folk?
She did not have answers except to say her humiliation, while it might have been aimed at her, had unfortunately defied His Majesty the King’s call for more women in Parliament this year.

She said she took this as a serious affront to her personal dignity as well as an attack of the fine job she had done in first taking out the country from its perennial stay in the ILO’s Special Paragraph and then finally bringing back AGOA. With her permission I then called the deputy prime minister, someone I have always respected and just wondered what could have prompted him to do this dastardly act?

Because of the mutual respect between the two of us, when I told him it was me who had called him and why, he was very happy but shocked just like Winnie!
He too did not expect this instruction, which came to him at the wrong  time but that he had been told that it was ‘a Swazi custom and tradition’ which demanded that a widow be not where Their Majesties would be and that he too had received the instruction and was not even aware that Winnie had long divorced.

He assured me that he was going to call her and ask for forgiveness because it could never be right for him and his ministry to be seen to be undermining women and still be said to be responsible for the promotion and protection of the rights of women.

Although he told me who the source of this command was, I assured him that I was not going to mention it in this letter but leave it to the conscience of those who plotted this evil act.

May this nation remember that we now have  a national Constitution which is the supreme law of the land; and that therefore there can be no  law or custom/tradition which undermines our protected human rights, which include that ‘no woman shall be forced to respect a custom or tradition which conflicts with either her beliefs or basic rights.

Musa Hlophe

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