PRODUCT OF ESWATINI CULTURE?

Sir,

Sometimes the stories (tinganekwane) we were told when we were still young become a true reality of the lives we live as human beings.
I recall a story that I was told when I was young in primary school, around the 70s, about a granny who went to fetch firewood in the bushes to prepare her supper as usual. But, that day was different as she came across a big beautiful egg which she decided to take to her hut where she made fire to cook it. 

As the hut got warm, lo and behold the egg hatched and a big ‘anaconda’ like snake emerged and demanded food from the elderly woman.
She gave the snake everything, but still it demanded more lest it swallowed her.

She even gave the snake all her livestock, until she started to go to her neighbours asking for more food.

Suspicious

After a while the neighbours became suspicious and decided to check what was going on, as the granny was getting thinner and thinner yet more food was being offered to her.
You might be wondering why I brought up such an old funny story, but the reality is, our grandfathers and grandmothers are suffering and we are all contributors to that suffering. Elderly people are systematically forced to feed us, our children and even our children’s children.

Robbed

Read the Times of Swaziland, when they get their grants from government, they are either robbed by their children, grandchildren or even killed for the meagre grants which they use to buy food for the very same ‘anacondas’.
Something definitely needs to be done to protect our elderly people against ourselves, otherwise we might end up not having them existing in our societies.
Recall the history of mankind; which says people were wanderers, moving around looking for food.

Elderly people were killed as they retarded their movement, are we not today moving back to that era?
We have seen our government taking a giant legal step in introducing the SODV law; it is high time we do likewise in protecting the elderly of our country.
The Office of the DPM and the Ministry of Tinkhundla need to do some research especially on rural and peri-urban areas and find out about this problem.

Affected

It is a fact; most of the affected  elderly people are not comfortable to openly state how they are treated by these youngsters because according to them, once these youngsters find out that they have revealed this problem, they might even kill them.
Is this a product of our Eswatini culture? If so, let me close with this quote from Hanns Johst; “When I hear anyone talk of culture, I reach for my revolver.”

Mandla

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