PLANS TO SABOTAGE SADC SUMMIT

A section of the people who attended the seminar at COSATU House last week.

EZULWINI – The People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) and Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) are sensitising South African political parties and trade unions to sabotage the SADC Summit to be hosted by Swaziland next month.

SADC stands for Southern African Development Community. A conference attended by some members of political parties, trade unions and local political activists was held at COSATU House on Thursday.
It was resolved that they should hold demonstrations on strategic places to force SADC to reconsider its decision to allow Swaziland to host the big meeting next month. The SADC Summit will be held at the Royal Swazi Spa Convention Centre.

More than 10 heads of state are expected to grace the occasion, which will see His Majesty the King assuming chairmanship of the regional bloc, taking over from Ian Khama, the president of Botswana. Usually, summits of this magnitude are accorded the highest level of security.

Meanwhile, before the conference held in South Africa resolved on the issue of the Kingdom, Mlungisi Makhanya, Secretary General of the banned PUDEMO, Solly Mapailla, the Deputy Secretary-General of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Zingiswa Losi, the second Deputy President of COSATU, made presentations on Swaziland and they felt the kingdom should not host the Summit.

COSATU stands for the Congress of South African Trade Unions and it is the most influential alliance of the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa. The presentations of the three speakers had common features: “Swaziland must not be allowed to host the SADC summit because she does not have a democracy.”  

After hearing this, conference attendants then resolved to hold a counter meeting to the SADC summit.  Their summit, they said, would look into strategies to influence SADC to reverse and regret its decisions to allow the country to host the main Summit next month.
Other comments cannot be repeated because of their sensitive nature.

Brian Ntshangase, the National Spokesperson of PUDEMO, confirmed that a meeting of stakeholders met at COSATU House to specifically answer Swaziland’s political question.
Ntshangase said the country should not host the summit because it was undemocratic in that political parties were banned in 1973 and remain banned even today as they cannot contest for elections and form a government.

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