A-Infos (en) South Africa, Zabalaza* #6 - SWAZILAND: A BITTER TASTE TO THE SHUGARCANE

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INTRODUCTION --- On January 25 and 26 this year, the
----------------Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions
(SFTU) held a national strike to try to force
Africa's last absolute monarchy to trans-
form itself into a multi-party bourgeois
democracy. But it was a poor showing,
with a demonstration of only 500 in
Mbabane. Leaders from the SFTU, the
Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL), the
People's United Democratic Movement
(PUDEMO), the Swaziland Youth
Congress (SWAYOCO) and the Ngwane
National Liberation Congress (the last
unpopular among the youth for "scratching
the belly of the beast") lead the Mbabane
march. SFTU general secretary Jan
Sithole said the regime's Imbokodvo party
rode to power on the back of popular
struggle: "The people of Swaziland liberat-
ed themselves from the British rule."
     But the lesson of popular power that
he hinted at appears to have been lost.
The strike was a far cry from the power of
that demonstrated by the general strike of
1997 in which tens of thousands of work-
ers including many from the state sector
downed tools in response to the state's
detention of four pro-democracy leaders
including Sithole. In 1997, the general
strike shut down the economy for almost
two weeks and suggested an insurrec-
tionary, social solution. But it was not to
be: as the following report from our mem-
bers in Swaziland will show, the pro-
democracy movement there is still heavily
compromised by bourgeois nationalist
influences - notably the duplicitous ANC
and SACP.

PRAYERS OF DESPERATION

     You are in Manzini! The taxi with a
South African registration is blasting toyi-
toyi struggle songs, reminding you of the
days when people's fear was replaced by
the spirit of resistance during the fight
against the apartheid regime, coupled with
its demise towards the 1994 elections.
Amongst the folks, individuals are wearing
bright yellow ANC T-shirts with Mbeki's
head on them, as if they are appealing to
the king: "Please learn from the South
African government. If you don't listen the
same thing that happened to the former
South African regime is going to happen to
yours."
     Many people are attracted to immi-
grate in South Africa for jobs. When they
visit back home they introduce the life of
the big city. And they've tasted a disparate
life to their fellow-country people, which
gives them guts to challenge royal power.
  here are quite a considerable number of
hawkers and street vendors from
Mozambique who also have T-shirts of the
main political parties in Mozambique with
the head of that political party's candidate.
Those in Swaziland have few ideas on
how to achieve their freedom except pray-
ing, because wearing the T-shirt of the
local movement can be leading to misery.
Inside the fleet of buses, which is the
major transportation of people, only
gospel music is played and screened. The
mainstream media is state-controlled and
manipulated by the royal family and its
friends. Many people in the very remote,
primitive and forgotten villages have no
access at all to any source of media.
    The unemployed, peasants and work-
ers are mostly dependent on subsistence
farming for survival. As for the workers,
their wages are paltry. Doubled with mis-
erable working conditions, workers are
continuously trampled. For more than 10
years the entire work force at the royal
hotels were only casuals. The bosses are
issuing retrenchment notices unilaterally.
State workers are not allowed to join
unions or strikes. For months nurses did
not receive their wages. The trade union
bureaucracy whines occasionally, but only
to justify the king at the end of the day.
Unanimous with the need to have the king,
they say: "The king is innocent but only his
advisers are to blame.", which helps keep
the king interesting and civilised to his
counterparts on the continent who are
implementing neo-liberalism.
LAND-BARONS ON THE WARPATH
    The king is on a land-privatising spree.
There's an influx of land prospectors,
resulting in white strangers falling on the
land, staying and introducing their western
and European designed houses and their
4x4s. The next thing people hear are that
dams, sugar cane fields and game
reserves will be built on the same land
where they are staying. Sugar is one of
Swaziland's big exports. Already there are
peasants who got lured into the snare by
the hope that their lives will improve when
they were told they'd automatically have
ownership in the sugarcane fields. Later
when the time to benefit comes, after
they've worked so hard turning their land
to sugarcane fields, they are told they owe
the bank and the price of the sugar has
gone down. Which means their land is
now owned by the bank and they are
advised to sign retrenchment documents.
    In other incidents, the peasants are
being told they may not have more than
 en cows. A commotion erupted between
the inhabitants of the land and the govern-
ment authority over evictions from the land
without remuneration: sheriffs instructing
bulldozers, with police to arrest anyone
resisting. If the attacked communities
show any solidarity in resisting the evic-
tions, the army is immediately sent to set
up a checkpoint in the vicinity, and the
entire community is evicted. This mad-
ness of harassment is also advancing the
plan by the state to group the people
together (the state says it is planning on
installing water, electricity, roads, shops
and that there will be jobs for people, but
this is all being done at the state's con-
venience, not the people's).

BOURGEOIS NATIONALIST
POLITICIANS TREAD WATER

     There are three political parties, of
which one is the People's Democratic
Movement (PUDEMO). The other two
have nothing much to do with the masses;
mostly they represent the interests of the
local businesses and they are infested by
the administrators of the same regime.
But PUDEMO is sub-ANC and it remains
convinced the ANC will bring change in
Swaziland. They believe in the ANC, not
the masses of South Africa, because they
only know the ANC "liberated" South Africa
without understanding exactly who
marched, demonstrated, boycotted and
died for a complete change, not the neo-
liberal war on the poor under the ANC of
today. When the current king, Mswati III,
came to power, PUDEMO urged the peo-
ple to give him a chance. Within couple of
years PUDEMO started barking as the
king became more repressive than his
father, King Sobhuza II.
     Because of the decree declared in
1973 by Sobhuza, which gives the king
absolute powers in decision-making, polit-
ical parties and similar bodies can be dis-
solved and prohibited if they pose ques-
tions about royal power. There has been
an attempt to amend this decree, by lead-
ers of political parties and heads of state.
Initially they took a diplomatic approach to
build the bridge, but the Swaziland
National Council (SNC), which is the main
shareholder in the negotiations, is just an
appendix of the state, which in turn is sub-
ject to the king. The negotiations have
been going for more than a decade. But
the people on the ground have no idea
whether the amendment will feed the
entire Swaziland or just the very few.
They've been waiting patiently. And every
time their leaders are coming out of the
talks empty-handed.
     Whenever there's a public outcry, lead-
ers from different sectors are summoned
by the king to have an amending ceremo-
ny with him (he's always doing cultural rit-
uals to remind everyone not to forget him).
Clearly the heads of state are procrasti-
nating on negotiations, but the pressure is
amounting on the movement because
their promise to have a multi-party govern-
ment by 2008 is being shattered. This has
caused impatience and exhausted the
slightest lawful means and it is driving
mostly the youth in the direction of armed
struggle because the youth blames their
leaders for wasting time. During these
unnecessary delays the state is brutally
storming activists with beatings, torture,
arrests, interrogations, raiding and confis-
cations of office equipment. Some have
been killed or paralysed.

PARALYSIS ON THE LABOUR
FRONT, TOO
     The two federations are Swaziland
Federation of Trade Union (SFTU) and
Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL).
The SFTU's two biggest affiliates are the
Swaziland Nation Association of Civil
Servants (SNACS) and Swaziland
National Association of Teachers (SNAT),
both of which are currently suspended
from the federation after they expressed
dissatisfaction about lack of transparency
and democracy in the SFTU federation's
bureaucracy. Although SNAT only men-
tioned late balloting of its members, as the
cause of its failure to participate in the
strike, both affiliates shunned this year's
strike at the last minute, because of their
suspensions. The affiliates of the union
federations are run like spaza shops.
There's no solidarity: affiliation is only for
recognition. Most leaders of the affiliates
are civil servants in the highest posts,
where they have to dance the tune of the
king. And they are involved within certain
sub-structures which keep the communi-
ties submissive to the king's orders.
     It is the same with the union federa-
tions. There's a fight amongst its national
executive committees, mostly because of
their relationships with certain political par-
ties: everyone needs to have their political
party's agenda recognised. Currently four
affiliates are suspended. PUDEMO's rela-
tionship with the federation is bitter and
most of the suspended affiliates are close
to PUDEMO.            But the relationship
between the trade unions and the political
movement is vague and unpredictable.
The movement gets its funding and guid-
ance from the ANC government and the
tripartite alliance. Obviously the sole inter-
est of the South African government has
nothing to do with liberating the
oppressed, suppressed and repressed
destitute       indigenous     masses        of
Swaziland, but rather to protect and
advance business co-operation with South
Africa and abroad so the mega-rich and
up-coming black capitalists can collabo-
rate with the king in expropriating the land
belonging to the people. Also to get cheap
labour and expand their market claws. So
the political movement is expected only to
democratise the kingdom - not to get rid of
the entire royal power.
REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH ENTER
THE FRAY
    But outspoken members of student
organisations have also expressed their
disapproval of the SFTU's leadership. The
Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO)
is the sub-division of PUDEMO. The
youth on the ground have been
autonomously influential in grassroots
political activities, which keeps the move-
ment in step with the oppressed men and
women in the street of Manzini and
Mbabane. These are mostly the youth in
the high-school level, who are frustrated at
the extreme poverty and disease in their
communities and at the lack of job
prospects, limited mainly among male stu-
dents to possible careers in the state
security apparatus (the regime is the
largest employer and the entire work force
is only 96,000). They are mainly inspired
by the youth in South Africa during the
1976 uprising and are demanding free and
quality education with their student repre-
sentatives taking part in decision-making.
    Active in an environment where
HIV/AIDS, hunger and curable disease
decimate their communities, these ener-
getic young up-coming revolutionaries are
prepared to go beyond PUDEMO's
reformist agenda. After explaining to them
what is happening today in South Africa
under the ANC government, they immedi-
ately realised that the ANC is playing a
dirty game in Swaziland. Clearly, the ANC
betrayed masses around the world. In
Swaziland the masses were promised that
immediately after South Africa was freed,
Swaziland would be liberated, but until this
day, the masses are still waiting. The
1996/7 uprising in Swaziland came from
the Swazi people on the street, hoping the
ANC would give them support. But
instead, leaders from various pro-democ-
racy groups ended up in the government
and became obstacles to the possible fall
of the king. These political activities were
always there, although 1996/7 is most
remembered because of the influence of
the South African masses.

BUILDING REVOLUTIONARY
COUNTER-POWER
    Today the people of Swaziland are so
completely downtrodden that the youth
are starting to speak of going for guerrilla
training and taking up the armed struggle,
in emulation of MK in South Africa. But
that path is the road to disaster, as clearly
shown by the ANC-lead state's military
invasion of the constitutional monarchy of
Lesotho in 1998 in order to crush a pro-
democratic mutiny. Swaziland, a land-
locked country similar in many ways to
Lesotho, can only expect a similar bloody
military intervention if its people resort to
arms too early. The only real option for the
people of Swaziland now is for them to
forever sever their dreams of liberation
from trickster politicians and opportunistic
labour leaders.
     Swaziland is not undergoing a national
liberation struggle in the conventional
sense. But its popular classes are still
having to fight against the neo-colonialism
of South African and British capitalists
allied with local chiefs. Against this back-
ground, the opportunities for a real pre-
revolutionary dual-power situation to be
developed by committed rank-and-file rev-
olutionaries in Swaziland are great. This
is because a) it is geographically and cul-
turally very close to the grassroots revolu-
tionary traditions of South Africa, b) there
is no communist party or any other sub-
stantial left-wing presence able to side-
track the struggle, c) the entire civil socie-
ty, trade union and political movement is
excluded from power - but corrupted by
bourgeois aspirations, and d) people are
angry at poor working conditions and at
blatant land-grabs by capitalist agribusi-
ness and brutal evictions by the state.
     The       revolutionaries        among
SWAYOCO's youth must start building
counter-power in Swaziland by forming
horizontal links with like-minded groupings
in the region, especially in South Africa,
who have more members and resources
to assist them. They must start building
secret rank-and-file members' networks
within SWAYOCO, PUDEMO, SFTU, SFL
and the suspended unions, and within
social groupings of the working class,
peasantry and poor, whether of women, or
high-school children. So long as they
remain directly democratic, allowing their
policy decisions to be taken by those most
immediately affected, these local and
regional networks will be able to form the
foundation of a social force strong enough
to undermine the capitalist monarchic
state by seizing power - and putting it in
the hands of their communities and so
build a libertarian socialist system.
    These new networks must shatter the
chains that bind them to bourgeois nation-
alist politics. Their united voices should
cry out - not for patriotic chauvinism - but
for A SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF THE
OPPRESSED CLASSES! They must
realise that tens of thousands of Swazis
live beyond Swaziland's borders, thus the
liberation of the Swazis recognises no
such artificial boundaries: the movement
must be INTERNATIONALIST and ANTI-
IMPERIALIST. They must also recognise
the liberation of the Swazis requires the
liberation of all other ethnic groups, black,
white, brown or yellow, united against all
centres of exploitation: the movement
must be ANTI-RACIST and ANTI-CAPI-
TALIST. They must recognise that to deny
the king and his Tinkundla system its
  uthoritarian rule is not to deny their "cul-
ture," but to deny the ruling class its
extraction of profit from their sweat in the
name of culture. Anarchists only support
what is progressive and democratic in
each culture. We are against the chief-
taincy, the monarchy, and traditional laws
that oppress women. We want grassroots
democracy, not authority, traditional or oth-
erwise.
    The power of the people is not to be
found in the boardrooms of the parasite
class that feeds off the people: the move-
ment must be ANTI-BOURGEOIS, but mil-
itate for WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY.
Recognising that our enemies are anti-
democratic, the movement must practice
DIRECT ACTION IN THE FIELD and
DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN DECISION-
MAKING. Recognising that our enemies
sow only distrust, disease, death and dis-
may, the movement must practice MUTU-
AL AID, and fight its resistance struggle in
ways that LIBERATE, not enslave, those
they seek to free. These new networks
must champion the autonomy of grass-
roots organisations, for WORKER CON-
TROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUC-
TION and COMMUNITY CONTROL OF
MUNICIPALITIES. That path is the road to
a true social revolution that the 1997 gen-
eral strike only hinted at.
                ZACF International Secretaries
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