Tinkhundla nurtures hypocrisy

This is an unedited version of an article published by The Times of Swaziland under the ''As I See It" column on July 24, 2013.

By Vusi Sibisi

The one thing constant about the forthcoming elections is that the nation will not get to elect the Prime Minister of its choice notwithstanding an overwhelming call at last year’s Sibaya for the head of government to be directly elected by the people while the complexion of the next parliament will be determined at the polling stations.

And with the election season upon us, the talk at every nook and cranny of the kingdom is about the possible make-up of the next parliament and, by progression, the next Cabinet and government. But can the same political experiment deliver radical political changes?

At last year’s Sibaya, the People’s Parliament, convened amidst a plethora of challenges facing the Kingdom of eSwatini, amongst which was the teachers “Waya Waya” strike over wages, the people were almost unanimous on the urgent need for political transformation. And if the call for the PM to be directly elected by the people had any bearing on the political inclination of the people, this essentially translated to mean that the nation wanted the devolution of political power – from the institution of the monarch where all authority is currently resident - to the people. 

As I see it, the call by the people for an elected PM was a blatant rejection of and also a vote of no confidence on the overly glorified and protected Tinkhundla political system. That the people went further to pass a vote of no confidence on the Cabinet itself by calling for its immediate dissolution, a move later supplemented by their elective representatives in parliament, the House of Assembly, in accordance with the dictates of the national constitution, is further proof of the people’s increasing disenchantment with the obtaining political hegemony. The question is how long the system can continue to be forced down the throats of the people before reaching the point of no return.

Indeed last year’s Sibaya was probably a precursor to the systemic changing face of Swazi polity ostensibly because Sibaya had previously served to grandstand and sing the praises of the obtaining political oligarchy and those of the leadership. Thus it must have come as a shock to the leadership when Ludzidzini National Cattle Byre reverberated from the echoes of previously unheard of criticism of the obtaining political status quo. After all the political establishment had driven the fear of God into the hearts and minds of the people and gagged them into the silence that the leadership misinterpreted as a sign of peace when defending and justifying the political status quo. But if last year’s Sibaya is representative of the critical mass of the nation, we can expect a radical transformation of parliament in which the conformist voices will be replaced by critical thinkers that should naturally lead to the second political and socio-economic emancipation of the people.

As I see it, this evolution is inevitable because it is anchored on high moral values as opposed to the hypocrisy that is manifestly the campus of the obtaining political hegemony in which the truth has been sacrificed on the altar of personal aggrandizement. And the good Reverend Absalom Dlamini is partially correct in his sermon, during a prayer breakfast last Saturday at Mavuso Exhibition and Trade Centre as part of the weekend’s Somhlolo Festival of Praise 2013, that some of those orbiting the centre of political authority were great pretenders who were looking out for themselves other than the King. Indeed not many of those gravitating the political centre of power in this country are what they appear to be and can be likened to foxes in sheep’s skins. 

The Rev. Dlamini’s call that all institutions and structures should be influenced by God in order to rid the country of corruption is unlikely to find homage anywhere because it is the obtaining Tinkhundla political system that is incapable of producing anything but hypocrites given to praising the king’s apparel even when he is naked just so to curry his favour. That is what this system of government is by design only capable of producing people who are not just hostile to but enemies of the truth.

That of late we have seen the enactment of legislation amongst the raft of six proposed election laws that is targeted at derailing certain individuals from being elected cannot be described anything otherwise except that it is evil. You have to ask yourself what kind of a government can stoop so low as to enact legislation to deal with individuals who pose no threat to the nation whatsoever because certainly this cannot be said to be in the public interests. Yet not a single of these proposed laws is derived from the recommendations of last year’s Sibaya, the voice of the Swazi nation that the leadership often boasts about in international fora when singing the so-called democratic credentials of the Tinkhundla political system.

As I see it, using arms to instill fear, or what the ruling elite refers to as peace, cannot be a permanent panacea and solution to the challenges that have been facing the country in the immediate past, such as the fiscus crisis, and those that will face the nation in the future. Peace cannot be achieved by instilling fear in the people by amassing military arsenal when this country is unlikely to fight any war now or in the future. This is unsustainable for the long term because it certainly is not what God designated for this nation and anyone who says otherwise is the archetypal hypocrite that the Tinkhundla political system was designed to produce.

The Rev. Dlamini has orbited the kingdom’s political centre of power long enough to know and be able to lance the boil because he has intimate knowledge of the operations and indeed the people entrusted the responsibility of driving the country’s political machinery. I am sure he also can name and shame those who have sacrificed the truth just so as to benefit their bellies, except that in SiSwati ligama lemuntfu yinkhomo (a person’s name is sacrosanct).