When a recent spate of pro-democracy protests spread across Eswatini, the untruth of the country’s peace and stability gained a global audience.
Eswatini’s contrived reputation as a ‘peaceful and stable’ country has come to define the kingdom. The notion of being peaceful was quickly internalized as intrinsic to being Swati. But what that only serves to perpetrate is to silence people confronting unforgiving realities and trick them into docility. When a recent spate of pro-democracy protests convulsed across the country, the untruth of the country’s peace and stability gained a global audience and pronounced a political re-awakening, driven by the youth against the structural violence of scarcity.
Eswatini’s political putrefaction actually began 48 years ago, in 1973. On the 12th of April 1973, the late King Sobhuza II made a proclamation that repealed the multi-party constitution of 1968 with a rule by decree where ‘all political parties and similar bodies that cultivate and bring about disturbances and ill-feelings within the Nations are hereby dissolved and prohibited.’ The decree further states that any person who even conspires to form a political party would be liable for imprisonment. The late ruler believed the 1968 multi-party constitution disrupted ‘Swazis peaceful, constructive and essentially democratic methods of political activity’. Under the guise of ensuring peace was maintained, specifically this Swazi peace, he bequeathed complete power to the throne. By disallowing the political agency of his people, a wound was marred into the nation’s body politic and somewhat frozen in that time. As years have passed, that wound has been thawing and there has been clear evidence in the years since of pro-democracy movements gaining pace, and its latest manifestation were the June 2021 protests.
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