Police break up border blockade

South African police broke up a pro-democracy blockade at the Swaziland border on Thursday and warned protestors not to block traffic again between South Africa and the tiny kingdom, agencies reported. The blockade against the landlocked Swazi kingdom, which borders South Africa on all sides except for a boundary with Mozambique to the east, was called by the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU). Their demand for political reforms in sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy was backed by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), a ruling ally of President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC). Around 60 protestors were peacefully disbursed after police ordered them to leave Oshoek, a border gate area on Swaziland’s northwest border, which leads to the Swaziland capital Mbabane from South Africa’s main commercial heartland of Johannesburg. Swaziland, with a population of about one million, has been hit by student demonstrations and labour unrest in recent weeks, sparked by a palace order to evict 200 villagers in eastern Swaziland who refused to recognise King Mswati III’s brother as their chief. Political parties in Swaziland, ruled by the British-educated Mswati, are banned under a 1973 royal decree introduced by Mswati’s father King Sobhuza II following independence from Britain in 1969.