Banned opposition party launches manifesto

Swaziland's largest, if illegal, opposition political party - the People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) - published its manifesto on Wednesday. It was a milestone, given that just 10 years ago, police raided homes suspected of having PUDEMO pamphlets and newspapers were forbidden from quoting the organisation's statements. The government called the group's literature "highly treasonous", and used possession as grounds for arresting and detaining political reformers who sought to bring democracy to sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarchy. "The People's Movement will lead all the oppressed and democracy-seeing forces," Bong'nkhosi Dlamini, PUDEMO secretary-general, wrote in the manifesto. Ironically, the message was carried in the Swazi Observer, a daily newspaper owned by the palace-controlled royal conglomerate, Tibiyo TakaNgwane. "The palace is under pressure from the international community to legalise political debate. As much as it would like to suppress PUDEMO's message, which was the rule a few years ago, it won't dare [to do so now]," a political scientist at the University of Swaziland told IRIN. "Government appears to permit propaganda, but is drawing the line beyond that. Meetings, rallies, marches and demonstrations are still banned," he added. The manifesto, in the form of a New Year's message, called for the repeal of a 1973 royal decree that banned parties and activity in opposition to royal rule. King Mswati III's father, King Sobhuza, outlawed political groups and meetings when he overturned the nation's independence constitution and assumed control of government. Dlamini called for negotiations with government to seek a way out of the current political impasse. On Wednesday, US news services were reporting the State Department had put Swaziland's participation in the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) on probation, and Secretary of State Collin Powell would soon notify government of its possible suspension from the trade treaty if political reform was not forthcoming. Meanwhile, a new coalition of business and legal groups has given the government until 20 January to show its commitment to democratisation. The coalition fears the loss of AGOA privileges, on which the kingdom's growing export sector depends. For the first time, PUDEMO has gone beyond a list of complaints against government, and set forth a party platform of policies it wishes to follow. These included a poverty-reduction plan aimed at raising living standards and fighting the spread of AIDS. Criticising polygamy, which is legal in Swaziland, and by inference Mswati, whose wedding plans for his eleventh wife were recently announced, the organisation said: "We unequivocally condemn all cultural practices promoting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including polygamy." Mario Masuku, president of PUDEMO, told IRIN that the organisation's membership numbers were secret. "It is against the law to belong to PUDEMO, and many Swazis cannot afford to be publicly identified with us. But our members and sympathisers number in the tens of thousands," he said. Mswati, in his first message of 2003 to the nation on Tuesday, responded to 2002's political controversies by saying God and the ancestral spirits would confront political activists in the afterlife. Speaking in SiSwati, Mswati said: "All those doing this disturbing will be seen by God and the ancestors."