Govt turns down "orphan city" proposal

After months of controversy, the Swazi government has turned down a church group's offer to build an "orphan city" in exchange for the country's two largest game parks and other property. Enterprise and Employment Minister Lutfo Dlamini was quoted in the Swazi media on Thursday as saying, "We pointed out that their approach to the problem was too radical for us to understand." The offer made by the American Christian Evangelical group became public in June, when an agreement between the government and the church group was reported in the Swazi media. The group had asked for the Hlane Nature Reserve, the Mlawula Game Park and government-built factory shells in the eastern provincial capital, Siteki, for commercial exploitation, as well as more than 5,000 ha of communal Swazi Nation land to build a complex to house 60,000 orphans. In return for receiving five percent of the small country's landmass for free, with a guaranteed 99-year lease on all holdings, the Dream for Africa (DFA) initiative would have constructed an orphan complex of huge proportions. However on Thursday, Dlamini, the cabinet's point man in negotiations with DFA, said the government could not turn over national assets in exchange for what critics of the plan called an "orphan city". Some lawmakers feared the Christian group would use the growing number of AIDS orphans for indoctrination into a cult. Critics decried the secrecy with which the project was being handled. When the proposal came to light in June, it took the private Big Game Parks of Swaziland, which manages Hlane Nature Reserve, and the Swaziland National Trust Commission, which runs Mlawula Game Park, by surprise. Other critics said isolating orphans was contrary to Swazi tradition. "We have to examine projects proposed to help orphans and vulnerable children in light of what these can do for the Swazi people, and not just the donors. These have to be sensitive to the needs of Swazis," said Emmanuel Ndlangamandla, director of the Coordinating Assembly of NGOs (CANGO), an umbrella federation of child welfare and other NGOs. "Taking African children out of their communities and placing them in an orphan city, separating them from roots of family, community, nation and name goes against fundamental and valuable African values and traditions of inclusiveness, of family, and of collective responsibility for children of the clan," said Alan Brody, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) country representative. According to UNICEF, by 2010 about 15 percent of Swaziland's population is expected to be AIDS orphans aged under 15.