Poor stayaway attendance a blow to reform

The poor attendance at a mass stayaway on Thursday and Friday to protest the governance of King Mswati III, was a blow to union organisers and reformists who had hoped to send a strong message to the government and the palace.

"Government will view the low observation of the mass action as a triumph, when its failure should more properly be blamed on poor strategy," Dr Joshua Mzizi, secretary-general of the Human Rights Association of Swaziland, told IRIN.

One union official attributed the poor turnout to the strike co-inciding with the days workers received their Christmas pay cheques and bonuses. Most workers would have felt they could not afford to stay away from their jobs.

Only 60 protestors attended rallies on Thursday and Friday outside the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) headquarters in Manzini while security forces kept a low profile. Armed soldiers patrolled the streets in pairs while most troops were deployed on the outskirts of urban centres awaiting word of confrontations that never came.

"There were no clashes between police and demonstrators, and no arrests," police spokesman Sergeant Vusie Masuku said in a statement.

When 100 demonstrators in Manzini decided to march up the town's main street, they were followed only by a traffic policeman while a few hundred demonstrators marched through the capital Mbabane, past soldiers guarding the government radio station.

Buses operated normally and it was business as usual in the commercial and industrial sectors, except for the closure of some post offices and banks.

A source at Standard Bank Swaziland described the closure of its branches as "precautionary, rather than the result of anything that transpired during the stay-away".

There were reports of normal operations at the sugar estates and timber plantations.

One frustrated union official said: "The agriculture workers union hired a bus for 80 workers from Illovu Sugar in eastern Swaziland, and brought them to Manzini. Just about all of them saw it as an opportunity for a Christmas shopping excursion, and disappeared into the stores."

The labour federations, with a combined membership of 84,000, are the most influential members of the Swaziland Democratic Alliance - an umbrella organisation including human rights groups and political organisations banned by a royal decree forbidding organised political opposition to palace rule.

"The poor turn-out for the mass action was an embarrassment. It set back efforts to convince the palace it is time for political change. Government will use the strike's failure as a referendum, and say workers are happy with the way things are," said one alliance member.

Other alliance members said the strike might have compromised reformist challenges to Southern Africa's only unelected government.

The main reasons for the strike were the government's intended purchase of a US $72 million private luxury jet for Mswati at a time of food shortages and a depressed economy, and the government's refusal to honour court rulings.

"Government cannot pick and choose which court order it obeys," human rights activist Mzizi said. "Either this is a nation governed by laws or by the whims of its rulers."

The nation's government-controlled television led its Thursday news bulletin with a profile of Mswati, wearing traditional warrior attire and leading the dancing of the on-going Incwala kingship pageant. News of the stayaway was relegated to a later spot.

Vincent Ngcongwane, president of the Swaziland Federation of Labour, told a press conference: "We view the stayaway as a process of engaging government in dialogue. It is not a one-time event," he said. He added that strike leaders vowed to stage a national stayaway for two days every month.

Meanwhile, on Thursday a full bench of the High Court gave Prime Minster Sibusiso Dlamini seven days to apologise and withdraw a statement overturning Court of Appeal orders, or they would not entertain any application filed by government, the Times of Swaziland reported.

This follows the resignation of the entire Appeal Court after Dlamini said the government would not abide by a ruling overturning a decree giving Mswati unlimited powers, and would also ignore a contempt of court arrest warrant for the police commissioner. The commissioner refused to allow an evicted man back onto his property after he had obtained a court order giving him permission to return home.