King unmoved after three days of protest

King Mswati III asserted on Friday that the rule of law was observed in Swaziland, despite a police decision to defy a court order permitting protesting workers to deliver a petition to delegates at a Commonwealth heads of state summit. The key complaint in the workers' petition was Mswati's defiance of court rulings that run counter to royal interests. A three-day labour-led protest, coinciding the with Global Smart Partnership International Dialogue Summit, has tried to push the government towards democratic reforms. "Your court order does not matter, because the bottom line is you are not going there," police regional commander of the northern Hhohho region, Sabelo Hlope, was reported to have told union leaders on Thursday, hours after they had been granted court permission to march to the summit in Ezulwini, 10 km from the capital, Mbabane. "You cannot be allowed to go there because you are a security risk." Industrial Court presiding judge Nderi Nduma granted a union motion to prevent police from blocking the delivery of the worker's petition to summit delegates. He ruled that this week's national strike and protest action, in which unionists had been beaten by police on Wednesday, was legal under Section 40 of the Industrial Relations Act. After the court ruling, a justice ministry official told IRIN: "We've done what we could do here, now it's up to the police." Jan Sithole, secretary general for the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), was among 50 union leaders and supporters detained for three hours on Thursday night. Returning from Mbabane after the court ruling, the unionists' bus was stopped by police and its occupants searched and interrogated. "This was pure harassment," Sithole told the press. "They were trying to link us to an activist arrested with explosives." On Thursday night, Roland Rudd, a journalist whose criticisms of the royal government appeared in a local newspaper column, was arrested when four petrol bombs were reportedly found in his car. Last month, a petrol bomb exploded at a police barracks in Mbabane. There were no injuries. "The Swaziland Solidarity Network [an organisation of activists and banned political parties] claimed responsibility for that bombing," Foreign Minister Roy Fanourakis told IRIN. "We will find the perpetrators, and we will nail them." As it entered Ezulwini, the highway leading to the summit venue was blocked on Friday by the police, who offloaded and questioned bus passengers and multiple occupants of private vehicles. Only local residents and people accredited to the summit were permitted to continue, ensuring that demonstrators would be kept away from heads of state including Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Botswana's Festus Mogae, and Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad. The final day of the national protest action focused on a demonstration at the Oshoek border crossing in western Swaziland on Friday. The border post is the busiest in the kingdom, linking Swaziland with South Africa's commercial capital, Johannesburg. Up to 200 Swazi labour federation workers intermittently blocked traffic, with the assistance of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, whose members picketed on their side of the crossing. Union officials were satisfied they were able to draw international attention this week to what they described as Mswati's intolerance towards dissent. "We paid the price in the blood of our brothers and sisters, but the world is realising that when the king says 'rule of law' he means 'my law'," said Mfanasibili Nkhambule, a shop steward and SFTU member. At least 12 workers were injured by baton-wielding police in Mbabane on Wednesday. SFTU's Sithole told IRIN: "We have been protesting the breakdown of rule of law since November, when Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini said government would ignore Court of Appeal rulings. This led to the entire Appeal Court bench resigning in protest, and we have not had our highest court since." The appeal court had overturned Mswati's power to rule by decree, and ordered the jailing of the police commissioner for obstruction of justice. At a press conference in Ezulwini on Friday, Mswati told reporters: "We have rule of law in Swaziland. Everything is normal here." Mswati is expected to decree a palace-authored constitution that will give him absolute governing power, including authority over the court system.