Volunteers provide essential services in cash-shy towns

In the scenic town of Ezulwini, on the eastern outskirts of the Swazi capital, Mbabane, high school students Zelda Ngwenya and Thuli Mabusela spend their spare time picking up trash from the roadside instead of rehearsing their drama club's latest production.

They have volunteered to help their under-resourced local government keep a burgeoning problem in check. In the cash-strapped kingdom, volunteers from the community and welfare nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are regularly called upon to perform services that would normally be provided by municipal governments and financed by taxpayers.

"Well, we can practice singing our show's libretto in the open air," said Ngwenya gamely, stuffing soggy newspapers and weeds into a plastic sack held by Mabusela. A few dozen other students from Somnjalose High School are spread along the road.

About 20km to the east, in the Fairview North township of the central commercial town of Manzini, Thomas Mkhotjwa leads a brigade of teenage boys and girls drawn from his youth group, who meet once a month on a Saturday to pick up garbage that never seems to be removed by the city's sanitation crews.

Mkhotjwa's self-motivated youth group, mainly financed by proceeds earned from a car-washing project, has received small grants from the Alliance of Mayor's Initiative on Community Action Against AIDS at the Local Level (AMICAALL), based in Manzini.

Swaziland has the world's worst HIV prevalence rate - roughly 40 percent of adults are positive - which has had a crippling impact on its urban local authorities, most of them short of funds because residents are too poor to pay taxes and there is a lack of investment. City and town councils receive stipends from the national government, but they are often insufficient.

"AMICAALL Swaziland receives donor funding from abroad, and Swaziland's 11 towns are involved in AIDS projects. The disease is devastating the towns, economically and socially. It's hard for them to cope," said Rudolph Maziya, national director of AMICAALL.

Swaziland is a land-locked country, highly dependent on neighbouring South Africa, with 80 percent of its people engaged in subsistence agriculture on crown-owned land. Overgrazing, soil depletion and successive years of drought have left around a quarter of the population dependent on food aid since 2002.

Besides volunteering, many nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are also filling the gaps by mobilising the community to provide social welfare services. AMICAALL is trying to engage residents to assist with AIDS, while NGOs such as the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA), provides medical, legal and psychological assistance to abuse survivors.

"In the developed world, towns have social welfare departments. We have those in Swaziland in some towns, but there is little money available to make them as effective as the town councils would like," said Thandi Ndwandwe, a councillor in Manzini.

In towns where volunteerism is not active, the results are evident. The southern town Nhlangano, provincial capital of the Shiselweni Region, has been described as "a weedy disgrace".

When Nhlangano municipal workers downed tools after the council was unable to pay their salaries for the second consecutive month, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development stepped in with funds. But the ministry has reportedly said this could not be done again, leaving town officials wondering how Nhlangano will function. The mayor blames property owners for defaulting on tax payments, while residents say they cannot afford the taxes.

Wasteful spending has also cut into the town resources. Mbabane City Council's decision to spend about US$70,000 on a statue was ridiculed in the local media, which complained of potholed roads ringing the proposed site for the monument.

Public anger at Manzini city officials was enflamed by their plan to end their terms of office this year by going on a junket to the Far East at taxpayers' expense, but Manzini property owners met to tell city officials to call off the trip and start delivering services.

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