A Misguided Focus on Trade Speculation Reveals Deep Disconnection from Domestic Crises
The recent coverage by the Times of Eswatini regarding potential economic opportunities arising from U.S. tariffs on South Africa exposes a troubling disconnect between the kingdom’s political and media elite and the harsh realities facing ordinary EmaSwati. While the newspaper’s analysts breathlessly speculate about Eswatini becoming a “major player” in regional trade, their commentary reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of contemporary U.S. trade policy and, more critically, a willful blindness to the urgent crises devastating communities across the kingdom.
The Times’ suggestion that South African companies might relocate to Eswatini to circumvent U.S. tariffs demonstrates a concerning unfamiliarity with current American trade enforcement mechanisms. Any journalist following U.S. trade negotiations with countries like Vietnam would understand that Washington has become increasingly sophisticated in combating transshipment—the practice where companies establish operations in third countries primarily to evade tariffs while maintaining their original supply chains.
The Trump administration’s negotiations with Vietnam have dragged precisely because U.S. trade officials now include strict anti-rerouting provisions in their agreements. Chinese companies that established Vietnamese facilities to label their products “Made in Vietnam” while bypassing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods have found themselves under intense scrutiny. The “China plus one” strategy, once seen as a clever workaround, now faces systematic American efforts to ensure that trade benefits flow only to genuine economic partnerships, not paper arrangements designed to circumvent trade policy.
Had the Times’ analysts bothered to examine these precedents, they might have realized that any U.S. trade arrangement with Eswatini would likely include similarly rigorous anti-circumvention measures. The notion that South African companies could simply establish token operations in Eswatini and gain preferential U.S. market access reflects a naive understanding of how modern trade enforcement works. Such a shallow article that misinforms readers about complex trade realities could have been easily avoided with basic research into current U.S. trade practices.
But this analytical failure raises fundamental questions about the integrity and capability of Eswatini’s fourth estate. When the country’s leading newspaper publishes speculation presented as analysis, fails to conduct basic research, and misinforms its readership about complex policy matters, it ceases to function as a credible watchdog of democracy. Instead, it becomes complicit in perpetuating the very disconnect it should be challenging.
This erosion of journalistic standards is symptomatic of a far more serious problem: the profound disconnect between Eswatini’s leadership class and the daily struggles of its citizens. While newspapers dedicate front-page coverage to speculative trade opportunities, the kingdom grapples with endemic gender-based violence, rising crime rates, pervasive corruption, deepening inequality, and social fragmentation that threatens the very fabric of Swati society.
This disconnect is not new. Throughout Eswatini’s post-independence history, the kingdom’s elite have repeatedly offered grand visions while failing to address fundamental structural problems. The leadership’s promises of modernization and development have consistently fallen short of meaningful change for ordinary citizens. From the failed industrialization promises of the 1980s to the unfulfilled economic diversification plans of the 2000s, Eswatini’s leadership has shown a consistent pattern of promoting aspirational rhetoric while avoiding the difficult work of systemic reform.
As former RSA Finance Minister Trevor Manuel once observed, “Visions are visions. They are broad, frequently general. They are aspirations. But plans have to be detailed, supported by numbers.” The Times’ tariff speculation feels like yet another broad, aspirational vision disconnected from practical, measurable action.
Consider what genuine policy engagement might look like. If government officials spent time listening to police officers struggling with inadequate resources, community workers dealing with the fallout from social breakdown, or survivors of gender-based violence navigating a dysfunctional justice system, their policies would be shaped by reality rather than disconnected visions. But these critical voices; the people actually working on the front lines; are systematically excluded from meaningful conversations about solutions.
The result is a governance approach that prioritizes image over substance. While the political elite debate hypothetical trade windfalls, many frontline workers operate within broken systems with little institutional support, resulting in failed justice for survivors and growing public distrust. These are the voices and experiences that should inform any national agenda.
Eswatini already has a string of brand new vision documents: the National Development Plan, the “Grand Plan,” and countless other strategic frameworks that promise transformation while delivering incremental change at best. What the kingdom lacks is not more aspirational thinking about external opportunities, but the political will to confront internal realities.
The focus on potential U.S. trade benefits while ignoring domestic crises reflects a broader pattern in which Eswatini’s elite seek validation and opportunity outside the kingdom’s borders rather than grappling with the difficult work of internal reform. This outward gaze allows leaders to avoid accountability for persistent failures in governance, service delivery, and social cohesion.
True progress in Eswatini will require abandoning the comfortable fiction that external factors, whether trade opportunities or foreign investment, can substitute for the hard work of building responsive institutions, addressing systemic inequalities, and empowering citizens to shape their futures. Until the kingdom’s leaders turn their attention inward and engage seriously with the voices of those most affected by current failures, analyses like those in the Times of Eswatini will remain exercises in elite fantasy rather than meaningful contributions to national development.
The choice facing Eswatini is clear: continue chasing external opportunities while internal structures decay, or begin the difficult but necessary work of building a society that serves all its citizens.
Discussion about this post