MBABANE-Anika Magita from the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) alleged that the environment on the ground was not conducive for the anticipated Constitutional dialogue, because freedoms rights were not protected in the country.
Magita was speaking during an interview with Newsroom Africa Television (TV) Channel that was discussing the political situation in the Kingdom of Eswatini.
She highlighted that a Constitutional dialogue involved both parties, and the inability for both parties to come together would make it impossible for the dialogue to take place. “If the situation is like this, who will organise the dialogue, because in literal sense the government cannot,’’ she wondered.
Anika also revealed that the government of Eswatini feared criticism, that was the reason they banned the existence of political parties in the countries. “Government of Eswatini should not be scared to unban political parties, because criticism is one of the fundamentals of democracy,” she said.
She further said in the Kingdom of Eswatini there were laws which deem to make the police accountable, and if they were to be well implemented, there will be no disorder in the country. The laws include the one which states that police officers should protect people’s rights to freedom of assembly, which does not happen in practice.
‘’I believe the king doesn’t know about all the violations of human rights that are currently happening in the country. Instead, the breakdown in communication has made people to accept that there is impunity of whatever they do,’’ she alleged.
She also acknowledged that the Constitution of Eswatini does provide freedom of rights. However, she said there were laws that were used by government to deal with people who were critical to the government. This law includes the famous one known as the suppression of terrorism act which is commonly used to sentence political activists who are also critical to the government.
The Human Rights Lawyer Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, who was also part of the interview, said the current Constitution of Eswatini which was delivered in 2005, had elements of the 1973 degree. “Constitution with a bill of rights but it is made in the same spirit of the 1973 proclamation,’’ he said.
It is worth mentioning that in the past weeks the mass democratic movement organised protests which aimed to deliver petitions on the 1973 decree to various sectors, including the United States (US) embassy, United Nations (UN) embassy.
The human rights lawyer alleged that political parties were not engage on the Constitutional talks of the 2005 Constitution, and this automatically made it to have no constitutionalism in it.
“The administration of Justice in the country is in question. The courts are failing to protect the laws that are enshrined in the Constitution. The very same Constitution provides that police should behave, but that is not the case on the ground,’’ he said.
He revealed that the government of Eswatini formed an ant-corruption committee which seek to deal with corruption amongst politicians and civil servants. He mentioned that the lack of independence in the body make it impossible for it to deal with corrupt top officials of the government.
Professor Cambumusa Magagula, said the Eswatini Constitution says elections should be done on individual merit, and political parties are not allowed to participate. He mentioned that political parties were existing only to put pressure on the government rather than to contests on elections.
“Other political parties are being labelled as terrorists, under the rule of law in the current constitution of the country,” he said
He also urged the International Community to come to Eswatini to talk to the people and hear their side of story on what was real happening in the country.
On the political situation of the country, His Majesty King Mswati 111 during the opening of the 2023 parliament session, noted that over the past few years, the world has been faced with increased agitation that has manifested itself through repetitive waves of instability and other forms of disruptions.
“The SADAC region has been no exception to this. We encourage the African populace to join hands in working towards realising one of the African Union Agenda 2063 initiatives, in silencing the guns by 2030, which aspires to end all wars and violent conflict on the continent,’’ he said.
He also highlighted that the success of this goal would go a long way towards ensuring that the people of Africa focus their attention on socio-economic development issues in a free and safe environment.
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