"Party cadres to the front: Make the Mswati regime ungovernable!” 

The 2018 Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) Winter School Winter school will take place on 27 - 29 July to focus on the Mswati election boycott as a launching pad for the party campaign to make the Mswati regime ungovernable and unable to act in key areas of society. 

The School will discuss and analyse the overall situation in the country, which is in permanent crisis due to the bleeding of the economy by the autocracy and failure to meet the needs of the people.

Swaziland is characterised by the following main features that are responsible for its current crisis:

1. Deepening cash flow crisis and shrinking of the economy;

2. Selling of land held in trust for the people and state assets to keep the ruling elite in luxury;

3. The inability to make the feudal system to operate within a semi-modernised capitalist setting: the absolute monarchy puts a brake on capitalist accumulation and development; even bourgeois democracy, with its limited but important rights, is unable to function properly, causing paralysis. There is a constant tension between the feudalism (tinkhundla) and capitalist imperatives (industry, market forces). This tension is largely responsible for developments 1 and 2;

4. Deepening poverty and social distress, rising prices of essential foods, with consequent (un-coordinated) unrest among marginalised sections of the population;

5. Growing economic isolation as countries find it impossible to engage with Swaziland commercially in any way that would develop the economy.

Opposition to the Mswati regime, by workers, students and in communities is being put down with increasing force.

Freedom of the press and media, freedom of expression and freedom of association, including the right to organise political parties are heavily restricted or, specifically in the latter case, banned. Political parties cannot contest elections, making any elections’ claim to be free and fair a sham.

Mswati’s weak point is the international community, which he constantly tries to appease with talk of incremental change. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) should be bringing pressure on Swaziland to institute democratic reforms, but these organisations are toothless and uninterested in democratic development or change.

Swaziland, as envisaged by the CPS programme, needs to build socialism in order to reverse the current situation and to meet the needs of our people. The process towards this must begin with putting an end to the autocracy and instituting immediate democratic reforms: unbanning political parties; stopping political persecution; free media and freedom of expression; freedom of association; free and fair elections.

Our approach to the regime must be to obstruct it and make it unworkable. How are we to do this, given the levels of opposition already existing to Mswati in the country? What needs to be done to increase awareness of the need for change? What are the best channels for doing this? How far have we come and how far have we still to go?

The CPS winter school will discuss these issues over a number of intensive sessions and workshops.

The aim is to increase the strategic and tactical planning of the CPS as well as to educate new members in the work and aims of the Party with particular reference to the above issues and developments.

Issued by the Communist Party of Swaziland