CPS 2023 New Year Message

Make 2023 a year of Building the Offensive Capacity of the Movement of the Oppressed People for Democracy Now!

Wednesday 4 January 2023: - Year 2023 will be a time of hard and persistent struggle by the CPS and the democracy movement in our country to advance the gains of the recent period, where we have seen the Mswati dictatorship increasingly on the back foot. The regime is resorting to more desperate tactics to hold on to power in the face of a more confident and determined opposition by our people. Increasingly, our calls for Democracy Now and a national democratic revolution to put an end to the autocracy of royal dictatorship are seen within the country and outside as the only viable way forward for Swaziland. Increasingly, the dictatorship is finding the country harder to govern as the people, not least the youth, see the reality of oppression before them and the ways to end it.

This ungovernability needs to be stepped up and this needs strong organisation of the oppressed people with resistance capacity. Organisation building owes to the hard work of patiently and tenaciously recruiting, educating and motivating people from the ranks of the workers and poor but also from all walks of life to develop a mass movement for democratic revolutionary change. While more and more of our people see that the situation of dictatorship and its thin veils of pretend democracy are both hopelessly inept at running a country but are viciously oppressive and draining Swaziland of a wealth that should be available to the benefit of all, it is only through sustained, organised opposition by a politically  and class-conscious majority of citizens that will tip the ideological battle in favour of radical change.

The CPS aims to devote itself to work on the ground in our communities to further develop this unity in action. We must work harder in all our communities to deepen the call for Democracy Now, and this entails what we call 'political consciousness’ – the awareness that feudal royal autocratic rule is not a matter of cultural legacy and value, but a subversion and denial of freedom, progress and nation building.

This year, the dictatorship will celebrate 50 years of the rolling state of emergency (augmented with ‘anti-terrorism’ laws that ban anti-dictatorship activity) that it has used to try to stamp out all opposition to its looting of the state for the enrichment of the elite and to the deliberate degradation and impoverishment of the majority. Our work on building a strong movement of the oppressed people to achieve Democracy Now are the key ways of weakening the dictatorship and moving the country towards a democratic dispensation. The Mswati regime must be made unworkable, its organs ungovernable.

The regime is on the defensive, resorting to increased armed confrontation against our people. This is a desperate measure that exposes the fragility of the regime, despite its backing by vested imperialist interests. The countries of the SADC region need to wake up to the reality of the situation in Swaziland – courtesy calls to Mswati that nervously urge “dialogue” to end the violent oppression of our people are a dead end. SADC and others, if they are serious about peace and freedom in our country, must start listening to the calls for democratic change. And those calls must be reinforced by our hard work on Building the Resistance Movement and fight to achieve Democracy Now.

Our approach is to continue building the strength of the oppressed people by continuing with our resolve to fight for democracy through mobilisation of the entire oppressed people to rise and resist the oppression, build unity amongst the oppressed people, and win the support of the progressive people of the world to our side. We will keep the world informed about the daily struggles with an aim of exposing the atrocities of the regime and the daily sacrifices made by our people and why we must fight using new tactics.

The regime wants to regain and expand its influence in our people by penetrating our communities using puppet administrative and legislative institutions whose criteria is to divide the oppressed people and crack the growing resistance of the movement and whose intention is to exploit in peace.

We must increase and sustain the defiant street protests and expand them in all the towns, and other sites of conflicts and make them effective.  We must mobilise from all sections of our society, workplaces, schools, institutions of higher education, rural and urban poor communities. We must mobilise to stop the political and offensive of the regime and deny tinkhundla regime any new space and capacity to survive by applying counter offensive campaigns.

The principal aims of ungovernability is to weaken and demobilise the military offensive of the regime, target the political and economic life of the Mswati dictatorship, disrupt all operations of the puppet government and its instructions, deny the regime any space to exploit the people with ease. Boycotts should be skilfully organised to support daily activism. We must mobilise the people to wage an armed struggle against the regime to oppose tinkhundla clean up policies.  We must continue to expose tendencies of compromise and defeatism in the ranks of the pro-democracy movement in all manifestations.

The CPS will continue to strengthen the forces in struggle, train more cadres and mobilise the necessary resources and means of struggle, develop and consolidate the movement’s organisational strength in all sites of human activity in our country and in the diaspora.  Working-class organisations and communities are central pillars of this movement. The process of preparing the conditions for the seizure of power by the people must begin this year. Ungovernability must make it difficult for the regime and its ruling class to sleep and enjoy the fruits of oppression.

The struggle has accumulated the necessary capacity and understanding that the Mswati regime cannot be influenced in any way to democratise. Through direct action against the regime, the determination of the people can lead to victory of our struggle, win international allies who can practically side with our struggle and isolate the dictatorship.

Forward with the Movement of the Oppressed People!

Forward to Ungovernability!

Forward to the People’s Offensive!

Forward to Democracy Now!

Forward to International Solidarity!

Forward to the People’s Democratic Republic of Swaziland!

Victory or Death!

Issued by the Communist Party of Swaziland