Tuesday, 22 February 2022: Mswati’s killer police have again pounced on defenceless Swazi youth, this time attacking high school students with high voltage stun guns on Monday 21 February 2022.

The royal police’s paramilitary harassed and tortured students of Sigangeni High School, in the Hhohho region north of Swaziland, for allegedly consuming popcorn allegedly laced with marijuana at the school on Friday.

The police tased the students with high voltage stun guns, which left them physically and mentally traumatised. They did not conduct the attack as a means to effect an arrest, but as an act of extrajudicial punishment of the youngsters.

They also forced them to “sit” on an imaginary chair (situlo semoya) as they went on to scream insults at the students.

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) condemns the police violence on the students and calls upon communist activists on the ground to stand with the students in defence of their rights.

Police’s wanton violation of human rights has become second nature to them as they routinely do that around the country without consequences.

Mswati rules Swaziland as Africa’s last absolute monarch. He still wields absolute control over the executive, legislature, and the judiciary, powers invested in him since the banning of political parties in 1973.

Since June 2021, Mswati’s army and the police have murdered about 100 protesters, injuring hundreds, and arresting about 700 for calling for democracy under the “Democracy Now” campaign.

The CPS calls upon the teachers’ union, Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), and the entire working class to unite and denounce the continued police brutality against the youth of our country.

SNAT and the Swaziland National Union of Students, which organises in the post-high school sector, have the duty to help build and strengthen the Swaziland Association of Students, which organises in the pre-tertiary sector, to defend and advance the rights of students, the overwhelming majority of whom are working-class and poor.

As we advance to freedom under our collective “Democracy Now” campaign, it is urgent and critical that the working class put aside their differences and unite against the absolute monarch, for freedom, democracy, and socialism.