18 January 2021

Communist Party of Swaziland on the dire Covid-19 situation in Swaziland; Mswati must be charged with mass murder

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) calls for urgent intervention by the African Union as Covid-19 threatens to wipe out our population under the incapable, callous and incompetent Mswati dictatorship.

The situation is dire. The number of deaths and infections is skyrocketing. The 33 reported weekend deaths are far lower than the actual figures. The recording of Covid-19 deaths is inaccurate as the death recordings form does not include Covid-19 as cause of death, but, instead, the form only includes 'Upper Respiratory Infection', leaving the declaration of Covid-19 as cause only at the discretion of the doctor on sight to only include on the bye-side of the form of declaration.

Additionally, home Covid-19 deaths are not determined. Hospitals wards, all over the country, are already full and cannot take any more patients. There is no oxygen in all the hospitals in the country. Conditions of tests are based on clinical symptoms and some infected people are only done temperature tests and returned home with high potential to infect others as likely contacts are turned back.

The average family size in the country is 7 people per household in an average housing structure of three rooms including a kitchen. Home isolation is impossible and spread risks are very high.

Funeral parlours are full. There are no more coffins to bury the dead. The only available coffins are the expensive ones, ranging from a minimum E25,000 (about US$1,700), which the great majority of the people cannot afford. Close to 70 percent of the people of Swaziland live below the poverty line, and over a third of the population need urgent food aid to survive each day.

The heavily overworked health workers of our country are now fatigued as the conditions get unbearable. Deaths occur continually with little to no help from Mswati’s government.  The reason for the health sector union to strike, which the political police are clamping down, is to highlight this plight for the necessary external interventions as the incompetent Mswati government is overpowered and systematically giving up. Many government top officials are either incapacitated or have also contracted the virus.

It is clear that the current spread nest was Mswati’s incwala event, which Mswati organised in the midst of the second wave despite warnings of the new wave by the World Health Organisation. Due to this, many countries have enlisted Swaziland as a Covid-19 hotspot, which must not be visited. The CPS calls for the World Health Organisation to investigate Mswati’s actions. Mswati must thus, accordingly, be charged with causing the mass deaths of our people.

The CPS further calls for our people to stick to the preventive measures and, where possible, avoid any movements in order to control the spread.

The CPS further calls for a nationwide protest against these failures by the regime, in particular demand for the availability of oxygen in the hospitals and support to the health workers whose fatigue is now undermining any commitment to save the lives of those still alive and in need of their attention.