Swaziland, small country with big problem but no one cares...

Swaziland is a small country with a big problem. The 1.3 million inhabitants of the land-locked southern African kingdom live under the thumb of one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, a venal and repressive regime whose plunder of the country is systematic and comprehensive.

Now presiding over the 37th year of the world’s longest running State of Emergency, King Mswati III controls the parliament, appoints cabinet ministers, judges and senior civil servants and makes and breaks the law at will. Political parties are banned, along with most demonstrations and meetings. Shouting the wrong slogan or wearing the wrong tee shirt can get you locked up as a “terrorist”.

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Take, for example his partnership with Coca Cola, whose concentrate plant, exporting to much of Africa, is located in Swaziland because of favourable tax arrangements and access to cheap raw sugar. Coke accounts for up to 40 percent of Swaziland’s GDP, and an unknown but sizeable chunk of this goes directly into the King’s pocket. Mswati’s pilgrimage to Coca Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, has become an annual ritual.

On a visit to Britain in August, Mswati attended the graduation of one of his sons from the military academy at Sandhurst. Not long after, the UK government announced it would deport well-known Swazi democracy activist Thobile Gwebu, who had been staging a weekly picket outside the Swazi High Commission in London, as a “failed asylum seeker”. Full story...

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