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A bitter taste to the sugarcane

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Today the people of Swaziland are so completely downtrodden that the youth are starting to speak of going for guerrilla training and taking up the armed struggle. But that path is the road to disaster, as clearly shown by the ANC-lead state's military invasion

of the constitutional monarchy of Lesotho in 1998 in order to crush a pro-democratic mutiny. The revolutionaries among SWAYOCO's youth must start building counter-power in Swaziland by forming horizontal links with like-minded groupings in the region, especially in South Africa, who have more members and resources to assist them. They must start building secret rank-and-file members' networks within SWAYOCO, PUDEMO, SFTU, SFL and the suspended unions, and within social groupings of the working class, peasantry and poor, whether of women, or high-school children.

You are in Manzini! The taxi with a South African registration is blasting toyi-toyi struggle songs, reminding you of the days when people's fear was replaced by the spirit of resistance during the fight against the apartheid regime, coupled with its demise towards the 1994 elections. Those in Swaziland have few ideas on how to achieve their freedom except praying, because wearing the T-shirt of the local movement can be leading to misery. Inside the fleet of buses, which is the major transportation of people, only gospel music is played and screened. The mainstream media is state-controlled and manipulated by the royal family and its friends. Many people in the very remote, primitive and forgotten villages.

Swaziland: A bitter taste to the sugarcane

INTRODUCTION
On January 25 and 26 this year, the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) held a national strike to try to force Africa's last absolute monarchy to transform itself into a multi-party bourgeois democracy. But it was a poor showing, with a demonstration of only 500 in Mbabane. Leaders from the SFTU, the Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL), the People's United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) and the Ngwane National Liberation Congress (the last unpopular among the youth for "scratching the belly of the beast") lead the Mbabane march. SFTU general secretary Jan Sithole said the regime's Imbokodvo party rode to power on the back of popular struggle: "The people of Swaziland liberated themselves from the British rule."

But the lesson of popular power that he hinted at appears to have been lost. The strike was a far cry from the power of that demonstrated by the general strike of 1997 in which tens of thousands of workers including many from the state sector downed tools in response to the state's detention of four pro-democracy leaders including Sithole. In 1997, the general strike shut down the economy for almost two weeks and suggested an insurrectionary, social solution. But it was not to be: as the following report from our members in Swaziland will show, the pro-democracy movement there is still heavily compromised by bourgeois nationalist influences - notably the duplicitous ANC and SACP.

PRAYERS OF DESPERATION
You are in Manzini! The taxi with a South African registration is blasting toyi-toyi struggle songs, reminding you of the days when people's fear was replaced by the spirit of resistance during the fight against the apartheid regime, coupled with its demise towards the 1994 elections. Amongst the folks, individuals are wearing bright yellow ANC T-shirts with Mbeki's head on them, as if they are appealing to the king: "Please learn from the South African government. If you don't listen the same thing that happened to the former South African regime is going to happen to yours."

Many people are attracted to immigrate in South Africa for jobs. When they visit back home they introduce the life of the big city. And they've tasted a disparate life to their fellow-country people, which gives them guts to challenge royal power. There are quite a considerable number of hawkers and street vendors from Mozambique who also have T-shirts of the main political parties in Mozambique with the head of that political party's candidate. Those in Swaziland have few ideas on how to achieve their freedom except praying, because wearing the T-shirt of the local movement can be leading to misery. Inside the fleet of buses, which is the major transportation of people, only gospel music is played and screened. The mainstream media is state-controlled and manipulated by the royal family and its friends. Many people in the very remote, primitive and forgotten villages have no access at all to any source of media.

The unemployed, peasants and workers are mostly dependent on subsistence farming for survival. As for the workers, their wages are paltry. Doubled with miserable working conditions, workers are continuously trampled. For more than 10 years the entire work force at the royal hotels were only casuals. The bosses are issuing retrenchment notices unilaterally. State workers are not allowed to join unions or strikes. For months nurses did not receive their wages. The trade union bureaucracy whines occasionally, but only to justify the king at the end of the day. Unanimous with the need to have the king, they say: "The king is innocent but only his advisers are to blame.", which helps keep the king interesting and civilised to his counterparts on the continent who are implementing neo-liberalism.

LAND-BARONS ON THE WARPATH
The king is on a land-privatising spree. There's an influx of land prospectors, resulting in white strangers falling on the land, staying and introducing their western and European designed houses and their 4x4s. The next thing people hear are that dams, sugar cane fields and game reserves will be built on the same land where they are staying. Sugar is one of Swaziland's big exports. Already there are peasants who got lured into the snare by the hope that their lives will improve when they were told they'd automatically have ownership in the sugarcane fields. Later when the time to benefit comes, after they've worked so hard turning their land to sugarcane fields, they are told they owe the bank and the price of the sugar has gone down. Which means their land is now owned by the bank and they are advised to sign retrenchment documents.

In other incidents, the peasants are being told they may not have more than ten cows. A commotion erupted between the inhabitants of the land and the government authority over evictions from the land without remuneration: sheriffs instructing bulldozers, with police to arrest anyone resisting. If the attacked communities show any solidarity in resisting the evictions, the army is immediately sent to set up a checkpoint in the vicinity, and the entire community is evicted. This madness of harassment is also advancing the plan by the state to group the people together (the state says it is planning on installing water, electricity, roads, shops and that there will be jobs for people, but this is all being done at the state's convenience, not the people's).

BOURGEOIS NATIONALIST POLITICIANS TREAD WATER
There are three political parties, of which one is the People's Democratic Movement (PUDEMO). The other two have nothing much to do with the masses; mostly they represent the interests of the local businesses and they are infested by the administrators of the same regime. But PUDEMO is sub-ANC and it remains convinced the ANC will bring change in Swaziland. They believe in the ANC, not the masses of South Africa, because they only know the ANC "liberated" South Africa without understanding exactly who marched, demonstrated, boycotted and died for a complete change, not the neo-liberal war on the poor under the ANC of today. When the current king, Mswati III, came to power, PUDEMO urged the people to give him a chance. Within couple of years PUDEMO started barking as the king became more repressive than his father, King Sobhuza II.

Because of the decree declared in 1973 by Sobhuza, which gives the king absolute powers in decision-making, political parties and similar bodies can be dissolved and prohibited if they pose questions about royal power. There has been an attempt to amend this decree, by leaders of political parties and heads of state. Initially they took a diplomatic approach to build the bridge, but the Swaziland National Council (SNC), which is the main shareholder in the negotiations, is just an appendix of the state, which in turn is subject to the king. The negotiations have been going for more than a decade. But the people on the ground have no idea whether the amendment will feed the entire Swaziland or just the very few. They've been waiting patiently. And every time their leaders are coming out of the talks empty-handed.

Whenever there's a public outcry, leaders from different sectors are summoned by the king to have an amending ceremony with him (he's always doing cultural rituals to remind everyone not to forget him). Clearly the heads of state are procrastinating on negotiations, but the pressure is amounting on the movement because their promise to have a multi-party government by 2008 is being shattered. This has caused impatience and exhausted the slightest lawful means and it is driving mostly the youth in the direction of armed struggle because the youth blames their leaders for wasting time. During these unnecessary delays the state is brutally storming activists with beatings, torture, arrests, interrogations, raiding and confiscations of office equipment. Some have been killed or paralysed.

PARALYSIS ON THE LABOUR FRONT, TOO
The two federations are Swaziland Federation of Trade Union (SFTU) and Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL). The SFTU's two biggest affiliates are the Swaziland Nation Association of Civil Servants (SNACS) and Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), both of which are currently suspended from the federation after they expressed dissatisfaction about lack of transparency and democracy in the SFTU federation's bureaucracy. Although SNAT only mentioned late balloting of its members, as the cause of its failure to participate in the strike, both affiliates shunned this year's strike at the last minute, because of their suspensions. The affiliates of the union federations are run like spaza shops. There's no solidarity: affiliation is only for recognition. Most leaders of the affiliates are civil servants in the highest posts, where they have to dance the tune of the king. And they are involved within certain sub-structures which keep the communities submissive to the king's orders.

It is the same with the union federations. There's a fight amongst its national executive committees, mostly because of their relationships with certain political parties: everyone needs to have their political party's agenda recognised. Currently four affiliates are suspended. PUDEMO's relationship with the federation is bitter and most of the suspended affiliates are close to PUDEMO. But the relationship between the trade unions and the political movement is vague and unpredictable. The movement gets its funding and guidance from the ANC government and the tripartite alliance. Obviously the sole interest of the South African government has nothing to do with liberating the oppressed, suppressed and repressed destitute indigenous masses of Swaziland, but rather to protect and advance business co-operation with South Africa and abroad so the mega-rich and up-coming black capitalists can collaborate with the king in expropriating the land belonging to the people. Also to get cheap labour and expand their market claws. So the political movement is expected only to democratise the kingdom - not to get rid of the entire royal power.

REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH ENTER THE FRAY
But outspoken members of student organisations have also expressed their disapproval of the SFTU's leadership. The Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) is the sub-division of PUDEMO. The youth on the ground have been autonomously influential in grassroots political activities, which keeps the movement in step with the oppressed men and women in the street of Manzini and Mbabane. These are mostly the youth in the high-school level, who are frustrated at the extreme poverty and disease in their communities and at the lack of job prospects, limited mainly among male students to possible careers in the state security apparatus (the regime is the largest employer and the entire work force is only 96,000). They are mainly inspired by the youth in South Africa during the 1976 uprising and are demanding free and quality education with their student representatives taking part in decision-making.

Active in an environment where HIV/AIDS, hunger and curable disease decimate their communities, these energetic young up-coming revolutionaries are prepared to go beyond PUDEMO's reformist agenda. After explaining to them what is happening today in South Africa under the ANC government, they immediately realised that the ANC is playing a dirty game in Swaziland. Clearly, the ANC betrayed masses around the world. In Swaziland the masses were promised that immediately after South Africa was freed, Swaziland would be liberated, but until this day, the masses are still waiting. The 1996/7 uprising in Swaziland came from the Swazi people on the street, hoping the ANC would give them support. But instead, leaders from various pro-democracy groups ended up in the government and became obstacles to the possible fall of the king. These political activities were always there, although 1996/7 is most remembered because of the influence of the South African masses.

BUILDING REVOLUTIONARY COUNTER-POWER
Today the people of Swaziland are so completely downtrodden that the youth are starting to speak of going for guerrilla training and taking up the armed struggle, in emulation of MK in South Africa. But that path is the road to disaster, as clearly shown by the ANC-lead state's military invasion of the constitutional monarchy of Lesotho in 1998 in order to crush a pro-democratic mutiny. Swaziland, a landlocked country similar in many ways to Lesotho, can only expect a similar bloody military intervention if its people resort to arms too early. The only real option for the people of Swaziland now is for them to forever sever their dreams of liberation from trickster politicians and opportunistic labour leaders.

Swaziland is not undergoing a national liberation struggle in the conventional sense. But its popular classes are still having to fight against the neo-colonialism of South African and British capitalists allied with local chiefs. Against this background, the opportunities for a real pre-revolutionary dual-power situation to be developed by committed rank-and-file revolutionaries in Swaziland are great. This is because
a) it is geographically and culturally very close to the grassroots revolutionary traditions of South Africa,
b) there is no communist party or any other substantial left-wing presence able to sidetrack the struggle,
c) the entire civil society, trade union and political movement is excluded from power - but corrupted by bourgeois aspirations, and
d) people are angry at poor working conditions and at blatant land-grabs by capitalist agribusiness and brutal evictions by the state.

The revolutionaries among SWAYOCO's youth must start building counter-power in Swaziland by forming horizontal links with like-minded groupings in the region, especially in South Africa, who have more members and resources to assist them. They must start building secret rank-and-file members' networks within SWAYOCO, PUDEMO, SFTU, SFL and the suspended unions, and within social groupings of the working class, peasantry and poor, whether of women, or high-school children. So long as they remain directly democratic, allowing their policy decisions to be taken by those most immediately affected, these local and regional networks will be able to form the foundation of a social force strong enough to undermine the capitalist monarchic state by seizing power - and putting it in the hands of their communities and so build a libertarian socialist system.

These new networks must shatter the chains that bind them to bourgeois nationalist politics. Their united voices should cry out - not for patriotic chauvinism - but for A SOCIAL REVOLUTION OF THE OPPRESSED CLASSES! They must realise that tens of thousands of Swazis live beyond Swaziland's borders, thus the liberation of the Swazis recognises no such artificial boundaries: the movement must be INTERNATIONALIST and ANTI-IMPERIALIST. They must also recognise the liberation of the Swazis requires the liberation of all other ethnic groups, black, white, brown or yellow, united against all centres of exploitation: the movement must be ANTI-RACIST and ANTI-CAPITALIST. They must recognise that to deny the king and his Tinkundla system its authoritarian rule is not to deny their "culture," but to deny the ruling class its extraction of profit from their sweat in the name of culture. Anarchists only support what is progressive and democratic in each culture. We are against the chieftaincy, the monarchy, and traditional laws that oppress women. We want grassroots democracy, not authority, traditional or otherwise.

The power of the people is not to be found in the boardrooms of the parasite class that feeds off the people: the movement must be ANTI-BOURGEOIS, but militate for WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY. Recognising that our enemies are anti-democratic, the movement must practice DIRECT ACTION IN THE FIELD and DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN DECISION-MAKING. Recognising that our enemies sow only distrust, disease, death and dismay, the movement must practice MUTUAL AID, and fight its resistance struggle in ways that LIBERATE, not enslave, those they seek to free. These new networks must champion the autonomy of grassroots organisations, for WORKER CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION and COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MUNICIPALITIES. That path is the road to a true social revolution that the 1997 general strike only hinted at.

Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation International Secretaries

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