15 January 2006
editorial
Johannesburg — TO MANY on the outside, King Mswati III is just a curiosity - a youngster with an overcharged libido and the political power to feed it. The world laughs at his quirks and his extravagances. When the Western press reports on his excesses, they blithely refer to him as "Africa's last absolute monarch".
But to the people of Swaziland, Mswati is a painful reality. In recent weeks they have come face to face with that as Mswati's security forces rounded up pro-democracy activists. Unable to solve a string of petrol bomb attacks on government properties, the Swazi authorities are alleged to have tortured the activists in a bid to extract confessions. Some have been charged with sedition and high treason and face the death penalty or life terms.
This latest attack on pro-democracy activists is nothing new in Swaziland, a country where Mswati and his coterie of feudal traditionalists brook no dissent.
With most of the continent increasingly embracing democratic norms, Mswati has shown no appetite for human rights. He continues to rule by the law of decree, which his late father, King Sobhuza, instituted in 1973 when he scrapped the constitution and outlawed political parties.
South Africans need to awake to the horrors being perpetrated in the little kingdom, and force Pretoria to act.
And when Mswati turns up for the African Union summit in Sudan next week, those leaders who are committed to democratic ideals must let him know that he is an unwelcome oddity in modern Africa.
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