Referendum on democracy
By KISLON SHONGWE
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| Referendum on democracy |
I have, through your publication, been following views expressed by, among others, Mgabhi Dlamini, Prince Masitsela and a Mr Magagula from the Kwaluseni Campus of the University of Swaziland, regarding the above subject and am herein below giving my considered opinion thereon.
But before doing that, I find it necessary to congratulate you, Mr editor for summoning sufficient and suitable courage to allow various and opposing views to be expressed through your paper because this has the effect of balancing opinions on, inter alia, important national issues.
Your conduct in this regard is and is seen to be contributory to nation building. Long live Mr Editor, long live.
I now return to the subject in question. If democracy means the government of the people, for the people and by the people and thus ensuring accountability, transparency and good governance, it means and is capable of being understood to mean that it is a product of popular views of the people freely expressed under a conducive political climate, as Mr Magagula correctly asserted in his article relating to this subject.
But I would add that it should be understood within the context of the inalienable universal human rights and freedoms for it is an intergral part thereof and in the result the call by certain quarters, not withstanding their claim to be nearer to God than the likes of us, for a referendum thereon is not only ungodly, contra bonus mores, but also violent against the letter and spirit of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which even the Kingdom of Eswatini is a signatory to.
In the light of the above assertion, the modus operandi correctly articulated by the said Mr Magagula would be appropriate and deserving support in other aspects of the broad political dichotomy, such as, but not limited to, whether or not the Kingdom of Eswatini should be a unitary or a federal state or whether or not all streets and state buildings should be exclusively named after certain princes and the Tinkhundla stalwarts.
The call for a referendum on democracy is approximate to inviting the nation to vote whether or not the air it breaths, the water it drinks and the sunlight which is indispensable to the sustenance of its life should be made to be the exclusive preserve of the stalwarts and ill-informed supporters of the Tinkhundla system of governance.
Mr Editor, I am herein not concerned about the Tinkhundla as the Imbokodvo National Movement's developmental strategy, but as its system of governance.
If the founders of the said system of governance sincerely believed it to be acceptable to the majority of the country's citizens, they would have had no reasonable ground to have it preceded by the 1973 King's Proclamation To The Nation, which unlawfully abrogated the country's independence Constitution and effectively criminalised the freedoms of association, assembly and expression, banned political parties, decreed Detention Without trial Order and by extension established Umbutfo Swaziland Force to thereby force it down the throat of the nation, even under the pretext that it was an experiment wherein the nation was going to be used as guinea pigs.
In the premise, the authors of this system were aware of the fact that it was evil and criminal in all its intents and purposes and as such generally unacceptable to the nation. But they knew that it was going to serve as the effective fattening ranch for those who govern us.
THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE SAID REFERENDUM
It would appear that a workable way-forward is a peaceful negotiation process towards a national constitutional assembly, which should be all-inclusive unlike the exclusive processes, which the country experienced under the Tinkhundla regime.
This process ought to be, but not limited to, preliminary negotiations or talks whose outcome must be a memorandum of intent in terms whereof the head of state shall create the conducive political environment articulated by the said Mr Magagula.
The second stage must be the convening of a formal national convention with a built-in conflict resolution mechanism. It must consist of all material stakeholders such as, but not limited to, political parties, political organisations, the government of the day, but without governmental authority, non governmental organisations and traditional structures, but not representing the monarchy because the latter is or ought to be the king of all the people thereat represented.
Its immediate objective must be the establishment of an all-inclusive transitional governing authority with a reasonably limited time frame and electing a constituent assembly. The reason for not entrusting the present government with the responsibility to oversee the transition in this process is that, it would be wrong and unfair for it to be the referee and player at the same time.
The last step should be national parliamentary multiparty elections under a new Constitution drawn up and adopted by the nation through a properly constituted assembly. Such a Constitution will be a true and genuine aspiration of the nation.
Mr Editor, it is worthy of note that the team of experts from the Commonwealth of Nations that observed Swaziland's elections that preceded the last one said, not in so many words, that the credibility of those elections was not the issue where they were for a Parliament that had no parliamentary supremacy and where political parties were banned. That observation was a very serious indictment on such illegitimate electoral system and hould have been revisited.
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