an Eldis Resource
Consolidating democratic governance in the SADC Region: Swaziland
Swaziland: the start of a democracy?
Authors:
P. Joubert; Z. Masilela; M. Langwenya
Publisher:
EISA, 2008
Swaziland remains the only state in SADC with sovereign monarchical powers. It is a unitary state country with minimal involvement of citizens on the socio-economic issues and on other matters of interest to them The structures instituted for people’s participation at regional level are not yet workable due to constraints of minimal understanding of the role of these structures in enhancing their participation, limited autonomy to express their concerns without the potential of being labelled to be “unSwazi”, and many
other associate problems.
Unions, NGOs/CBOs are strongly suppressed from challenging government on political issues a factor that has slowed down the democratization process. Rather, the system of governance encourages individualism in a collective society a factor that may negate against the values and ideals of the Swazi society. As a result of suppression, the country has not progressed much towards the democratization process.
The paper's findings/ conclusions include:
- Although highly debatable, Swaziland has, however, begun the process of democratizing. It is a deliberate, careful and slow process sure to succeed but doomed to fail if the pace were to be changed according to the conservative perception
- The challenge for all actors, state and non-state, is to work together on Swaziland's first constitution for 33 years. This requires political willingness and compromise from the leaders and strategic pragmatism from the non-state actors
- As an integral part of fiscal consolidation and to effectively address poverty, Swaziland has to re-direct expenditures in favour of HIV/AIDS and other pro-poor programs by increasing the share of capital expenditure for poverty reduction
- Unless there is true devolvement of powers to lower echelons and there are fair elections and political parties are allowed to represent the different parties’ interests, the majority interests are prone to be underrepresented.
