eSwatini’s sham election: Medieval feudalism debases all Africa

Friday’s farce of a parliamentary election in neighbouring eSwatini makes even the recent questionable polls in Zimbabwe look like the epitome of free democracy.

It’s a farce because political parties are banned from participating, as the country’s constitution emphasises “individual merit” as the basis for selecting lawmakers, who cannot be affiliated with any political group.

And that is just how King Mswati III, who is Africa’s last absolute monarch, wants it.

What he says goes – he can veto any legislation and he directly appoints 10 lawmakers to the lower house of parliament which has 59 “elected” members.

Political opposition in the kingdom has been suppressed ever since the country gained independence from Britain in 1968.

Those who question the monarchy are locked up, or forced to flee into exile, while one of the country’s biggest opposition groups has been declared a “terrorist” organisation.

Mswati lives a life of extreme luxury: in a country wracked by poverty and with the highest HIV/Aids rate in the world, he and his family swan around in Rolls-Royces and Maybach limousines.

He has taken 15 wives (who would, or could, refuse?), some of whom were minors when they were married off.

The fact that Mswati can continue his despotic and gluttonous reign is down to the fact that to question him and the way he rules is, in the eyes of many, to question the very essence of African culture.

An additional factor in the opinion of our government – which frequently turns a blind eye to human rights abuses on our continent in the name of African solidarity – would be that eSwatini is a sovereign nation and, as Pretoria sees it, the only country permitted to interfere in another is Russia…

Africa will never earn its place at the global table if it continues to tolerate medieval feudalism such as eSwatini’s.