Communist Party of Swaziland calls for support for NAPSAWU

The Communist Party of Swaziland expresses its full solidarity with the National Public Servants and Allied Workers Union (NAPSAWU) in its landmark court victory and the battle for its full implementation, commencing this Friday 12 December, to upgrade the pay of hospital orderlies.

The case involves money squirreled away by the Mswati regime for its own use instead of being used as was stipulated to meet the pay requirements of about 1 000 hospital orderlies – some of the lowest paid public sector workers – for whom NAPSAWU had won a pay scale upgrade from A2 to A4.

This union had scored an important victory in improving the pay of hospital orderlies, from a paltry E2 500 to nearly E 6 000, a more civilised living wage (though only just). In addition, the workers were to receive a larger housing allowance of E601, up from E325 a month, plus an occupational health allowance because of exposure to infectious diseases at work.

The package also came with a deal that future recruitment of all non-academic and non-specialist jobs in the health service would be open to existing staff – a welcome concession that would see more varied positions, such as ambulance driving, being occupied by women.

The pay package was supposed to have been implemented from January this year. But the government reneged on the deal and has refused the pay scale upgrade. It now owes the workers millions in unpaid wages.

The wider context is a familiar and simple one. The toxically parasitic Mswati regime is continually squeezing cash from the state budget to sustain itself.

This is one of the main reasons why crucially important parts of the public sector – education, health, basic services – have been pared down until they are barely able to function. Charity and overseas aid is used to fill some of the gaps, but this is ineffectual, lopsided and not subject to any policy coherence.

In the area of health, this is also a main reason why Swaziland has the world’s worst rates of HIV and TB. Treatment is piecemeal, which is why many Swazis regularly flee to health clinics in South Africa to get ARVs and other drugs. Thousands of Swazis die every year needlessly, and solely because the Mswati regime refuses essential public spending. This is a crime of genocide pure and simple.

The regime has lost no time in attacking the NAPSAWU and trying to dislodge its President, Quinton Dlamini, including by threats to his family. Mswati is furious that the union is using his courts to try to reinstate the workers’ pay rise. His stance is part of his unrelenting efforts to crush or emasculate the trade union movement in Swaziland.

We therefore call for widespread solidarity with the NAPSAWU, and that unions and union federations everywhere closely monitor the situation. The regime is bound to come down heavily on the union and on the pickets planned to protest for better pay and conditions for health workers.

Long live NAPSAWU!

Justice for public sector health workers!

Long live working class solidarity!

Break the chains of oppression in Swaziland!

Contact

Kenneth Kunene

General Secretary

+27 72 594 3971

Remembering 9 - 10 December 2007; When University of Swaziland burned down

This week I recall 9 December 2007, the night when we, students of the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), scored a memorable victory over the historically all-powerful UNISWA Senate, the University Council and the government of Swaziland. At that time I was not a member of the Student Representative Council (SRC).

The day was a Sunday, but it was clearly not a normal Sunday. The whole week the weather had been unkindly hot but for some reason on this particular Sunday the drizzling rain decided to pay us a little visit.

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By this time we were collectively known as the ‘Choir.’ All students belonged to this ‘Choir.’ The 9^th of December is not a story about the day of 9 December per se. It is a story that shall always remain a point of reference and inspiration to many in so far as student activism is concerned. The broader mass democratic movement of Swaziland can also learn important things such as utmost commitment, and the importance of resolutely sticking together and forging ahead notwithstanding vicious attacks from the enemy in order to attain the desired goal. 9 December 2007 is therefore about a story of the people of Swaziland.

To bring everybody on board it is important to briefly trace the events that led to the all-important day of 9 December, 2007. When we came to register for the 2007/08 academic year in August 2007 we discovered that the university Senate had willy-nilly imposed a concept called ‘semesterization’ on all students, even to those on whom the semesterization concept was extraneous. The worst thing was that they had done it without consulting the students. The Senate had imported wholesale a concept they had seen working in other countries without bothering to analyse how those international universities were implementing that programme and thereby see the best way of implementing it in Swaziland. No consultation whatsoever was ever conducted.

For these reasons we started protesting against such tyranny. It was always believed that when the Senate had decided on an issue, no one could ever overturn it; all was decided and all was final, so said some of the cowards! But this breed of students was just about to rewrite the books of history. A court case was even launched with the High Court to force the Senate to consult us. Countless court journeys were made, but we were unsuccessful in a case presided over by Maphalala, J, who told us that we should go back and exhaust internal remedies. We strongly disagreed with the judge. It was a wrong decision. By the time judgment was passed the university premises were already controlled by the police. Riot police with big bullet-proof tankers had already set up camp with an order to violently deal with the students if the need arose.

Despite disagreeing with the Judge’s decision, we nevertheless respected it because of his statement that we must sit down with the Senate and resolve this issue. At this stage we had managed to mobilise the majority of students to such an extent that no classes took place when we had a students’ meeting or protest action. Such unity had never been seen probably since the early 1990s.

We were shocked by the narcissistic and egocentric Senate’s egregious decision to continue with the implementation of the programme despite the court’s order for the reconstitution of the consultation table. This move enraged us. We instantaneously resolved to continue with class boycotts, and that we were not going to write examination unless proper consultation took place. I remember very well that even the signing of continuous assessment marks became the most evil thing to be done by any student. Signing them simply meant that you were finally giving in to the Senate’s dictatorship, thereby a traitor.

The Senate tried the old divide-and-rule tactic of shutting down the university and sending all students home, but it always failed this time. We always planned ahead for such eventualities and were able to mobilise students even when the university was shut down.

A few days before the 9^th of December we made a court application for an urgent interdict staying the illegal examinations which had been scheduled to commence on the 10^th of December. However, Justice Mbutfo Mamba dismissed our case. The decision was delivered without reasons on the 9^th of December 2007. We were not satisfied with this judgment too. In fact we were furious!  

We therefore resolved to have a ‘night vigil’ in one of the small classes. It was in this vigil that we resolved that there only people who would stop the exams was not the Senate, not the courts, not prayer, but the students themselves. It was clear to us all that unless we did something ourselves our future was doomed. Everybody started running outside and in about an hour the whole University was on fire.

In the morning of December 10, we made it impossible for first examination papers to take place. We stomped the gate and ensured that no one went in or out. The Senate later yielded to our demands and the December examinations were postponed indefinitely. We had won against the so-called mighty Senate of the University of Swaziland.

One of the most important lessons of December 9, a night which some of the students later called ‘A bright Sunday Night’, is that unity in action will always prevail over anything. Unity of boardrooms and useless meetings never works! This is why all the students who sacrificed everything they had in order to see semesterization dead will always have a special place in my heart.

Of course, after the burning down of the university many people suddenly woke up from wherever they had been sleeping and called the students many bad names anybody can think of. Times of Swaziland’s Managing Editor, Martin Dlamini, who happens to be King Mswati’s speech writer, even referred to us as barbarians, hooligans and bandits. This was so foolish for a respected man who had been silent all the time when the Senate was roughshodly imposing an academic system on the students, but only to wake up after the consequences. I could tell from the reading of his article that he was not thinking. If he was thinking then he was not thinking properly. Blaming a child for crying will not stop her or him from crying if you do not stop the violent adult who keeps assaulting her or him. 

Conclusion

As the UNISWA students of 2007 proved to all, there is no struggle that can ever be won by following the rules of the enemy. Some rules are so unjust that we must necessarily violate them. The Senate closed down the university every time we boycotted classes, hoping to dampen our spirits, but every time when we returned we continued with the struggle more fiercely than before. We went to the point of defying all court decisions, something which still needs to be assimilated into the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in the fight against the royal dictatorship of Swaziland!  

Back then we were united, but this unity did not fall from the sky. We had to build it. The struggle would not have been won if a tiny but resolute minority of students had not done serious mobilisation and conscientisation on a daily basis. I am proud to have been part of such group. In this group we met before and after any student body meeting in order to thoroughly analyse meetings and direction. Amazingly, none of us were even SRC members, but we were more influential than the SRC of that time. No students’ resolution was ever adopted without our endorsing it, and no students’ resolution was ever adopted without our giving input. We were effectively the unelected leadership of the whole university. This is one of the important factors that the Swaziland struggle lacks; the influential unelected leadership of the people! 

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ANC Conflicted on Swaziland: Can it be trusted?

(By Pius Vilakati, writing as Mr Pius Rinto)

It is unfortunate, very unfortunate, that whenever we talk about Swaziland’s royal regime and its brutality on the people, particularly on the economic sphere, we must necessarily be forced to include the African National Congress (ANC) in that same hot pot. Sadly, some of our comrades, for whatever reason we are not aware of, always try to shut us down when it comes to this matter, when the fact of the matter is clear to us all that the ANC, wittingly or unwittingly, supports the regime, just like other imperialist forces. We can try to refute anyhow we want, but the ANC’s position in Swaziland is seriously conflicted!

We love the ANC, we support it, but this does not mean that we must agree with everything it does. When it comes to the Swaziland struggle, we will not hesitate to speak! This is a struggle which directly affects us every second! Some of us would rather remain poor forever than to bend principles and condone the ANC-Tinkhundla business venture at the expense of the oppressed! 

It is encouraging, however, that the voices against such positioning of the ANC are growing. An example is the statement of the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS), dated 5 December 2014. It is reproduced in full hereunder with great approval:

CPS urges strong solidarity with Maloma colliery workers

The Communist Party of Swaziland expresses its full solidarity with the striking miners and colliery workers at the Maloma coal mine, in the Lubombo region of our country and denounce any pressures for brusque call off of the strike without meeting of demands.

We call on all workers and trade unions in Swaziland, South Africa and beyond to support the miners’ claim for better pay and conditions.

The posturing by the Mswati regime’s police force is typical of the dictatorship’s treatment of workers and unions: intimidation and the threat of violence, if not actual violence.

The miners are organized under the Mining, Quarrying and Allied Workers Union (MQAWU), an affiliate to TUCOSWA, the union federation proscribed by the regime.

The Maloma mine is 75% owned by Chancellor House, the in-house investment firm of South Africa’s African National Congress.

The other 25% is owned by Tibiyo Taka Ngwane, a billion-rand consortium. It is supposedly held in trust by Mswati III for the Swazi nation but in reality is one of the absolute monarch’s private income channels. In Maloma mine, such channels are watched over by Mswati’s brothers, Phinda and Themba Dlamini as directors.

The CPS calls on Chancellor House, as the principal owner of the mine, to come out strongly against police intimidation of and heavy-handed tactics against the miners. The Maloma management must oppose Mswati’s unwise ratcheting up of tensions by deploying heavily armed officers.

Pressure must also be put on the Maloma to behave in a civilized manner toward the strikers and stop refusing strikers water, sanitation and medical treatment. Management must get back to the negotiating table and accept that the strikers have a strong case for better pay and conditions.

The miners are striking in defence of their claim for E425 pay increment and E800 housing allowance, plus better workplace conditions.

Claims that the miners are paid well above the minimum wage (they are paid less than their South African counterparts), of E600 a month for skilled workers are, in the view of the CPS, meaningless as the minimum wage is itself a poverty wage and in insult to any employee.

The strikers are challenging an interdict imposed by management to prohibit picketing outside the workplace – a basic trade union right during industrial action. Instead pickets have been made to congregate some distance from the entrance to the mine.

Chancellor House and Tibiyo Taka Ngwane have a previous bad record of behaviour towards the miners and the local community, having earlier this year resisted beneficiation claims to improve conditions in the surrounding community.

The CPS is appalled that a company that abides by basic trade union and community rights in its home country is happy to disregard them in another for profit and simply because it can get away with it.

The CPS urges the WFTU and trade unionists and left parties to closely monitor the Maloma strike and to highlight the plight of workers at the colliery.

Amandla!

Contact

Kenneth Kunene

General Secretary

072 594 3971

Felix Mabaso

International Organiser

074 922 8277