Swaziland and its king
Look the other way
With no hint of democracy in the offing, the kingdom quietly plods along
THIS time last year Africa’s last absolute monarchy was in a mess. Swaziland’s government had run out of cash and, without economic and democratic reforms, no one seemed prepared to lend it any. Civil servants faced with a 10% cut in wages were going on strike, schools and universities were closing, hospitals running out of drugs. Pro-democracy protesters took to the streets. The budget deficit had soared well into double figures. King Mswati III’s corrupt and nepotistic regime wobbled.
A year later the little landlocked kingdom, almost totally surrounded by South Africa, is expecting a budget surplus. Government services are almost back to normal, the pro-democracy movement has grown weak and divided, and the protests, suppressed by the police, have almost fizzled out. The 44-year-old king, ranked by Forbes as the 15th-richest reigning monarch in the world, flanked by his dozen-odd wives (three have gone) and at least 23 children, is having a ball.
But the country is still in a mess, and it is likely to get worse. Two-thirds of its 1.2m people still live on less than $2 a day. One in four adults is HIV positive, the world’s highest rate. Life expectancy has fallen to 49. A state of emergency declared in 1973 is still in force. Any hint of dissent is crushed. The king’s spies are everywhere.
The economy, which has trundled along for the past decade at a rate of barely 2%, less than half that for Africa as a whole, is propped up by handouts from South Africa. But receipts from a regional customs’ union last year plummeted to 2.9 billion rand ($343m), less than half their normal total, plunging the country into crisis. This year, they have bounced back to 7.1 billion rand. But the relief is likely to be only temporary, with customs-union revenue forecast to fall again sharply next year, throwing the country into renewed crisis.
Meanwhile, the profligate but widely revered king continues to act as if nothing is amiss, splashing out millions on an unnecessary new international airport and refusing to carry out the fiscal and democratic reforms required to qualify for international loans or development aid from Western donors. South Africa, which at the height of last year’s cash crisis had offered Swaziland a 2.4 billion rand loan, has now put the deal on ice, and the African Development Bank has decided to quash planned budget aid of $100m a year for three years because the government has failed to keep its promises.
A former royal adviser has described the king as “unbalanced”, influenced by witchcraft, and “not intellectually well-developed”, according to an American diplomatic cable recently released by WikiLeaks. Another leaked cable quoted a half-brother of the king claiming he was surrounded by “dishonest, uneducated people” giving him bad advice.
But nothing truly horrific is going on. There may be the odd suspicious death in custody, but no mass killings or other grave atrocities. Little Swaziland has no big deposits of gold, diamonds or oil to covet. No civil war is threatening the region. So it is left to its own devices, while the world looks the other way.
http://www.economist.com/node/21556626
No comments:
Post a Comment