Sponsor a Swazi

2013-06-04T14:14:00.002+02:00

Nhlanhla is taking his second year exams. He has moved to Manzini, the biggest town in the country, where he will be doing a work placement in the coming academic year.

2013-06-04T14:11:00.003+02:00

I have a new fundraising page. Please pass it on. http://goo.gl/JCFph

A report on Swaziland by the US State Department

2012-12-12T13:35:00.001+01:00

A report on the rule of law in Swaziland

Exam time

2012-12-10T13:02:00.001+01:00

Nhlanhla tells me that he is currently taking his exams for his Batchelor of Commerce degree.

Recent pics of Nhlanhla

2012-09-25T20:19:00.001+02:00

nhlanhla, a set on Flickr.

Here he is in all his glory.

A reference I have written for Nhlanhla

2012-09-23T10:36:00.000+02:00

Happy birthday Nhlanhla - 21 today.

2012-09-11T23:27:00.001+02:00

Swaziland: Police Trick, Ambush, Beat Students

2012-09-07T19:49:00.002+02:00

Swaziland police tricked students into believing they were being escorted to deliver a petition to the government, but instead took them to a road with no exits and ambushed them, firing shots and beating them up.

Media in Swaziland are reporting that about 100 students were forced to flee across the streets of the Swazi capital, Mbabane.

The Swazi Observer reported today (5 September 2012) that the students were part of the on-going Global Week of Action for Swaziland and wanted to demonstrate under the banner 'Relevance of the Education System to the Current Situation'. They wanted to deliver petitions to the Ministries of Labour and Social Security and Education and Training Students and the South African High Commission.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201209050707.html

Swaziland: Armed Police Block Students Protest

2012-09-07T19:48:00.002+02:00

Heavily-armed state forces stopped students in Swaziland from marching on government to protest about the non-payment of tuition fees and scholarships.

More than 100 students today (16 August 2012) gathered at the University of Swaziland campus in the kingdom's capital Mbabane, but they were blocked from leaving for about four hours by police and prison wardens. Eventually the students gave up and went home.

The students hoped to march on the Labour and Social Security to deliver a petition concerning a continuing scholarship crisis.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201208170491.html

UNISWA

2012-08-25T22:35:00.001+02:00

http://allafrica.com/stories/201208171004.html

allAfrica.com: Swaziland: Nurses Protest Working Conditions

2012-08-15T19:48:00.001+02:00

allAfrica.com: Swaziland: Nurses Protest Working Conditions

Picture of Nhlanhla in 2007

2012-08-04T12:03:00.001+02:00

Here he is aged 15, when he was in high school. The seated lady used to work for me when I lived in Swaziland. I was a teacher there.

Nhlanhla struggling to make ends meet.

2012-08-04T11:46:00.001+02:00

I can no longer afford to support him. I moved to Denmark a year ago mainly for my son's benefit and the cost of living is too high. My mother supported him with a one off donation but that money has now run out.

The cost of food has risen so high now in Swaziland. This small country is in a financial mess and even the IMF has walked out. Neighbouring South Africa pulls all the strings. The government is supposed to give students a student grant but this money, like teachers' salaries, don't get paid.

My motivation in sponsoring nhlanhla, is to make some difference in the long term to the country. I prefer to do this than donating money to a faceless charity. I can see the results. It' s fantastic.

Swaziland: Teachers' Strike Highlights Crumbling Education System

2012-07-04T21:40:00.003+02:00

http://allafrica.com/stories/201206290092.html

Swaziland: Govt Fails to Jail Strike Leaders

2012-07-04T21:37:00.002+02:00

http://allafrica.com/stories/201207020183.html

allAfrica.com: Swaziland: IMF Walks Away From the Kingdom

2012-05-19T17:17:00.001+02:00

allAfrica.com: Swaziland: IMF Walks Away From the Kingdom

allAfrica.com: Swaziland: Teacher Carrying Union Bag Arrested

2012-05-12T08:46:00.001+02:00

allAfrica.com: Swaziland: Teacher Carrying Union Bag Arrested

King gets given a jet

2012-04-29T00:13:00.001+02:00

http://allafrica.com/stories/201204260855.html

Swaziland: Living On a Meal a Day

2012-03-31T15:28:00.002+02:00

http://allafrica.com/stories/201203190245.html

Update on nhlanhla

2011-12-29T18:13:00.001+01:00

The student grant has not materialised this year so if I had not continued to support him, he would have starved. Just a fact. I have paid him about an average of 100 euros a month. Prices in Swaziland are similar to south Africa and not far removed from European prices. This is something that people fail to understand. They think that because a sponsored person is in Africa, that they should be able to exist on a couple of dollars a day. These people need to review their thinking. He needs to eat, needs money for transport and money yes, to keep in touch by the internet.

I really think that people in Europe have no idea how people in a country like Swaziland exist. I have tried to fundraiser for the last year or so and frankly I only ever receive promises.

Patrick 2006 - 2011

2011-12-16T21:21:00.001+01:00

Patrick 2006 - 2011, a set on Flickr.

Shameful neglect of the poor

2011-10-17T22:38:00.000+02:00

From Allafrica.com

Mbabane — Swaziland's parliamentarians are questioning the purpose of a social safety net covering children, the elderly and the disabled. One dismissed it as little more than a public relations exercise, but in the teetering economy the recipients often depend on these small grants and pensions for survival.

"Why do we continue with this assistance [to orphans and vulnerable children, (OVC), pensions and school fees for primary school students]? It seems as if we are trying to impress some people here," said parliamentarian Patrick Gamedze in the assembly on 13 October. His colleague, Nichodemus Mashwama, also called for an end to government payments for primary school students, although this is stipulated in the constitution.

Other MPs backed Mashwama's call for a constitutional amendment to abolish government payments aimed at achieving universal primary education. Some questioned why MPs should be held accountable for school fees, old age and disability pensions, and grants for OVC when government had no money to pay for them.

More here ...

Swaziland: Mswati Back in Pretoria - for a No-Strings Bailout

2011-10-16T15:57:00.001+02:00

Swaziland's absolute ruler Mswati III was back in South Africa this week to try to persuade Pretoria to proceed with the R2,4-billion (USUS$307-million) loan promised to his cash-strapped regime, but minus the terms and conditions on democratic change.

His clampdown on the Swazi pro-democracy movement has been intensifying since the week of exuberant anti-government protests in early September, closely mirroring Mswati's growing reluctance to entertain even the vaguely worded democratic reforms required by South Africa as its condition for granting the loan.

Mswati has balked at signing the memorandum of understanding attached to the loan. The MoU closely follows the 3 August 2011 statement by South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, reinforcing its prescriptions on fiscal reform (Vol 29 No 21). Its stipulations on democratic change are fluffy by comparison, with no mention of the sorts of proactive steps Mbabane should take to move towards democracy, such as unbanning political parties.

Instead the MoU reiterates Gordhan's call for "broadening the dialogue process to include all stakeholders" and his description of the role of the Joint Bilateral Commission on Cooperation, which would meet a few times a year to oversee adherence to the loan conditions. Mswati has rejected both requirements.

The MoU remains unsigned. South Africa has consequently not paid the first of the three tranches of the loan, originally envisaged for the end of August.

From Allafrica.com. Read more here.

Corruption Exceeds Social Services Budget

2011-10-13T10:16:00.004+02:00

From AllAfrica.com

Mbabane — Swaziland's Minister of Finance, Majozi Sithole, has told the Senate that each year the country loses nearly double the annual social services budget to corruption, and non-governmental organizations are not being spared.

"Because of these practices service delivery has suffered," Sithole told the upper house, composed mostly of appointees of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch, on 10 October 2011.

The donor-dependent country sandwiched between Mozambique and South Africa is on the brink of insolvency and its financial crisis means that social services from schooling to pensions have either been discontinued or severely disrupted.

Sithole estimated that about R80 million (US$10.6 million) a month was disappearing - amounting to about R960 million (US$128 million) annually - while the government's 2010/11 budget allocated R562 million (US$75 million) to social services, including R182 million (US$24.2 million) for education and R252 million (US$33.6 million) for health.

Read more ...

Swaziland: 'Smart' Denial Amid Creeping Paralysis

2011-09-30T10:16:00.000+02:00

Though the aftermath of the robust anti-government protests of early September has deepened government paralysis and created a more volatile situation acrss the country, Swaziland's government continues to play for time.

The government is keeping itself afloat - barely - by borrowing from the country's central bank, despite entreaties in August from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) not to do so and to repay as soon as possible the outstanding emergency credit line it secured from the bank.

In addition to the pillage of the central bank, the Swazi government has also dipped into the country's emergency fuel fund to pay its public sector wage bill, a situation that is unsustainable beyond October.

The more it borrows from the central bank, the greater the distance the government is putting between itself and its ability to meet the conditions on fiscal continence attached to the R2.4-billion loan it hopes to receive from South Africa. The first part of the loan was supposed to have been paid in August, but the government of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa's last fully fledged royal despot, has so far resisted signing the Memorandum of Understanding on the loan's conditions, which include democratic reforms and strict adherence to the IMF's recipe for fiscal restraint. These conditions are anathema to Mbabane.

What moves there have been on opening up to change have tended to be clumsily arranged forums for some sections of civil society. Lately, though, even these seem to have dropped by the wayside. The latest effort at engagement was more true to established form - the Smart Partnership National Dialogue, held in mid-September at the Mavuso Trade and Exhibition Centre. Though a regular event on the royal calendar down the years, this year's conference was billed as the leading channel of debate on the country's political and economic troubles.

Mswati described the dialogue as an event "designed for individuals and not organisations", which put paid to any chances that the event would engage Swaziland's increasingly restless civil society. Though the king's organisers balked at inviting opposition parties and organisations to the conference, individual members were ostensibly welcome, but those from the pro-democracy organisations, including the newly formed Swazi
Democratic Party, said they would not attend anyway.
In the end it was only the Swaziland Council of Churches' Convention of Civil Society, a pro-government formation boycotted by trade union movement and the People's United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), that looked as if it might turn up to the king's "dialogue" with a list of proposals for democratic change. But it too threw in the towel when it was told that it would not be heard.

Instead the king used the event to lambast the IMF, the media and the political opposition for failing to take a proactively positive stand in solving Swaziland's troubles. He urged the business community to get Swaziland out of its financial mess, among other things by pioneering mineral prospecting. He referred to attacks on the lack of detail on the South African loan, but gave no indication that the loan was still on the cards.
The tiny landlocked kingdom of about a million people is beset by crises on a number of fronts. It is fiscally insolvent due to the sharp decline in Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) revenue since the end of last year, unsound spending on capital projects urged by the monarch, a top-heavy wage bill of 18% of GDP, and helter-skelter corruption. There is a constant leakage of state funds to sustain a rapacious royal family, including the king's 13 wives. The country also faces a developmental meltdown, with the world's highest levels of HIV and TB, 70% poverty and 40% malnutrition.
No matter which way it turns the government is stymied. The judiciary remains hamstrung by a strike by lawyers over the appointment of Chief Justice Michael Ramodibedi, seen as one of the king's men, following the dismissal of the more independent-minded Supreme Court Judge Thomas Masuku. In a further fallout from this controversy, Mswati's prime minister, Barnabas Dlamini, fired David Matse, the country's justice minister, on Thursday. Matse was sacked for his refusal to get rid of Masuku.

Matse is the second justice minister to be fired in a year, after Ndumiso Mamba was caught red-handed in a hotel room with the king's 12th wife Nothando Dube, a former Miss Teen Swaziland.
With the health sector hard hit by the absence of drugs for chronic and acute diseases, schools unable to open due to lack of government funding, and bus and taxi workers vying hard for custom, hair-trigger protests are increasing. This was seen in the violent clashes between over 1 500 transport workers and the police in and around Manzini last week, which was sparked by the arrest of taxi operators for operating outside their designated limits.

Outside the main urban centres residents have been quick to protest and rally against the authorities, as has happened over the continued closure of schools.
With no ready cash to pay for many schools to open and pupils to enrol, school principals and ministry of education officials have raided the education grant for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) to use it to enrol other children. The government recently received R15 million (-1.5 million) from the European Union for its OVC budget, and it is uncertain how the money was spent. The OVC fund is short anyway of R80-million.
The education ministry says that it will ensure that all primary and high schools will open by the second week of October, but admits that it does not have the funds for teaching aids, food and necessities to enable any of the schools to function. It also announced that it does not have cash for petrol for the fleet of ministry vehicles to tour the schools and take stock of the situation.

The education system has been further rocked by claims that teachers routinely tortured children at Mhlatane High School in Hhohho. The allegations are contained in a report by the Swazi office of the NGO Save the Children, which has been submitted to the United Nations.

Swaziland is due to appear before the UN Human Rights Committee in the first week of October, when it is expected to respond to the allegations.