Democratic movement must unite and involve rank and file to depose Swaziland’s absolute monarch

“A group of uncoordinated lions will fail to catch a limping buffalo,” says a member of the democratic movement in Roskilde University scholar Bo Karlsen’s newly published analysis of the democratic movement in Swaziland, Struggling to Achieve Mass Mobilisation and Unity.

Bo Karlsen collected empirical data during a five week field study in Swaziland, sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here he interviewed leaders from all of the main organisations in the democratic movement in Swaziland – a country that absolute monarch Mswati III has more or less bankrupted and whose population has been devastated due to “poor policy choices” and “heavy exploitation.”

From these interviews, Karlsen concludes that unity and mass mobilisation in the democratic movement in Swaziland are the main goals,

Sverige vil anerkende Vestsahara, hvad med Danmark?

Oppositionspartierne i Sverige – som har et flertal i parlamentet – opfordrede den borgerlige svenske mindretalsregering til at anerkende det besatte Vestsahara som en selvstændig stat på et møde i den svenske rigsdags udenrigsudvalg torsdag.

Beslutningen medfører at der bliver en afstemning om hvorvidt Sverige vil anerkende Vestsahara i det svenske parlament i slutningen af november.

”Dette er et stærkt signal til Vestsahara og Marokko om at der findes et flertal i Sveriges parlament

Swazi single mothers: do not ostracize us

“We believe that those who find themselves involuntarily having children should not be rejected and banned from their community. Swaziland Single Mothers’ Organization (SWASMO) is working hard to ensure that young single women are considered in Swaziland,” SWASMO said in their annual statement last week.

SWASMO is a membership-based Swazi NGO that amongst other things organizes projects and self-help groups that promote self-reliance, mutual support, mobilisation and education to try and improve the position and consciousness of single mothers by mobilising and educating poor single mothers in Swaziland.

No legal representation for Swazi student leaders in court case

“Once again the student activists, Maxwell Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni appeared before Magistrate Gumedze without any legal representation,” Foundation for Socio-Economic Justice (FSEJ) wrote in a press statement on Friday.

Maxwell Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni were both abducted and tortured by Swazi security forces during the so-called April 12 Uprising in April 2011, and were later charged with possession of explosives.

U-landsbistanden falder stadigvæk

Udviklingsbistanden faldt støt under VK-regeringen fra over 1% af BNI i 2000 til 0,8% i 2006, hvorefter den steg lidt til 0,91% i 2010. Desuden udhulede VK-regeringen udviklingsbistanden, så den i stigende grad drives af sikkerhedspolitiske og erhvervsrettede hensyn.

I valgkampen lovede den nuværende regerings partier så at udviklingsbistanden skulle stige og blive mere fattigdomsorienteret, hvis de kom i regering. Dette er ikke sket, tværtimod.

I regeringsgrundlaget står der ellers blandt andet, at ”Regeringen vil opjustere udviklingsbistanden, så den over en årrække kommer tilbage på 1 pct. af BNI”.