Communist Party of Swaziland
Thursday 31 August 2023: The dismissal of the President of the Swaziland National Teachers Association (SNAT), Comrade Mbongwa Dlamini, which followed many years of intimidation and harassment by the Mswati autocracy, is but one of the gross acts of union bashing by the Mswati autocracy. By attacking union leaders, the regime’s primary objective is to break the resilience of the people in the quest for democracy.
The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) condemns in the strongest terms possible this attack on Comrade Mbongwa and calls upon the people of Swaziland to unite and defend workers’ rights to speech, assembly, association, including their right to collective bargaining.
Swaziland continues to be ruled by an absolute monarchy, the last such backward institution in Africa. Political parties remain banned since 12 April 1973 when the monarch unilaterally abrogated the constitution and ruled by an iron fist. Workers’ rights remain heavily suppressed and their leaders are among the most brutalised within the mass democratic movement.
The unfair treatment of Comrade Mbongwa dates back to 2018 when he ascended to the office of the Presidency. He has been in and out of Mswati’s kangaroo courts and tribunals defending himself from the regime’s concocted charges imposed through the Teaching Service Commission, an institution tightly controlled by the ruling regime. On 10 August 2022, he was summoned by the police commissioner to answer why he had cautioned teachers on the dangers of going to work in the midst of the political unrest in Swaziland.
Soon after getting nominated for re-election as the union’s president in March 2022, the regime reinstated all the trumped-up charges which were unfairly levelled against him as far back as 2018. The regime went on to arbitrarily withhold his salary for more than eight months and slapped him with 109 trumped-up charges.
The CPS calls upon workers to rally behind Comrade Mbongwa, to defend the right to organise and unionise. The attack on Comrade Mbongwa is an attack on every worker in Swaziland, meant to suppress worker activism and unity. The regime must not be allowed to succeed in weakening the trade union movement, otherwise it will freely and easily impose its policy of arbitrary dismissals on more teachers. The CPS also calls upon the mass democratic movement to support SNAT as it remains among the regime’s prime targets within the trade union movement for defending workers’ rights and calling for a democratic dispensation in Swaziland.
ISSUED BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SWAZILAND
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Contacts:
Thokozane Kenneth Kunene
General Secretary
(+27)72 594 3971
Email: cpswa.org@gmail.com
Facebook: Communist Party Of Swaziland – CPS
Twitter: @CPSwaziland
Website: https://atomic-temporary-198635616.wpcomstaging.com/
Communist Party of Swaziland 