Alpheous Nxumalo, Swaziland’s government spokesperson, has stated that African National Congress (ANC) Secretary General Fikile Mbalula is mistaken in claiming that Eswatini is not a democratic state. Nxumalo was responding to Mbalula’s comments during an ANC news conference, in which the former stated that the ANC will fight for the country’s democratisation. Nxumalo stated that, despite the country’s unpopular government structure, Eswatini was a democratized state.
“To begin with, the Kingdom of Eswatini in terms of our national Constitution; is a fully-fledged democratised State. The kingdom’s National Constitution embraces all international democratic norms, standards and practices such as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which allows freedom of association, assembly, and movement and of holding and propagating a different political opinion regardless of how unpopular it might be,” he explained.
Nxumalo confronted Mbalula, accusing him of attempting to influence the country’s political decisions without giving the kingdom the opportunity to interact with them. “Fikile Mbalula, just like Senator Christopher Coons of the USA Congress, are but victims of narrow and biased political lobbying to the extent that they are taking political positions against the Kingdom of Eswatini without affording us the right and opportunity to engage them,” he said.
“Such practices go against natural justice, which demands that you afford somebody audience before you pronounce final judgment against them. What Fikile Mbalula might be referring to as ‘democratisation’ of Eswatini may be that Eswatini should adopt a multi-party political party system. If that be the case, one wonders as to why and how is he embracing and propagating the defeat of the basic definition of democracy itself,” Nxumalo said.
In order to make his case, Nxumalo described democracy as governance of the people, by the people, and for the people. “Therefore, democracy isn’t the rule of political parties for the people. In Eswatini, we embrace the constituency-based democratic system (Tinkhundla) which allows the people’s preferred voted candidates to go directly to Parliament,” he went on to explain.
Content created and supplied by: GavinMndawe11 (via Opera
News )
