ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has taken a dig at Eswatini.
Mbalula appeared to have broken with ANC and government tradition to avoid criticising human rights violations in neighbouring countries.
eSwatini activists representing the opposition People’s United Democratic Movement, who attended the dialogue, criticised Southern African Development Community leaders for ignoring the plight of eSwatini people who face regular oppression, including jailing and killing.
Earlier South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Solly Mapaila condemned the eSwatini government for not allowing free political activity in the country.
eSwatini’s late King Sobhuza II, father of the current King Mswati III, banned all political parties in 1973 and introduced the Thinkhudla system run by himself and the royal family.
eSwatini is the only country in Africa with an absolute monarchy where everything, including the state, was run by the royal family.
Closing the Brics Political Parties Plus Dialogue at Ekurhuleni this week, Mbalula called for the freeing of the people of Palestine and Western Sahara. He said their rights to freedom, nationhood and self-determination remained as critical to global humanity as the global anti-apartheid struggle.
“All progressive parties and governments must therefore not tire to work for the freedom of the people of Palestine and Western Sahara,” Mbalula said.
The dialogue will not repeat the mistakes of slavery, colonialism, patriarchy and imperialism that sought to divide humanity and rule the world in the basis of oppression, discrimination, racism, injustice and inequality, he said.
Therefore the dialogue reaffirmed its opposition to unilateralism and inequality and condemned economic sanctions and economic blockades and waging of wars to effect global control.
He called for the removal of the “unjust sanctions against Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Syria, Nicaragua imposed by Western countries against them”. Cuba had been under economic blockade by the US after its revolutionary president Fidel Castro announced his country would align with the Soviet Union. The embargo was never removed even after the Soviet Union disbanded despite international calls for the sanctions to be lifted.
Mapaila raised the plight of the people of Türkiye and the Kurdish people who were continuously being harassed by Turkish authorities.
Source: https://www.citizen.co.za/news/mbalula-anc-hits-at-eswatini/
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