SITTING ON A TIME BOMB: SWAYOCO NEC statement on the arrest of PUDEMO President

Swaziland Youth Congress

SITTING ON A TIME BOMB: SWAYOCO NEC statement on the arrest of PUDEMO President

The body of Comrade Bhambatha has been incarcerated before by Mswati and his shenanigans, but his spirit has always eluded these Satanists simply because the infinity of truth is a monolith, no amount of persecution will pervert the nobility of good men and women. Just as good would always ultimately triumph over evil, the very same prison walls stirring at the People's President today, would, far from being an act of revenge, play host to Mswati and his accomplices.

Of late, our palace insiders inform us, Mswati rarely has both the time and capacity to think properly. During the day, he is both flirting and giggling with barely nubile girls or is "consulting" with his evidently senile henchman, Barnabas. And for a better part of the night he is often, very typically, ogling and salivating at the nudity of girls in Big Brother Africa at midnight. A king plagued by midlife crisis!

The despotic performances of the Evil Duet (Mswati and Barnabas) are well documented. The barbaric macabre fashion with which the KaMkhweli and Macetjeni citizens were treated - among other cases - is imprinted and still very new in the minds of great many Swazis. The relentless abuse of culture and land in furtherance of the monarch's paedophilic and feudal agendas, resulting to systematic socio –political and economic disenfranchisement of some citizens compounds our growing frustration at the hands of a junta aided dictatorship. It is in resultant of these sustained frustrations and brutality coupled with the subsequent anathema of progressive formations that has necessitated the emergence of cadres in the form of Umbane operatives. Despondency never defeated adversity!

We note that Mswati is buoyed by – among other things – by the impenetrable refugee in SADC's love and tolerance for warlords and despots hence the deafening silence, at worst, and half hearted generalist calls for democracy in the region, at best. This happens while Swazis continue to live and perish under the longest state of emergency, being spectacularly ravaged by every form of disease and poverty with a privileged few occasionally showing off – in the most theatrical fashion - assets and toys associated with owners of oil deposits and refineries. A glaring paradox!

Cde Mario remains an epitome of the disenfranchised and poor masses of our society. His incarcerations speak of and to the intolerance of the regime. He is being toyed with from one court to another, treated with utmost disdain in front of his long suffering and selfless family. We can not take any more of this. As a youth league of PUDEMO we are continuously confronted by parents and loved ones of youths who were forced out of homesteads because their stay invited trouble for the families, threats of eviction are used to shoo them away. It is such intolerance and brutality – of late clandestinely termed anti terrorism - of dissent coupled with socio-economic inequalities that begets frustration and anger.

Now, as the Youth League of PUDEMO, SWAYOCO has a moral and political obligation and responsibility respectively to preserve and advance the values, integrity and all that PUDEMO stands for. We certainly WILL defend the People's President with all that we have and, by all and any means necessary, we will realise total emancipation. We will cleanse the institution of the monarchy to preserve its sacrosanct nature and remove it from opprobrium's way. And Mswati must either play along or give way, or we will push him!

On behalf of the entire membership of SWAYOCO, the National Executive Committee wishes to register its strongest condemnation on the unjustifiable gross harassment of the People's Leader and call for his immediate release. We have warned before that nobody should ever entertain the thought of having monopoly of violence. In fact the use of violence and any forms of brutality have the tendency to invite reciprocal actions, and if any form of kukhamana is unleashed, we will be equal to the task. Let not the general civility of the average Swazi be misinterpreted for passivity. Indeed our patience is wearing thinner by the day!

Swaziland belongs to all of us; it is not a bequest of a few!

Thabo Hlongwane

International Relations Secretary – SWAYOCO

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