Friends of Swazi Freedom condemn King Mswati III’s Criminalization of the LGBTI+ Community

King Mswati III on March 31 -- image via X

Statement on King Mswati III’s Reaffirmation of the Criminalization of the LGBTI+ Community

We in Friends of Swazi Freedom fiercely condemn the comments of King Mswati III at a ceremony of pastors in which he declared that “the spirit of sodom and gomorrah” will not be accepted in Swaziland. Due to the tyrannical nature of the absolute monarchy we cannot take these statements as just one of a demagogue, instead this is a complete reaffirmation of the anti-human, anti-queer nature of the Tinkhundla system. These remarks have come in the midst of accelerating attacks on the queer community in Swaziland as earlier this year in January the Minister of Education Owen Nxumalo issued a decree that stated that homosexual activities would not be tolerated in the school system and laid the foundation for increased disciplinary actions against queer students. This directive must not be disconnected from the case of the expulsion of six women from Dvokolwako High School on the basis of their non-heteronormative sexual identity and practices. Thankfully these six pupils were reinstated but the fact remains that they were disciplined solely on a discriminative measure meant to punish and “prevent the spread” of homosexuality among the student body.

Developments in Swaziland cannot be disconnected from events occurring throughout Africa and the world. Over the past few years we have witnessed either the codification of the criminalization of LGBTI+ communities or the passage of bills that would criminalize this community, but have not yet been signed into law. In Africa the governments of Burkina Faso, Senegal and Uganda has either outlawed homosexuality or built upon past legislation to increase the penalties of being outrightly queer or in a same-sex relationship. Currently the Ghanaian government is contemplating whether to enshrine the Human Sexual Rights and Family Bill which would severely restrict the rights of the Queer community, we hope that President John Mahama refuses to sign this bill and lead Ghana on a progressive instead of a reactionary path.

We must point out the context in which King Mswati III issued such hateful condemnations of the queer community in Swaziland. The audience of this speech were high ranking Christian religious officials throughout Swaziland and this is at a time in which the King and other royal officials have been espousing a Christian Nationalist narrative to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Mswati taking the throne. Concurrently last Thanksgiving the United States Representative that was sent to meet with Mswati and other royal officials was Trump’s spiritual advisor Mark Burns. Make no mistake, it is not a coincidence that such directives and rhetoric criminalizing the LGBTI+ community increased and were reaffirmed after this meeting with Trump’s spiritual advisor. The fascist Trump regime and his party is currently waging a war on queer communities in the United States and in the age old tactic of Christian imperialist “diplomacy” we have no doubt that behind the scenes the Trump administration is working with christian missions, “family values” oriented think tanks and other institutions to persuade governments throughout the world and Swaziland’s to crack down on the queer community, and history tells that these crackdowns will mean material benefits for the comprador regimes and the bourgeois clique they represent.

We in Friends of Swazi Freedom send our militant solidarity to the LGBTI+ community in Swaziland and vow that we will ensure that the international solidarity movement in Swaziland not only joins the fight against the monarchy but for the liberation of queer communities in Swaziland the world writ large. The reaffirmation of homophobia as state policy by King Mswati III is a reaffirmation of the necropolitical foundations of the Tinkhundla regime. The people of Swaziland are currently fighting for liberation from monarchical rule and to live in a society in which human dignity is preserved and a guiding principle. All humans regardless of sexual and gender identity must be ensured of such dignity and we will never end the struggle until this reigns true in Swaziland and worldwide.

Friends of Swazi Freedom calls for coordination and mobilization from the worldwide revolutionary and progressive community. The brutal regime of King Mswati III must fall and the struggle for Queer Liberation is integral to this struggle!

Amandla!

In Revolutionary Solidarity,

Jason Cohen

Friends of Swazi Freedom