Swazi Communists condemn Mswati appointment

Mswati at the 46th Ordinary Summit of SADC Heads of State and Government -- image via X

Tuesday, 18 August 2026: The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) condemns the appointment of Africa’s last absolute monarch, Mswati III, as the chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, known as the Troika.

Mswati’s appointment as chairperson of the Troika, an organ whose stated objectives include the promotion of peace and security in the SADC region, is a serious contradiction, as he already presides over a brutal system which has eroded all prospects of peace in Swaziland.

The people of Swaziland have known neither peace nor security since the banning of political parties on 12 April 1973, as the regime has deepened its iron rule over the people. Political parties remain banned. All executive, legislative and judicial powers are in the hands of the monarch. The autocracy has for over 53 years detained human rights activists for lengthy periods, often without trial, while forcing many to exile and killing many activists. All these atrocities are known by SADC leaders, but they have not only ignored them but also showered Mswati with top positions over the decades.

On 29 June 2021, Mswati unleashed his security forces on the people, arresting, wounding and killing about 1,000 people in the process. The regime’s victims never received justice for those egregious atrocities as SADC swiftly removed any discussion of Swaziland from the SADC agenda. The scars of the people keep deepening, and their blood keeps dripping, not least because of Mswati’s unending violence but also because they have been abandoned by the SADC block which proclaims to be in pursuit of a just world, per its 46th Summit, as well as democratic governance, all while turning a blind eye to the violation of those objectives by the same autocratic ruler, Mswati, who now heads the Troika.

The Communist Party of Swaziland, together with the pro-democracy movement, as well as international human rights organisations, have documented the numerous atrocities committed by the regime over the decades and brought them to the attention of the SADC leadership as well as the African Union and the United Nations but have been ignored. Consequently, political repression has deepened, and poverty has worsened, with about 70 per cent of the people living below the poverty line.

The Communist Party of Swaziland calls upon the people of Swaziland to unite and condemn this grave insult by SADC leaders – who continue to prove to be a gang of political hoodlums shielding each other from accountability. We also call upon all progressive forces within the mass democratic movement to work more closely together in the fight for liberation. In this year of revolutionary action, as the Communist Party, we will continue to play our vanguard role to mobilise and strengthen the working class and poor into an organised force of revolution towards the unbanning of political parties, release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles and construction of a democratic state.