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Swaziland |
SOCIAL CONDIT.
Chieftaincy disputes are blocking attempts to disperse urgently needed food aid to thousands of poverty-stricken rural communities in the drought stricken kingdom of Swaziland
So serious is the situation, that police have been deployed to some designated distribution areas to supervise the food distribution exercise. In the wake of on-going chieftaincy disputes, the Chairman of the National Disaster Task Force (NDTF), Dr. Ben Nsibandze, has issued a strong warning to the feuding chiefs to desist from using food relief as a weapon for fighting their political wars or continuing with their chieftaincy disputes.
He further cautioned them not to politicize the food relief programme, because international donors such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations (UN) are bound to withhold the much-needed food assistance.
He said: «Unless our chiefs and senior community leaders show appreciation of the food aid provided by the international and local donors for our starving people, we are bound to lose this important food assistance. I, therefore, appeal to all the chiefs and community leaders to have the interest of these desperate hunger victims at heart, and not to use this food relief as a weapon for fighting chieftaincy disputes at the expense of these dying hunger victims.»
Nsibandze also implored the communities who are not starving, to stop demanding food-aid from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO)s which are distributing it to deserving and genuine starving people. He noted with grave concern that a number of undeserving communities demand the food, claiming that they are also entitled because it is donated by the monarch.
He warned them: «I’m very disappointed by the growing tendency of other greedy communities, who claim that they must also get this food relief. The fact is, they don’t deserve it because they are not classified as hunger victims.
This food is not donated by the King, but by the WFP and local donors strictly for starving people. Their demands must stop forthwith because it is jeopardizing our chances of getting food aid from donors».
Food distribution problems
Examples of chieftaincy disputes stalling food relief, are the following:
The Malindza chieftaincy succession dispute is pitting two Tsabedze brothers, Mabutseka and Gede, against each other. A worried Member of Parliament, Mahlaba Mamba, says that food stored in the Mpaka warehouse is rotting because the NGOs cannot distribute it in the area. The NDTF Logistics Manager, Absalom Dlamini, has refuted the MP‘s statement, but he conceded that chieftaincy feuds in the two drought-stricken areas of Malindza and Mpolonjeni are blocking the food distribution exercise.
In the Mpolonjeni area under its Chief Sibengwane Ndzimandze, the chief has told the Swaziland Red Cross not to distribute food parcels to some hungry subjects who refuse him allegiance. Rather, they are paying allegiance to the chiefs of the neighbouring chiefdoms of KaMkhweli and Macetjeni. The Principal Secretary in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Tikhundla Office, Andreas Mathabela, has deployed police in the area to ensure that all the starving people get food relief.
The World Vision Relief Programme Manager, Mandla Maduna, has also had food distribution problems. «Disputes affect us in distributing food, as some people perceive us as being biased if we take certain decisions,» he said. «We are neutral and only offer food relief as a humanitarian act. Before distributing food, we appeal to the community leaders not to politicize the exercise, but surprisingly, some continue to do that».
Maduna explains that by way of food relief, the starving people receive parcels of 12kg of yellow maize, 1.8kg of beans and 750ml of cooking oil per head. As food security, they receive seed for farming including 12kg of maize seed, 4kg of bean seed, 4.5kg of cowpeas seed, 3kg of sorghum and 30kg of fertilizer.
There has been a rapid rise of people starving in Swaziland. The NDTF‘s Chairman attributes this to the stricken being unable to cope with the situation, largely because of their grinding poverty, HIV/AIDS, and generally, because of the poor economic situation faced by the country.
- Vuyisile Hlatshwayo, Swaziland, January 2003 — © Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment
Editor’s update -21 February: Swaziland is now reported to be one of the country’s most severely affected by the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Four in every ten people are HIV positive. A decade ago, life expectancy was 61. Now it is just 37. By the end of next year it is thought a third of all children will be without parents. A generation is going to its grave long before its time, leaving its children orphans and carrying the seeds of their own destruction.