13 March 2020

Communist Party of Swaziland supports students’ struggles for the right to education and against victimisation by Mswati autocracy

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) supports the struggles of students in their fight for free, quality education as well as their rights to freedom of assembly, speech and association. The CPS also supports the Swaziland National Union of Students and human rights activists in their decisive activism yesterday, Thursday 12 March 2020, calling for respect of students’ rights. More students, workers, parents and human rights activists must join and stand with the students in their struggles.

The students’ demands are: 1) Reversal of the SANU Senate's decision to expel the SRC President Gubevu Tholumuzi Simelane, Secretary General Colani Khulekani Maseko, and Sibusiso Nkwanyana; 2) justice and compensation for Phephile Sifundza who was viciously attacked by police during a demonstration in 2019; 3) All the SRC members who missed tests, assignments and examination while on suspension should be given the opportunity to write them.

The despotic action of the Southern Africa Nazarene University (SANU) Senate, an agent of the Mswati autocracy, expelling three student activists for leading peaceful marches during the course of 2019 amounts to victimisation of student activists and suppression of their rights. The expulsion was preceded by about four months of suspension as well as the unilateral and arbitrary disbanding of the Student Representative Council by the SANU Vice-Chancellor.

The CPS calls for decisive action against barbarism and warns against the right-wing tendencies of the Mswati dictatorship being executed from below as an experiment of the new forms of aggression of the Mswati dictatorship and his tinkhundla autocracy. The tinkhundla system has deepened its iron stranglehold on the people to the level where its various institutions, including universities, play the role of oppression in the regime’s resolve to crush any signs of dissent and activism in the country. This must not be allowed to gain any more ground. The students’ decisive action in fighting against this tendency is a clear sign of a people's revolt against the autocratic regime and must be supported by everyone.