Communist Party of Swaziland

CPS statement on the escalating suicide cases within the royal state security forces

19 September 2026

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) has noted the escalating cases of suicide among personnel of the state security apparatus in Swaziland – the Police Services, Correctional Services, and the army – and sends its message of condolences to the families and fellow rank-and-file of all the fallen officers.

In the latest case that took place on 10 September 2026, a Correctional Services officer working under the Royal Guard took his own life by shooting himself with his service firearm. This marked the fourth suicide case within the Correctional Services this year. This is a clear pattern, not an isolated tragedy.

This cannot be separated from the case of 27 April 2026, where a soldier and member of the Mswati's military protection unit took his life with his service firearm while on royal security duty in the presence of SADC Heads of State at the Royal Villas in Ezulwini – an incident the regime failed to bury and hide from the public, like many other cases, as it took place during a public activity and in the presence of international guests.

The tinkhundla autocracy wants us to believe these are individual weaknesses, while these deaths are the direct product of unbearable material conditions.

Rank-and-file officers are workers in uniform, recruited from the oppressed masses and then turned against them. Their crisis is two-fold:

1. Occupational Oppression: Poverty wages, squalid barracks, endless working hours, feudal military discipline, denial of the right to organise, and the heavy psychological burden of being forced to protect a lavish, parasitic monarchy while unleashing violence on their own people who are demanding their fundamental rights. The fact that an officer took his life while on duty guarding the king during his lavish celebrations reveals the immense psychological rupture and alienation within the very heart of the royal security apparatus.
2. Social Alienation: At home, they face the same capitalist crisis as every Swazi worker – inflation, debt, and dysfunctional families. In society, they are isolated and despised for the uniform they wear. Inside the forces, seeking help for mental distress is condemned as weakness and disloyalty, leaving them to suffer in total silence they break.

The regime demands absolute loyalty from these workers but offers them no humanity in return.

The CPS calls for:

1. Public disclosure of all suicide cases within the security forces and an independent, worker-led inquiry into the conditions that drive them.
2. Immediate, confidential and professional psychosocial support, independent of the chain of command.
3. The right of all security personnel to form associations and voice their grievances without intimidation.
4. An end to the use of poor workers in uniform as cannon-fodder for the defence of royal wealth and autocracy.
5. Participation of the security forces in the liberation struggle to defend the homeland and its people, not the royal family and imperial interests.

A system that drives its own guards to take their own lives inside its prisons and during its celebrations has lost all legitimacy. It must fall.

A People's Government will build a people's security service that serves the people and restores dignity to the rank-and-file.

Forward to People’s Security forces!

Forward to Socialism and People's Power!

Aluta Continua!

ISSUED BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SWAZILAND.