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The brazen assassination of Swazi human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko has deprived Eswatini’s pro-democracy activists, political prisoners and exiles of the only remaining and brave legal eagle who had no fear in taking brutal King Mswati III’s regime head-on.
Another lawyer, Maxwell Nkambule, who was taking briefs from activists, could not take the pressure and left the country.
As People’s United Democratic Movement president Mlungisi Makhanya put it:
Maseko’s death is a massive blow to the struggle for democracy in the world’s last absolute monarchy. At the time of his death, he was chairing the Swaziland Multi-Stakeholder Forum, which had been waiting since July 2021 for the monarch’s peers within the region to cajole him to the negotiating table.
The Swazi people may feel that it is time to intensify the violent protests that started in 2021, as they are targeted by mercenaries and killed even when they seek a peaceful solution.
Banned political parties could also be discussing how to change tack from trying to meet a king who has been rebuffing their requests for dialogue, which was proposed by his peers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
They have seemingly run out of options because the SADC is too cautious in mediating.
This he can do by commissioning an unbiased investigation into the matter.
This watershed moment should be enough to prod the SADC to come up with an effective intervention plan very soon. Otherwise, Eswatini might quickly be engulfed in a political chaos of serious proportions, and the whole region will suffer the consequences.
