COCA-COLA ‘SUPPORTS SWAZI DICTATOR’

A report about the relationship between Coca-Cola and King Mswati III of Swaziland has been published in the media across the world during the past 24 hours. It is based on a statement from the Swaziland Democracy Campaign calling for the drinks firm to sever its ties with the last absolute monarch in sub-Saharan Africa.

I wrote about Coca-Coal and Swaziland on this blog on 21 January 201. That posting contains more detail about what Coca-Cola gets up in to than the SDC report - so for those interested I have reproduced it here.

SWAZILAND: SPONSORED BY COCA-COLA

Coca-Cola is to work to promote Swaziland, a kingdom with one of the world’s worst human rights records.

Coca-Cola presently contributes about 40 percent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product (GDP) through the concentration plant it has in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

This helps to prop up a regime that consistently uses torture against dissidents and alleged criminals. In September 2010, Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, said he wanted people (especially foreigners) who criticised him and his government to be tortured using foot whipping.

Swaziland Investment Promotion Authority (SIPA) has said that it will work with Coca-Cola to market the kingdom internationally.

Phiwayinkhosi Ginindza, SIPA Chief Executive, said a country market study done with Coca-Cola was almost complete.

Ginindza told the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned and edited by King Mswati, they had identified Taiwan, the Middle East, and Europe as some possible targets.

Swaziland supplies the Coca-Cola concentrate (the sugary syrup the drink is made from) to most of Africa, big parts of Asia and all of Australia and New Zealand from its industrial plant in Matsapha.

Swaziland has been mortgaged to Coca-Cola, ever since it allowed the company to use it in its fight against workers’ interests in other countries. In 2009, Coca-Cola closed its concentrate supply plant in Nigeria, citing an ‘unfriendly manufacturing environment’ in that country.

It had made ‘little profits because of the high manufacturing costs’.

Coca-Cola is said to be so large in Swaziland that it accounts for 40 percent of the kingdom’s GDP, but it is said to be exempt from paying full taxes.

Coca-Cola also has an impact on the international standing of Swaziland’s economy. The money generated by Coca-Cola is what largely accounts for the kingdom being classified as a ‘lower-middle income developing country’ (and therefore not eligible for certain types of international aid), even though seven in ten of Swaziland’s one-million population live in abject poverty, earning less than one US dollar a day.

This dominance of the Swaziland economy by Coca-Cola represents a breathtaking piece of economic mismanagement by King Mswati and the governments he appoints. It in effect allows Coca-Cola to determine the economic (and other policies) of the kingdom. Coca-Cola can blackmail Swaziland at any moment it likes. If it doesn’t get its way it simply has to threaten to take its business elsewhere and Swaziland’s already depressed economy sinks into the mire.

Of course, it could use this power for positive effects. It could demand political reforms in the kingdom that has one of the worst human rights records in the world. It could insist that political parties be unbanned and that the Swaziland Constitution be honoured.

Alas, Coca-Cola won’t do any of that: it likes things the way they are. Coca-Cola is in Swaziland in such a big way precisely because it is a dictatorship. This allows wages to be kept low, unemployment high and workers rights to be oppressed.

It also means that Coca-Cola can work directly with King Mswati and the King can ensure that the company gets all it wants. It is no secret that the King keeps a slice of the income from Coca-Cola ‘in trust for the nation’, which we all know means, ‘for himself’.

King Mswati is said to be so close personally to Coca-Cola that he visits the company’s global headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, US, each year.

Ginindza, of SIPA, told the Observer, ‘We decided to use Coca-Cola as they have shown so much love for the continent [Africa] and they care for it. Over the past 20 years Africa has developed a relationship with them.’

But does Coca-Cola really ‘love’ Africa? In October 2010, Bloomberg Business Week reported that Coca-Cola’s sales in the US and other countries had stagnated and it will rely on some of the poorest nations (including in Africa) to generate the 7 to 9 percent earnings growth it has promised investors.

Consumption of Coke is also low in India and China, relative to the US, Europe, and Latin America, but those countries present less of an opportunity for the company than Africa, where Coke is the dominant brand and a middle class is just emerging.

Tara Lohan at foodchange.org reports that Coca-Cola has been in Africa since 1929, but has not reached total domination yet.

Lohan says, ‘The reason for this is that while there are many countries in Africa with growing middle classes, it’s also a continent with extreme poverty, scarce or unclean water sources, hunger, political instability, and war. Coke intends to spend $12 billion in the next ten years there and what do Africans get in return? A product that will use vast amounts of water, create more waste, and offer people no nutritional value.

Lohan adds, ‘Having recently been briefed on Coke’s sordid history in Michael Blanding’s new book The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink, I have to say I’m extremely wary of the company’s advances. Blanding's book details Coke's history of anti-union activity in Central and South America, allegations of its fraternization with paramilitaries who murdered bottling plant workers, the effects of marketing to kids in schools, and the wake of environmental catastrophes the company left behind in places like India where Coke has drained and polluted drinking water.

Lohan says, ‘If that's what Coke has in store for Africa, then it looks like the continent is getting the raw end of the deal.’

So there you have it. King Mswati allows Swaziland to be taken for a ride, for his own personal gain.

2011: THE END OF THE BEGINNING?

The end of the beginning? 2011, a year in the struggle for freedom in Swaziland by Richard Rooney is a new book published today (31 December 2011) and available free-of-charge online. You can read on screen or download it to your computer to print out. Click the link below.

Here is an extract from the Introduction to the book.

Tuesday April 12 2011 may yet go down in history as a watershed in the struggle for freedom in Swaziland. To borrow the words of Winston Churchill, it might not have been the day that the struggle for freedom in Swaziland ended in victory for the people. It might not even have been the beginning of the end. But it was, perhaps, the end of the beginning. After this day things would never be quite the same again in Swaziland.

It was on April 12 that Swaziland saw its biggest demonstration in living memory. It was to be the start of three days of protests across the tiny kingdom in southern Africa. Ordinary Swazis were fed up with the regime of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. They’d had enough of being denied their basic human and civil rights and were ready to fight for their freedom. They wanted an end to the corruption of the King and the governments he appoints. They wanted the freedom to meet, to demonstrate, to form political parties and to choose their own government – all things denied to them by the King.

A group of people, unaffiliated with any of the existing political parties or lobby groups, created a Facebook site and called it the April 12 Swazi Uprising. April 12 was the day in 1973 that King Sobhuza II, the father of the present King, tore up the country’s constitution and began to rule by decree. Despite the signing into law of a new constitution in 2006, people in the kingdom still live under the yoke of that decree.

The April 12 group caught attention in Swaziland and across the globe. It called for an uprising to start on April 12 2011 and soon prodemocracy activists, trade unionists, journalists and progressives from all over the world were watching the kingdom.

Swaziland had seen many street protests before, but this one was to be different. This was meant to be the beginning of the end.

This one was also to be the first to be played out on the Internet. Members of the April 12 group claimed they were a real on-the-ground organisation with at least three full time organisers. Perhaps they were, but mostly their battle was fought in cyberspace using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and blogsites.

The Uprising was brutally put down by police, but the struggle for democracy in Swaziland continues. This book looks at what happened in 2011. It is compiled from the pages of Swazi Media Commentary, the blog that contains information and comment on the fight for human rights in Swaziland.

As well as the events of April 12, the book covers in much detail the massive meltdown of the Swazi economy, caused by the governments handpicked over the years by King Mswati; and also caused in no small part by the greed and corruption of the King himself and his close supporters.

The economic meltdown has sensitised many people in Swaziland to the need for root and branch political reform in the kingdom.

This book starts with a section on the April 12 Uprising which is followed by the account of the economy. There then follows separate chapters looking at events in each month of 2011. These events include many protests, including the Global Week of Action held in September. They also highlight the numerous violations of rights suffered by the poor, by children, by women and by sexual minorities, among others, in the kingdom.

2011. a Year in the Struggle for Freedom in Swaziland - Rooney

SWAZI MEDIA FREEDOM BOOK

New book, Unheard Voices: Media Freedom and Censorship in Swaziland by Richard Rooney, FREE – available online here. Read online or download to your computer to print it out.

Unheard Voices, Media Freedom and Censorship in Swaziland - Richard Rooney

‘TIMES’ CENSORS ROYAL AIDE REPORT

The Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only ‘independent’ daily newspaper, is self-censoring again.

It runs a report today (22 December 2011) that a royal aide has been fined five cattle and banned from royal households for ‘handling a certain matter’ without first consulting traditional prime minister TV Mtetwa first.

The Times doesn’t name the female aide, nor does it say what she is alleged to have done.

But the newspaper says, ‘The Times Investigations Department’ (whatever that is) ‘has been reliably informed that the aide was summoned to Ludzidzini royal residence three times before the beginning of the Little Incwala’.

It says, ‘The case was eventually concluded on Friday, November 18, 2011 when the aide was told of the fine and the ban.’

So the Times leaves its readers in a fog. But some Swazis are asking, could this be the same story that the truly-independent Swazi Mirror ran about Inkhosikati laDube, the 12th wife of King Mswati III, who was last month (November 2011) chucked out of the royal palace by Mtetwa and his henchmen?

The Mirror reported that laDube sent an aide to the Ministry of Home Affairs to change her name to Nonthando Moosa.

LaDube came to international media attention (but the news was censored in Swaziland) in August 2010 when she was discovered in a sexual affair with Ndumiso Mamba, the then Justice Minister.

Meanwhile, the Times report unwittingly gives an insight into what it’s really like for women in Swaziland. They have no standing on their own and are the subjects of their male relatives.

The Times reports the female royal aide was told she had to attend at police headquarters.

The newspaper quotes her saying, ‘When I got there he told me that he had been sent by TV Mtetwa to take me to Ludzidzini. When we got there I found Mtetwa and Bheki Dlamini who told me the reason I had been summoned. They asked for my relatives and I told them my brother was Chief Mvimbi. I was told to come with him the following day.’

She said on the next day her brother told Mtetwa and Dlamini that she was now a married person and therefore her matter had to be tackled by her husband.

The aide said, ‘We were then told to come on the following day again, with my husband this time. Indeed, I came with my husband, brother and other relatives. That was when Mtetwa told us of the fine and that I was not to be seen within royal households anymore. This was done without affording any of us a chance to give our side of the story.’

See also

KING’S WIFE THROWN OUT OF PALACE

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/11/kings-wife-thrown-out-of-palace.html

‘TIMES SIDES WITH TV AGAINST QUEEN’

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2011/11/times-sides-with-tv-against-queen.html