A look at the small African country of Eswatini and its fighting Communist Party
Eswatini is a small landlocked country in Southern Africa bordered by Mozambique and South Africa. Under the name of Swaziland, Eswatini was a British territory from 1903 until it regained formal independence in 1968, and since 1972 the country has been an absolute monarchy, currently ruled by King Mswati III.
According to one history of the country, by 1915, after only a little more than a decade of British rule, “a carefully devised plan had been executed” with two aims: first, “to reduce the hitherto self-reliant non-capitalist economy to a level incapable of [fully] sustaining its population” leading to “the involuntary migration of workers into the local and South African cash economy”... and secondly, to “prepare the ground for the development of a fully-fledged colonial capitalist state with an unrestricted inflow of foreign capital”, while at the same time retaining the position of the traditional leaders (the Royal Family). A century later, in 2025 Eswatini is still characterised by the economic dependence of the majority, the penetration of the economy by foreign capital, and the preservation of power and wealth of the ruling family.
One of the most unequal countries in the world
Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa, with a population of 1.2 million. It is also one of the most unequal countries in the world. The unemployment rate in 2023 was 49%, reaching 59% among people between 15 and 24 (2021 figures). Fifty percent of the population earn Euros 1,000 or less per year, and a report from 2023 found that mere 20 per cent of the population control a staggering 80 per cent of the nation’s wealth. (In this respect, Eswatini is similar to to the USA, where in 2007 the top 20% of Americans owned 85% of all the wealth.) The royal family alone are said to own around 50% of the country’s economy.
In 2020, it emerged that King Mswati III had spent millions on 11 customised Rolls-Royce limousines and on overseas shopping sprees for members of the royal family. The US Ambassador, Lisa Petersen stated, 'when we hear of the lavish spending by the Swazi royal family - especially while a third of their citizens need food aid - it becomes difficult to encourage our government to make more emergency aid available.”
(Petersen, should extend her rebuke to her own country, where in 2023 13.5 percent of U.S. households - 47.4 million people- experienced at least one period of ‘food insecurity’ in the richest country in the world.)
Significant Challenges
Eswatini faces significant social challenges, including a high HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 25 per cent among adults that places a substantial burden on the healthcare system and economy.
The state owns and runs seven major public concerns, including the utilities in electricity, water, post and telecommunications, railways, and the Royal Eswatini National Airways Corporation. It is no surprise that the World Bank has accused these public enterprises of inefficiency and of ‘crowding out’ the public sector:
[W]ithout reform of the business environment, the private sector is likely to remain subdued ... Sustaining high growth rates will require Eswatini to shift from state-led to private sector-export-led growth. … Though there are not many commercial State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs), they retain a considerable presence. SOEs drain fiscal resources and, as regulators in the sector in which they operate, create an uneven playing field for private sector firms.
A 2024 report on Eswatini from the US State Department notes that privatisation of telecommunications is in its early stages and that “sectors and timelines for additional future privatization exist …The National Development Plan 2023-2028 lays out guidelines and parameters for government to pursue a consolidated development framework, including plans for privatization”.
Protests and Massacres
Unsurprisingly, a widespread pro-democracy movement has grown up in Eswatini led by trade unions and with significant input from the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS). It is also no surprise that Eswatini is home to state-directed political repression and murder. Over a weekend in late June 2021, Mswati III, unleashed his military with the direct commands to suppress nationwide democracy protests. In its newspaper Liciniso ("Truth") , the Communist Party described the massacre that resulted:
"Over 70 people were killed over two days (28-30 June) by both military and the police. Hundreds of people were heavily injured, with dozens maimed by the military’s guns, and close to 700 arrested. The protests had begun in May, following the killing of a young law student, Thabani Nkomonye, by the police on the night 8 May 2021, shooting the car he was driving from behind. The police had attempted to keep the killing under wraps, giving false information about the incident. Mswati’s police maintained the façade until it was unveiled that all that time when they were requesting the public to help them find the “missing” Thabani, they had his car at the police station in Matsapha, a large industrial area and town 11 km from the city of Manzini Manzini.
"The Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) took up the matter, led students and the youth in what was to become the #JusticeForThabani campaign. During May and June 2021, over 40 constituencies successfully marched across Swaziland to deliver petitions, raising various demands including the call for democratisation of the country. As more marches grew in numbers, the regime realised that the people were getting more radicalised each day. The regime moved swiftly to ban all marches on 24 June.
"The banning of the marches did not deter the people, however. The people intensified the marches, defying the regime’s ban. After realising that the masses had not been deterred by the ban, Mswati unleashed his military into the streets from the weekend beginning 25 June, with a direct command to shoot to kill. Countrywide protests went on into the night from 28 June. That marked the first night of the massacre of the people by Mswati’s military. The killings were indiscriminate. As such, even children were shot and killed, some of whom were not even close to the protests."
The repression continues. In 2023, two former MPs in the severely restricted Eswatini parliament were found guilty of terrorism, sedition calling for political reform during the 2021 protests and face up to 20 years in prison. While in detention during 2022, they were beaten by correctional services officers and denied access to their lawyers and medical treatment.
The security forces arbitrarily detained and tortured political and labour activists. One activist who had led the peaceful delivery of a petition to the UN in April 2023 was abducted, tortured and dumped in a forest by state soldiers. In separate incidents police detained and beat members of the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) before releasing them without charge. The CPS members also reported that they were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment in police custody.
The CPS describes itself as “a Marxist-Leninist party that struggles for socialism”.
"We do not want to see the monarchic autocracy reformed or dressed in democratic trappings to appease the liberal sensibilities of any interest group or the imperialist international community. We seek a complete end to the autocracy and the establishment of a free, democratic multi-party system. We seek a revolutionary transformation of society that ends poverty, disease, the oppression of women, and the stifling of youth. We believe that such a revolution will enable the Swazi people to begin to build a socialist society, in which there is full equality and pervasive democracy."
As elsewhere in Africa and throughout the world, anti-colonial revolutions failed to liberate the majority but instead brought corrupt elites to power who continue to keep the door open to foreign exploitation. In Eswatini, the path to a real revolution is being charted by the Communists.