Det har fået folk op af stolene i det plagede og enevældigt styrede sydafrikanske lilleput-land
MBABANE, 29 November 2011 (IRIN): Swaziland spends 4,7 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on paying, equipping and barracking the 3.000 soldiers in its army, and now parliament has passed a 8 million US dollar supplementary budget for the force – a lot of money in a poor country.
This has provoked a rare public reaction in questioning the role or even the need for an army in view of the countrys deepening economic crisis.
Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini’s remark recently that “The army exists so we might sleep peacefully at night”, was the catalyst for an unprecedented debate about the role of the armed forces in this tiny Kingdom sliced in between South Africa and Mozambique.
In the consistently food insecure country with its predominantly agrarian society, about 70 percent of the 1,02 million population lives on two dollar (ca. 11 DKR) or less a day. In spite of this, the government allocates a mere 4 percent of spending from the state coffers to agriculture, while 17 percent is spent on the security services.
Only the budgets for general administration and education receive a larger amount of money from the donor-dependent government, while health gets a 10 percent share.
Swaziland has the world’s highest HIV/AIDS prevalence, with one in four people aged 15-49 infected with the disease.
Unprecedented protests
2011 has seen unprecedented public protests against the rule of sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III, sparked by an economic crisis that has led to severe cuts in social services, such as education, pensions and support for orphans and vulnerable children.
“The fiscal crisis in Swaziland has reached a critical stage,” Joannes Mongardini, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Deputy Division Chief, said in a statement after the conclusion of a country inspection earlier this month.
“Government revenue collections are insufficient to cover essential government expenditures. More importantly, key social programmes like the fight against HIV/AIDS, free primary education, the support for orphaned and vulnerable children, and elderly grants are being negatively affected”, noted he.
Swaziland’s financial crisis began in earnest after revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) declined significantly in the wake of the 2008 global slowdown.
SACU is the world’s oldest customs union, comprising Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa, and applies a common set of tariffs and disproportionately distributes the revenue to member states.
Debate forbidden in parliament
Military spending as a ratio to GDP ranks it 18th in the world, according to the CIA World Fact Book. An estimated 40,5 million dollar is allocated annually to the Umbutfo Swaziland Defence Force (USDF), excluding supplemental budget requests.
Parliament is forbidden to debate military budgets, and details of specific military spending are cited as a state security matter.
“We actually do not need the army. Most of the army’s resources are spent on the borders and on providing security at royal residences,” said an editorial in the Times Sunday newspaper. “To protect us, that is the duty of the police.”
A letter published in the newspaper asked: “How can we get a peaceful night’s sleep when civil servants are told to take salary cuts, and the elderly are told they will not get their grants (pension)?”
“Government says there is no money, so why is there so much money then to feed soldiers? Are they preparing for war? Against whom? The only thing that can cause conflict is the lack of [government] service delivery.”
‘The country is not at war’
Læs videre på http://www.IRINnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94336
