CPS logo.png CPS: Red October Campaign focuses on educating our people for a post-Mswati Swaziland 19 October 2015 The Communist Party of Swaziland is devoting its Red October campaign for 2015-2016 to an information and education campaign on a transitional programme for taking Swaziland to democracy. The CPS has, since it was founded, advocated an interim or transitional arrangement between the ending of the Mswati dictatorship and, following elections, the creation of a multi party democracy based on a new Constitution, a Bill of Rights and a programme to implement them, aimed to begin with at transforming the judicial and executive areas of government. A key aspect of the transitional programme is to develop an emergency economic strategy to address the worst of our country's crises of poverty and disease. Work toward a transitional programme needs to be largely focussed on revolutionary education among our people to develop their understanding of democracy and how they can benefit from it to take the process of liberation forward. Educating the Swazi people about the meaning of democracy and freedom from Royal rule and diktat are crucial steps that need to be taken at a relatively early stage. It should be part of the nation-wide consultation and enlightenment process that, ultimately, will lead to the sort of national forum that will set the immediate goals of social and economic revolutionary change out of the ruins of the Mswati regime. The Swazi print and broadcast media, which is primarily a propaganda vehicle for the Mswati regime, has over the decades consistently depicted democracy as foreign imported chaos. It is consistently contrasted unfavourably with the Tinkhundla feudal system that the Mswati autocracy uses to control the Swaziland and exploit its wealth. There has been virtually no civil education by non-governmental groups to build awareness of democracy and the sorts of freedoms it can offer. People are ignorant of the rights and freedoms - real ones, not those displayed as window-dressing by the repressive regime - that could empower them. The rights and freedoms of democracy must encompass strong social and economic rights that will overturn the legacies of the ruinous decades of dictatorship. Democracy must be revolutionary. It run deep, and not be a sham that gets wheeled out at election time but a democracy that is in action at every level of society and in all situations continually. Educating our people about this is a massive task. It requires a high profile campaign to bring the message to people. Our people must be equipped to understand that only by building democracy will Swaziland be able to rebuild itself and usher in a comprehensive programme of development and reconstruction. A transition to democracy is a first crucial step on the road to a socialist Swaziland where our people are able to realise their full potential. Revolutionary change must seek to overturn the damage of chronic underdevelopment mass poverty and pandemic disease that the Mswati regime has allowed to blight the country so that it can siphon off its wealth to enrich the royal and elite and its minions. The Mswati regime is continually teetering and faltering. Sooner or later it will buckle under the demands for change. It is a feudal-capitalist dinosaur that needs to be put out of its misery once and for all. Increasingly pressure and interest are mounting on the potential for some kind of settlement in Swaziland. Some pressure is coming from progressive forces, including the trade union movement, but also from imperialism, which in its current liberal-capitalist guise pushes for democratic dispensations if it feels that this will best serve its interests. Progressive forces in Swaziland therefore have to be vigilant and ensure that no negotiations take place on a post-Mswati settlement that does not satisfy key demands for revolutionary change in the country. We must ensure that a future settlement does not simply bring in a bunch of gatekeepers and liberal capitalists, some of whom already now pose as champions of the pro-democracy movement. Their purpose, apart from lining their own pockets and creating their own power cliques, would be to keep Swaziland open for business in the interests of imperialism. A revolutionary transition from autocracy to radical democracy in Swaziland must involve all progressive forces and must be steered by mandates from the people organised in their communities. It must be bottom-up, and not top-down. During this Red October campaign for 2015-2016, the CPS will be working in our communities at grass roots level to distribute information and run education workshops on the meaning of revolutionary democracy building for Swaziland. Our people must get a good overview of the great advances and prospects that liberation from the Mswati dictatorship and Tinkhundla rule will mean for them. Contact: Kenneth Kunene General Secretary Mobile: 072 594 3971 Email: cpswa....@gmail.com
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