Business Day
*Cosatu group joins large protest march in Swaziland* *Foreign Staff, Business Day, Johannesburg, 7 September 2011*CONGRESS of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) members joined more than 1000 people on a march through Swaziland's main city Manzini yesterday in one of the largest protests yet against Africa's last absolute monarch, King Mswati.
Cosatu's international relations secretary Bongani Masuku said yesterday 45 people from Cosatu, its affiliates, and civil society organisations led by Cosatu deputy president Zingiswa Losi had joined the protests . "It is about taking solidarity to another level and ... boosting the confidence of the fighting masses."
He said the federation had done the same in Zimbabwe and Lesotho. Protest marches were also being planned for Friday in Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth and Durban.
A fiscal crisis is deepening in Swaziland, Africa's third-biggest sugar producer, even after SA agreed to give the government a R2,4bn loan to help it plug a budget shortfall that sparked riots in April, the International Monetary Fund said last month. The landlocked country of 1,2-million people raised taxes and cut state spending this year after losing a third of its revenue when the global economic crisis slashed income from a regional customs union.
In Manzini scores of riot police watched as protesters marched to the city centre, in the biggest demonstration since April 12, when about 1000 teachers and students were dispersed with batons, tear gas and water canon.
Vincent Ncongwane, secretary-general of the Swaziland Federation of Labour, said the marchers demanded multiparty democracy because opposition parties act as watchdogs for the country. "We want the king to relinquish all of his powers."
Political parties have been banned since 1973 in Swaziland and King Mswati holds ultimate executive, legislative and judicial power, and appoints the country's prime minister.
He has been at the helm for 25 years, has more than 10 wives and a personal fortune of $200m, according to Forbes magazine.
"Release our political prisoners, democracy now," read one placard. Many in the crowd wore red, the colour of workers and closely associated with the banned People's United Democratic Movement. Sapa-AFP
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