Time for seizure of power in Swaziland has arrived-SNUS

The Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) would like to declare to the world that the time for the seizure of power has arrived in Swaziland.

We are proud as the youth of Swaziland attached in various tertiary institutions and organized under SNUS, our revolutionary organisation, that tomorrow will mark the end of the royal misrule in Swaziland. SNUS would like to declaire to the world that our demand in tomorrow’s protest action is for the government to resign and the immediate establishment of a transitional government that should draft, in consultation with our people, a democratic constitution that will lead us towards free and fair democratic elections. We have lost confidence in the present government and call for it to hand power back to the people.

In 2009 the government of King Mswati III proposed a scholarship policy that was utterly rejected by all members of civil society and SNUS played a leading role in proposing a review of the scholarship. The proposed scholarship policy sought to cut substantially those whose tertiary education is paid for by the government but more than anything it proposed that members and sympathizers of banned political parties should not be paid for by the government.

We were rightly outraged about these new proposals and we held several protests marches and delivered numerous petitions in the last two years calling for the government to review its position about the proposed new scholarship policy. In our last petition, delivered in early February this year, we promised the government that in the next protest march we will not come back demanding the review of the scholarship policy but would be calling for a regime change. Our genuine caution was ignored and now the government will face our wrath.

The students and youth of Swaziland are inspired by the revolutionary statement of the ANCYL released yesterday and it did well to boost our confidence and determination to unseat this tyrannical regime. The students of Swaziland are not prepared to deliver another petition to the same deaf government but would rather deliver it to another government hence our call for the Barnabas led government to resign. In the past few weeks we have been organizing and mobilizing different civil society organisation to join us in these protest marches and we were humbled when the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) openly supported our call for the government to resign.

Organised under the revolutionary leadership of the Swaziland United Democratic Front (SUDF), all civil society, political, workers, youth, church, rural and business groups agreed to be on the streets tomorrow demanding regime change. We make no apologies that students are angry and warn the army and police no to dare touch us. In fact, we believe that our destiny is tied up together with that of the army and police. We call upon them to abandon this government and stand on the side of the people. The regime’s intimidating tactics of flooding the country with fully armed police officers parading in a brazen show of military power will not help.

Our humble call for mutual cooperation with the police and army does not mean that we will not defend ourselves in the event we are attacked. We call upon all students across the world to stage their own demonstrations across the globe and demand their governments to isolate this regime. We call upon all Swazis in the diaspora, particularly those in South Africa, to participate in any action that will be called by the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) and the Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC) and other allied organisations in support of the Swazi uprising.

We call upon our allies in different tertiary institutions across South Africa to identify children of the regime who are enjoying the comfort of the freedom that was fought so ferociously by the people of South Africa. Our call is that all the regime’s children must come back to Swaziland and face the poverty here at home. They cannot enjoy the toil of others while their parents subject us to untold suffering and. Our members are reminded that history charged us with a duty to lead the masses towards change and our militancy will be felt tomorrow.