Official launch of the Communist Party of Swaziland’s Red October Land for Food Campaign

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) will be officially launching its Land for Food Campaign, Saturday 22 October in Moneni, Manzini.

The campaign kicks off the CPS’ first Red October Campaign. It aims to highlight the need for full use of Swaziland’s land to solve the food crisis in the country, which affects about 40% of the population.

Hundreds of people are expected to attend the campaign launch. All pro-democracy forces are warmly invited to take part.

The Land for Food Campaign will draw attention to the need to put land expropriated by the absolute monarchy of Mswati III back into the hands of the people. The monarch, his government and oligarchy of chiefs maintain a stranglehold over Swaziland’s best agricultural land.

At the same time, thousands of our people face daily food insecurity. This compounds the disastrous health situation in the country. Malnutrition and under-nutrition worsens the terrible HIV and TB pandemics.

The Land for Food campaign aims to reverse this situation by lobbying and protesting for the release of land for food cultivation. Our land workers must be encouraged and given the skills, technical support and innovative and sustainable methods for productive land use.

The crown estates, government land, and land ostensibly “held in trust” for the Swazi nation by Mswati must be given over to community control.

Land for Food is a crucial channel to challenge the ruling autocracy. It is key to the freedom and democracy people seek.

The campaign also supports the rights of people criminally evicted from rural areas by the ruling elite. Moneni is one such communities and further threatened by new evictions, and the CPS will launch Land for Food to demonstrate its solidarity with the people of Moneni and to show the link between the monarchy’s imposition of evictions and the need for a revolutionary solution to land issues.

The CPS Land for Food Campaign will run until October next year, after which it will be incorporated into the permanent strategic work of the CPS and will be taken forward by a special working group to ensure that the campaign gains and maintains momentum.

The problems of our people, the ruinous exploitation they face at the hands of the Mswati autocracy, the massive expropriation of good quality land by the royal family and the tinkhundla chiefs all require that we come up with homegrown solutions to bringing freedom to Swaziland.

Our land is our future !

Kick the monarchy and tinkhundla off the land !

Put the land in the hands of the people !

Land, food and freedom !