The Hegemonic Leadership’s Failure to Transform Swaziland

Despite boasting 40 years of independence in Swaziland, there are no signs of change in the ailing economy, inadequate health facilities, violence against women and children, poverty and lack of democracy. Our leadership continues to hide behind safety, peace and security targeting innocent citizens who are speaking up against the current state of our beautiful Kingdom. The citizens of the country have been harassed and detained for communicating their dissatisfaction against the government’s failure to address the state of the education, information technology, health, governance, and poverty. The current leadership continues to prevent events planned to promote dialogue to transform the kingdom. In practice, the government is a mechanism used to make communal decisions. Our country is suffering from economic down syndrome not because there is no cure or preventative measures, but bad governance. In the past people blamed civil servants about their work ethic and now I have realized that the people are not the problem, but the system they work under. It is troubling to see how self-centered our politicians can be, not only in Swaziland, but across Africa.

The government is even failing to accept the reality that the state revenues is laying on life support and donor pockets are deflating at an alarming rate, thus calling for Socratic and transformative servant leadership not driven by self-interest. Socratic and transformative servant leadership embraces democracy and technological advancement and promotes transparency and accountability. They understand that they are stewards of the country’s resources by committing to greater integrity and tighter control of public funds, and understand that there is a direct correlation between governance and prosperity. Thus, we need a responsible government, ready to use available resources to shape the country’s economy. We cannot make excuses for corruption any more, that time is up. President Obama said, “countries that are governed well, that are stable, where the leadership recognizes that they are accountable to the people and that institutions are stronger than any one person have a track record of producing results for the people.”

There is no time to splash money on luxury trips while people are suffering from all kinds of ailments, hospitals not properly functioning, schools not properly equipped, government failing to make education affordable to everyone, etc. I believe our PM and Cabinet Ministers should put a freeze on those luxury trips taken by government officials and those associated with the current regime with no benefits for the country except their full stomach. Our government should be bringing in new talents if they are to realize the power of entrepreneurial government, instead of shuffling the same people in different positions. We need to explore new kinds of institutions that are non-bureaucratic, lean, innovative and decentralized. We need an entrepreneurial type of government to transform our beautiful kingdom. Time for hegemony is up. Marxist Philosopher Antonio Gramsci defined hegemony as the dominance of one social class over other social classes or the dominance of one political unit over other units. This is a wake-up call to bring in transformative servant leadership, which embrace shared governance and understand the importance of engaging all stakeholders. The current Administration need to be committed to democracy and find ways to integrate all communities or political groups to share authority and stop acting like they have a fiduciaries obligation to the non-democratic principles for their survival. Thus, the administration needs to continuously grow, listen, build and improve all the constituencies regardless of their affiliation. Freedom of association is important for citizens to nurture their independence of thought and become active global citizens. Yes, shared governance does come with cost, but is very important that is respected and practiced in order to successfully transform the country.

This is the time for our government to ask the following questions:
• Are we doing enough for the development of the country?
• Realistically, can we compete in the global sphere with the current institutions?
• Why are we losing our young and talented citizens?
• Why is our constitution being violated everyday?
• Why there is nobody who can come out clean and interpret the constitution?
• Why are citizens’ freedom of expression being violated?
• Why are we not learning from their dissatisfaction?

Time for “iloyali” is over, we cannot afford to stand still. The country is still far behind in residential broadband speed, penetration, or affordability. It is high time that we adopt a transformative system of governance to drive our economy and improve the state of the citizens. There should be an aggressive national economic strategy coupled with innovations driven by the young and talented instead of telling them to go and develop other countries. The University of Swaziland should wake up and get involved and empower students with entrepreneurial form of education instead of making them moving database of information. The four critical areas the country needs to invest in: scientific and information technology driven skills development, telecommunications, health, education, and building sustainable commercial infrastructure. The country needs to place emphasis on technology-driven education system in order to produce high quality skilled Information Technologists and Scientists. There is also a great need for the country to consider both rural and urban landscapes while trying to implement technologically driven services to add value in the country.

The people tasked with the implementation of ICT are digital immigrants are failing to even implement current web applications in their own backyards, thus failing to even utilize systems that could cut cost and make funds available for projects to transform the country. The government has been adding ministries and appointing those close to the kingdoms echelons to be in charge of those fattening ranches. Citizens’ protest stem from the creation of government driven programs that fails to adhere to democratic principles and values, which violates people’s right to freedom of participation. The country have hosted all kinds of dialogues with the hope to address the state of the economy and transform the country, but results have been those close to the echelons getting contracts and become rich overnight and on top of that rewarded with high profile positions. Ministries added at the expense of taxpayers hard earned money.

Swaziland is a small country, surrounded by one of the thriving economies in the world. Instead of adding ministries there should be developing the newly created ministry of ICT and merged “Commerce Industry and Trade” and “Economic Planning & Development” , “Natural Resources and Energy” and “Public Works and Transport” , “Public Service” and “Labor and Social Security.” That’s what would have been governments prove for observing fiscal prudence by targeting priority areas and keep the budget deficits at its lowest. Instead we are busy making the wrong investments sending people all over the world on luxury trips. It is high time we recognize the current economic situation in the country and try to implement ICT to transform the country's socio-economic conditions. Those who have the technical know-how, and understand the value of technology and speak the digital language should lead the transition.

There is a need for transformative leadership, which embraces shared governance and understands the existence of different communities. The violation of the principles of shared governance is what we see across the country as unions and students’ organizations resolve to violence. The police force is not helping the situation. Their hegemonic behavior fuel the violation of human rights. In Gramscian sense those who aspire to hegemony must govern to some degree on behalf of the constituencies they serve. I repeat we need an Aristocratic type of leadership, which embraces democratic principles. The administration should use their power to emancipate all Swazis, instead of making us internalize their ideals. In short the government should partner and start a dialogue with all stakeholders to revolutionize our country.