The head of the Catholic Church in Eswatini has warned that the southern African kingdom could slide into a civil war unless there is a steady push for stakeholder dialogue in the aftermath of recent political unrest in the country.
Bishop of Manzini, José Luis Ponce de Leon said he feared that the violence that has rocked the country since June 2021 could “escalate into conflict on a much greater scale.”
“Unless we are able to break that circle, things can become out of control,” the bishop said in an interview with Vatican Radio published on Monday.
He added: “Violence increases slowly and people keep adapting to it. It becomes, as we were saying during COVID, part of the new normal, we just accept this as a natural consequence and we don’t react anymore.”
Eswatini has experienced unprecedented violence over the past 20 months since the fateful day in June 2021 when pro-democracy activists took to the streets of the capital Mbabane and nearby Manzini to protest the death of a law student the previous month. There was suspicion that the student had been killed by the police.
The violence culminated in the murder of prominent Eswatini lawyer and human rights activist Thulani Maseko who was gunned down at his Manzini home on January 21.
De Leon bemoaned the lukewarm response by the Eswatini authorities to calls to pursue dialogue to resolve the political crisis.
“As Council of Churches, we offered to pursue the path of dialogue and started meeting different groups – political parties, NGOs – to understand what their demands are, what they think is the way forward,” he said.
He added: “Unfortunately, I am not aware of any steps having been taken in the last year and a half towards the dialogue because the government says ‘yes, dialogue will take place but it cannot take place in the midst of violence’.”
The bishop, however, described the feeling of being caught in a vicious circle in which “some groups say because there is no dialogue, we turn to violence,” and warned that “unless we are able to break that circle, things can become out of control.”
He said the undercurrent of violence in Eswatini is fuelled by unemployment, poverty, lack of infrastructure, and by the perception that the king and the government are turning a deaf ear to the demands of the people.
The deteriorating situation in Eswatini saw the Southern African Development Community last month expressing concern at the lack of progress in the dialogue process.
JN/APA