The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) has called for protests against the visit of Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, to the southern African kingdom in April to commemorate 40 years of rule by Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III.
Under his repressive rule, with all political parties banned, Swaziland, which the King renamed Eswatini, is the only African country to recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country, in violation of the globally accepted One-China policy.
Taiwan is recognized by only eleven other countries in the world, mostly Caribbean and some small Pacific islands, whose foreign policy is largely devised in Washington. The US itself, however, maintains a One-China policy formally, while aiding Taiwanese separatism, including with massive military support.
“The Taiwanese separatist regime plays a dangerous role in sustaining the absolute monarchy in Swaziland,” the CPS said in a statement. It provides both “material and symbolic support to a regime that denies the people basic democratic rights … Their support strengthens a parasitic system that thrives on inequality, repression, and the silencing of the masses.”
This support is crucial for the sustenance of the Monarchy, whose domestic unpopularity reached a fever pitch in mid-2021 when a violent crackdown on the country-wide, pro-democracy protests sparked a mass uprising against the monarchy. Amid attacks on his properties and businesses, Mswati fled the country, returning only after his army suppressed the uprising, killing scores and wounding hundreds.
“Helicopters, weapons, and ammunition supplied by Taiwan were used by the Swaziland army to kill protesters,” maintains CPS head of publicity, Sandile Xaba. “It is widely known that Taiwan supplies arms and also provides training for the army.”
Providing such sustenance to one of the most reactionary regimes on the continent, Taiwan, in turn, extracts massive surpluses from cheap Swazi labor, especially women, laboring in the textile sector where Taiwanese capital is heavily invested.
Read more: Swaziland monarch’s call for UN recognition of Taiwan is “not sovereign diplomacy, but imperial control”: Communist Party
”These workers endure poverty wages that cannot sustain a decent standard of living, while facing degrading and abusive working conditions. Reports of sexual harassment and gender-based violence within these workplaces expose the brutal reality of capitalist exploitation under foreign ownership. This is not development, rather it is modern-day economic oppression,” the CPS maintains.
Therefore, the party argued, “the struggle against absolute monarchy” in Swaziland is inextricably linked to the “struggle against Taiwanese separatist influence.”
Taiwanese separatism, it insists, is “part of a broader imperialist strategy to undermine the emergence of a multipolar world. By aligning with Western powers, the separatist regime seeks to weaken progressive forces and delay the restructuring of global power relations in favor of the oppressed nations and peoples of the world. This makes their presence in Swaziland not only a national issue, but an international one that is tied to the broader struggle against imperialism.”
The post Communist party of Swaziland calls for protests against visit by Taiwanese president appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.
From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.