White Swazis Are Always Self-serving

So many things disrupted me about reading a report that Nkilongo Member of Parliament (MP) Hans Steffen is advocating for the addition of Afrikaans and Portuguese as official languages in Swaziland. 

If you could see the red pen markings I made on the news article you’d swear you were looking at my high school Math paper where I averaged at 30%. 

I actually had to print it out to read over and over because I had to make sure I was feeling the same way each time I read the report. And each time I reached the same conclusion; White Swazis will always be self-serving. 

In 2014 I tweeted about this very observation and a white European tweep (person on twitter) who lives in Swaziland was quick to point out that I’m making dangerous generalizations. 

I’m happy to report though that after we engaged each other over several tweets, he returned the next day to state that he’d done his own little ‘research’ and it seems it is a sentiment shared by other black Swazis. 

I do kinda wish he reverted with the same feedback though after he dismissed as trash, the documentary “Unfair Game: The Politics of Poaching” (Google it), even though he admitted he hadn’t and wouldn’t watch it. White privilege. 

Hans Steffen is a member of Swaziland's parliament. He wants to lobby the legislature to add Afrikaans and Portuguese as official languages which will also be taught at an expensive private school that he plans to construct on his farm. Pic: courtesy of Swazi Observer newspaper. 

One of the points I’d made in my twitter rant was that white Swazis, even when in national positions like parliament or cabinet, are not in it primarily for national development. 

I added that even those not in such public posts, never get involved in the national discourse. Instead, they create their own little world inside the country where they make their own rules that will ensure their lives are not interrupted by whatever upheaval the majority of the Swazis may be experiencing. 

I gave my European tweep an example; in the 1990s there was that ‘khuculelangoco’ workers strike that lasted weeks – I remember because I was envious; my siblings stayed home for weeks while I did the early morning school run alone to get to the white private school I attended in Big Bend; a private school that ‘they’ built far away from their homes in Apartheid South Africa for themselves and a few ‘privileged’ blacks. 

There, we carried on like the Swaziland Electricity Board workers hadn’t just switched off the national electricity grid. It was like the rest of the teachers around the country were just on the streets because they wanted to neglect children including their own because they felt like it. 

This is the same school that introduced us to the movie “Sarafina” and yet so deliberately out of touch with what was happening in our own backyard. 

This is the same Big Bend where you’d find a few blacks at the Ubombo Country Club’s swimming pool, pub or tennis court but never a single white person at any point at kaLomngeletjane Club located on the other side of the tracks where there was just the bar for entertainment. 

Anyway, I suppose white Swazi MPs are no different from black Swazi MPs because why else is the class of 2016 only TALKING of changing the policy of the shameful E265 monthly elderly grant now - 48years after independence? 

And in all their sense of urgency on the matter they talk of each ‘donating’ a slight portion of their salaries towards the grants. How sustainable is a donation honorable superheroes? 

That said, Steffen’s big DREAM is thoroughly upsetting because firstly, by his own admission, he finds it hard to follow parliament debates because they are conducted in siSwati – why then not invest some of his riches towards polishing this language so that he can better serve the majority of his constituency instead of looking to invest E1billion in Afrikaans and Portuguese? 

Well, he gives the answer himself; because “statistics have reflected that MOST BUSINESS PEOPLE speak the two languages” according to the news report. That should answer the question of whose interest matters most for this MP – demographics, ownership of means of economic production in Swaziland and all because what black Swazi businessperson speaks Afrikaans and Portuguese? 

That the cows and crops you sell to pay for your children’s school fees are dying from one of the worst droughts isn’t that important to Steffen right now. 

 Secondly, it’s an uncomfortable conversation for many throughout Africa but when Steffen speaks of the school being built on Mabhuda Farm, doesn’t it have you asking questions on the ownership of prime land in this country? In addition, these Afrikaans and Portuguese languages will be taught at HIS. EXPENSIVE. PRIVATE. school in Siteki . 

This is in the vicinity of the rapidly dilapidating School for the Deaf whose learners could benefit a more meaningful future if more Swazis were taught Sign Language than any other second language allowing them to interact effectively in buses, police stations, health facilities etc. but no, Afrikaans and Portuguese-speaking entrepreneurs from Mozambique, South Africa and all over the world make better sense to Meneer Steffen’s business plan. 

 And if you’re poor and want to attend HIS school – government, yes, the very government whose challenges he’s presumabley well aware of as MP, must pay for you in his (he actually does speak of it as ‘my’ ) EXPENSIVE school. Must be nice. 

All those decades of residents of Big Bend and surrounding areas buying from Matata Stores, navigating crowds of stampede levels at month end, and this is the best Steffen can offer to the people of Swaziland who continue to buy from his shops now spread across the country?

I don’t think so, but then again who am I because you know what? White privilege and supremacy don’t care what blacks think and say.