Manzini, 21 August, 2022 / 9:25 pm (ACI Africa).
Christian leaders in Eswatini are calling on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to push their government to implement “the dialogue” that was proposed last year to address the political situation in the country.
At the height of pro-democracy protests in July last year, the government of Eswatini said there would be a national dialogue, aimed at addressing the unrest that resulted in the loss of at least 50 lives. This is yet to take place.
In their Wednesday, August 17 statement, officials of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) in Eswatini’s Manzini Diocese and the Council of Swaziland Churches (CSC) say the government seems to have agreed to a dialogue “only to appease the regional partners and come out as being sensitive to the wishes of the citizenry.”
The CCJP and CSC officials say they “add their voices to other civil society organs both inside and outside calling on the regional economic bloc, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to urge the Eswatini Government to implement the ‘dialogue’ that was announced by the country's authorities almost a year ago.”
“Essentially, nothing has happened so far regarding the dialogue and the situation keeps getting worse, with the citizens being thrown into a cloud of uncertainty,” the Christian leaders say, adding, “Initially, there were timeframes that were set at the beginning of the talk of a dialogue, but these were never adhered to.”
