Monarch's bid to declare journalists 'terrorists' fails

The Mpumalanga High Court (Mbombela) has declined an attempt by the eSwatini Government to declare the kingdom’s journalists living and working in SA as terrorists, saying this would offend SA law. This is after the Prime Minister of eSwatini – on behalf of eSwatini’s Head of State King Mswati III – asked the court to clamp down on news sites domiciled in SA, as well as Swaziland News and its editor, Zweli Dlamini. According to a BusinessLIVE report, the monarch asked the court to find Swaziland News and Dlamini to have committed acts of terrorism under several sections of the kingdom’s laws. It said the publication and Dlamini did this by ‘publishing false allegations against King Mswati and the soldiers and police of that government in the articles of 25 November 2022 and 13 November 2022 in relation to the terrorist activities of the organisation known as the Swaziland International Solidarity Forces described in those articles.’ The articles referred to are the reports about government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in the kingdom, which led to at least 45 deaths. In 2022, then-Prime Minister Cleopas Sipho Dlamini published an order declaring Swaziland News and Dlamini ‘terrorist entities’. He made the order on the recommendation of the Attorney-General, who accused Dlamini of publishing articles ‘that instigate violence, the burning of public and state property, the seizure of state power and the overthrow of lawful government’. Dlamini has been staying and working in SA since 2018, when he fled his native land after Swaziland News was banned.

While the court declined declaring the news publication and its editor as terrorists and interdicting them from doing their work, it was critical of their coverage of events in eSwatini, notes BusinessLIVE. ‘The source of the information in the articles are not disclosed by Swaziland News. The timing of the articles coincided with the public uprising in eSwatini. No comment was sought from the eSwatini Government prior to the publication of the articles. The tone of the articles was extremely critical and stated as fact. No balanced view was given,’ reads the judgment. ‘The articles were not independent and constituted the most severe criticism against the king and the eSwatini Government. The timing of the articles coinciding with the public uprising, was clearly aimed at or had the potential or indeed did fuel the perpetrators of the uprising and clearly sought to gain support for the dissidence.’ The judgment added: ‘Having regard to the factors to be considered in order to determine whether the articles were reasonable, I conclude they were not.’

Judgment

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