Swaziland: the revolution to come

[JMA]

[B]JMA:
As you pointed it, the problem is one man one vote, ONCE.
While it should be one man, one vote: several times.

Europe was just off loading the colonies and didn't care, in fact dealing with one man who had unlimited power suited them fine. And after the next coup they just opened a Swiss bank account for the new boss and then it was business as usual.

[M-A Lagrange]

Dayuhan:
How do you finance social services without somebody somewhere generating a taxable surplus... e.g. without a functioning economy?

I believe that we are in a somehow complex and unsolvable egg and chicken question: who came first, the egg or the chicken?

What I see is that Swaziland is in miniature what so many African countries could be: a heaven on earth. And that’s their curse.

Being naturally cynical, I would say that the aim nowadays is to build sustainable dictatorship (concept developed with/by T. Vircoulon from ICG on Zimbabwe case).
The sustainable dictatorship is the response to nonworking sustainable development:
- Strong dictatorial regime with regular popular consultation
- Capitalistic economy controlled by the first circle of power based on a communist like practice of economical control by the state but for personal enrichment.
- Regime legitimacy propaganda based on an external enemy: the classic paranoid state ideology
- A shift from population control from security to economy: use economical policies and terror to break middle class and opposition economical roots. Once the bourgeoisie and the upper middle class has understood that privileges come with political silence…
- Integration in the “party” or circle of power of any opposition party that manages to gain sufficient popular support to be a threat for the system. This to better isolate and corrupt it.

The variations of the model go from complete application in Zimbabwe to apparently lighter model as Uganda or Rwanda.
The main external back up of those countries was China but, at least in Africa, US and European countries have started to rethink their position on the need of democracy and good governance to have a stable environment for investments.

The thing in Africa is that you do not need a healthy economy for profitable investments. You just need a stable power and regime. Something that sustainable dictatorship does provide and is "easy to implement on that continent".
The case of Rwanda and Uganda is stunning: those countries have nothing to offer and they have been able to “develop” efficient social services. Not because of a healthy economy but through savaging DRC resources and international aid. They do not even had/have peace in the entire country. LRA use to burn North Uganda for decades. Or the Kamajor… The same for Rwanda: the FDLR “threat” which participates more to the propaganda of the external enemy than represent actually a real threat.
My point is that those models are:
1) Biased because the economical development was not internally generated but through an mercantile period of razzia of DRC resources. So there is no need of a healthy economy but a need of a lucrative market.
2) Rwanda and Uganda are/were dependant for more than 50% of their budgets on foreign aid… But they are stable. Politically non transparent and free but stable.

The question layes in how do you actually reach the take off point. You need to fund it. Internally or externally. Once your economy has taken off, then you can launch the rest and have tax surplus...

So, yes, I do believe that social services comes first to stabilise. But we may disagree on that and your points are as relevant as mine. The question is to choose between the chicken and the egg…