Swaziland: Judges’ stand supports human rights
Amnesty International welcomes the position taken yesterday by the judges of Swaziland’s Court of Appeal that the
Government must comply with its rulings or they will not resume their duties. As of 10 November 2004, the Government had
failed to implement an important ruling of the Court of Appeal two years previously, obliging them to allow forcibly
evicted families to return to their homes.
Amnesty International has repeatedly condemned the forcible evictions as human rights violations.
The Government’s failure to implement the court’s ruling seems also to have breached the spirit of a recent agreement,
brokered by the Commonwealth and announced on 17 September 2004, to ensure the restoration of the rule of law.
In the agreement, the Government declared that it "hereby and without qualification undertakes to be bound and to carry
out the orders of the Courts of the Kingdom". The judges, who had resigned in protest at the Government’s refusal in
2002 to implement two key rulings, returned to Swaziland this week in the belief that their judgments had been followed.
In October, Amnesty International wrote to the Swaziland Head of State, King Mswati III, to express concern that the
September agreement made an exception of the case involving the evicted families of KaMkhweli and Macetjeni, on the
grounds that it intended to apply for a "stay of execution of the orders issued". In late September, the police
prevented members of the evicted families from returning to their homes, stating that their instructions from Government
had not changed. (Read the press release at
In its letter to King Mswati III, Amnesty International emphasised that his Government is in breach of its international
human rights treaty obligations in continuing to prevent the evictees from returning to their homes. Whatever it
intended to do in a future application in court, the Government of Swaziland and its agents are obliged both by the
ruling of the Court of Appeal in 2002 and the country’s human rights treaty obligations to allow the evictees to return
to their homes with immediate effect. The evictees also have an internationally recognized right to redress, including
financial compensation.
Background
The Court of Appeal judges, all of them retired South African judges, resigned in November 2002 in protest at the then
Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini’s refusal to implement two rulings, in cases affecting the rights of families who had
been forcibly evicted for political reasons from their homes in 2000 and the rights of suspects to apply for bail in
certain cases. In the latter case, the Government appears to have complied with the Court of Appeal ruling by releasing
some 29 pre-trial prisoners who had been detained unlawfully since 2002.
In July 2004, Amnesty International stated in a public report (full report online at that the Government of Swaziland
had breached its obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child through the following actions: the forced evictions carried out in October 2000; the
dispossession or destruction of the families’ properties; the continuing threats of force to prevent their return; the
effect of these actions on the victims’ rights to livelihood, shelter, education and health; and the denial of an
effective remedy to redress these violations.
The continuing denial to the evictees of their human rights in 2004 has also placed the Government in breach of its
obligations under three other human rights treaties which the country ratified this year - - the UN Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
View all documents on Swaziland at http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maacQSgabbDhsbb0hPub/