By Alpheous Nxumalo
(Government Spokesperson)
MBABANE – There’s no Government, including ours here in the home front, that can only maintain a shut-away-door policy or a shoot-to-kill-all policy as a way to deal with people who are terrorists.
The policy is to always maintain an open-door policy for political renegades who have been hoodwinked to join anti-establishment, terrorist, and resistance entities with a view to win them to our political divide. That’s why in dealing with them, we use both soft and hard power in the attempt to persuade them to change and mend their respective political ways. Hence, we engage, disengage, and issue threats and send out friendly messages as we deal with them. We engage from time to time in political and psychological warfare just to achieve one end-state—to win political adversaries, renegades, and antagonists of the country back to our side. That’s why we have never engaged in permanent adversarial political practices against our critics in this country.
So, those who have already committed themselves to the road to politically self-correct with a view to recommit to national cause and political architecture and to our Tinkhundla democratic system of governance, must be allowed the space to do so instead of being mocked or ridiculed or even resisted. No one is born a terrorist or a political renegade. Therefore, no one should be allowed to die a terrorist or a political renegade. It’s a choice people have made out of extreme shallow consideration of facts. And when they realize that their choices were wrong, the onus to support them to make the right choices is then therefore, on us.
As a matter of fact, in other countries, there are programs to rehabilitate and reorient people who are returning from terrorism and other insurgency groups. There’s no doubt that both pre, during, and post the June 2021 unrest, many people made wrong choices. Many were made to believe that the political establishment of Eswatini has attained a point of no return. This was so serious. There was total inactivity and polarization to the point that many were cowed into total silence or unpronounced loyalty to the political maneuvers of the enemy.
Can you imagine this: I get to the office and do just exactly what I was engaged by the State to do—which is to speak for the Government of Eswatini. I then got called by three (3) of my principals and I get warned of a detailed plan hedged by the enemies to assassinate me. Hence, their advice was that I should not become too vocal as it were. I should slow down in order to save my vulnerable life. My response remains your guesswork. The point is that we should realize how intimidatory the situation was then.
So many of our people, realizing the political flaws and fallacies of that national unrest, they now want to change their ways. My appeal to the nation is simply that: let’s welcome them back. Those who need to account to the law, they shall do so without fail. What we cannot afford to do as a nation is to create and maintain a permanent coalition of the renegades and terrorist entities, including those who have already taken tangible and practical steps to self-correct.
