Condemning King Mswati III for advocating Taiwan’s secession from China in his address to the UN General Assembly last week, the Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) said that his call for UN recognition of Taiwan is “not sovereign diplomacy, but imperial control.”

The last absolute monarch in Africa, Mswati reigns over Swaziland, which is the last African country to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. It is one of eleven worldwide, mostly Caribbean and some small Pacific islands, which recognize the island nation.

However, the US itself officially endorses the one-China policy, which is the UN’s position. Mswati’s foreign policy against this international consensus “does not represent the aspirations of the working people of Swaziland”, where political parties are banned. It only “reflects the monarch’s role as a client of imperialist forces,” added the CPS’s statement on September 27.

Taiwanese aid to Swaziland “never reaches the working class and poor, but is diverted to sustain the lavish lifestyles of the royal elite” of the country, over a third of whose population survives on less than a dollar a day.

One example is the “donation of two Bell UH-1H decommissioned in Taiwan in 2020,” recalls CPS head of publicity, Sandile Xaba. “Though formally in custody of the army, a royal prince has been seen… flying it to visit his girlfriend”, sharing images and videos online.

Such a conspicuous display is in line with the royal tradition of Mswati, who flaunts his palaces, a fleet of Rolls-Royce cars, and private jets before a population struggling to eke out a living. Anti-monarchist sentiments have long been brewing in the population.

Pro-democracy protests, mostly limited to urban, working-class areas in the past decades, had spread across the rural swathes, manifesting in country-wide mass demonstrations in mid-2021. When attacks on these peaceful marches by security forces provoked an uprising, Mswati, with his properties under attack, fled his kingdom, returning only after his army violently crushed the insurrection, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.

“It is widely known that Taiwan supplies arms and also provides training for the army,” Xaba, who is also an activist in the Swaziland Solidarity Network, told Peoples Dispatch. “During the 2021 uprising, helicopters, weapons, and ammunition supplied by Taiwan were used by the Swaziland army to kill protesters.”

Read more: Unprecedented pro-democracy protests in Swaziland rattle the last absolute monarch in Africa

Holding on to power against the pro-democracy movement only by such violent means, Mswati “has no mandate from the people,” CPS maintains. His recognition of Taiwan, it reiterated, “is not a national interest”, but a “royal and imperial interest against the people” who have “nothing to gain” from this relationship.

Taiwanese investment has produced poverty, not jobs

Exploiting cheap Swazi labor, Taiwan, the biggest player in the country’s textile industry, has not produced any quality jobs, Xaba argues. Paid “meager wages”, workers employed in Taiwanese-owned textile industries “live in abject poverty and are sinking in debt”.

Several of its investments are often facilitated by “secretive financial deals”. Taiwanese ambassador Jeremy Liang is accused of pushing bribes to secure “the Taiwan Strategic Oil Reserves project estimated at R5.2 billion,” he added.

He further alleged that Taiwanese investors are grabbing land in the Southwestern part of the country. To facilitate the grab, the regime is demolishing houses, confiscating fields, and denying people access to their grazing land and burial sites.

“The monarchy is gearing up to enable Taiwan to grab more land and resources, so long as it props up the regime and helps keep it in power,” he maintains.

Calling on “all progressive forces to reject Mswati’s imperialist puppetry”, the CPS demanded “dismantling” of the monarchy, and “the establishment of a democratic republic”, with “a people’s foreign policy rooted in solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere.”

Read: Communist Party of Swaziland members face repeated arrests, torture, and persecution

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