Preparations for the forum were scheduled to take place from November 2021 to January 2022 while the king was in his вЂњannual, mandatoryвЂќ retreat. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat has been mandated to work with the Eswatini government to draft the terms of reference for the forum. They agreed to work closely to establish a National Dialogue Forum to resolve the intensifying problems. He visited King Mswati III in November to discuss the political and security developments. South Africa's apartheid regime manipulated borders. South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, as head of the Southern African Development Community Organ on Defence, Politics and Security Cooperation, sent a special envoy on a fact finding mission to Eswatini in October. The deteriorating situation prompted regional leaders to intervene in a bid to restore peace and stability. The king subsequently ordered that schools be shut in June 2021. Protesters continued to deliver petitions and were blocked by the police. On 24 June, acting prime minister Themba Masuku banned the delivery of further petitions. Three members of parliament вЂ“ Bacede Mabuza, Mthandeni Dube and Mduduzi Simelane вЂ“ joined the #justiceforThabani movementвЂ™s call for constitutional and political reforms. Under the tinkhundla system, people contest elections in their constituencies on a non-party basis.

Petitions were delivered to various tinkhundla (local government) constituency centres, mostly by youth to their members of parliament, calling for reforms. Soon after the incident, calls for constitutional and political reforms started circulating on various platforms across Eswatini. The death of Thabani Nkomonye, a 25-year-old University of Eswatini law student, at the hands of the police in early May sparked the latest uprisings against the monarchy. The country is AfricaвЂ™s last absolute monarchy. Additional bloodshed should not be required to support more sustained regional and international attention to eSwatiniвЂ™s untenable political situation.The Kingdom of Eswatini, the small, landlocked southern African country that shares borders with South Africa and Mozambique, has been in political turmoil since May. In the absence of any real mechanism for the population to drive the political agenda and impose consequences on leaders who fail them, the stage is set for continued confrontation between the forces of change and an ostentatious, unaccountable monarchy clinging to the delusion that its interests are inseparable from those of the population. Polling indicates that Swazis feel their country is moving in the wrong direction when it comes to poverty, hunger, access to medical care and clean water. No student of Southern African history would discount the power of student protests-and with over half of its population under the age of twenty-five and increasing numbers of them connected to a virtual world that provides counterpoints to the pro-monarchy messages that dominate official discourse, eSwatini should be particularly sensitive to the demands of its youth. In particular, students around the country, at the university and high-school levels, have been organizing walkouts and continuing to call for a transition to democratic governance. The crisis then fell off the worldвЂ™s crowded radar screen.Д«ut the people of eSwatini have not stopped trying to chart a different course for their future. Nothing of substance was resolved: King MswatiвЂ™s powers remain unchecked, and members of parliament who attempted to formally present calls for constitutional reform have been charged with terrorism. The Southern African Development CommunityВ dispatched a high-level fact-finding mission to the country, which foundered when Swazi officials resisted regional efforts to consult with voices outside of government and did not lead to any real regional pressure.

For a brief moment over the summer, eSwatini was the subject of international headlines when security forces killed pro-democracy demonstrators in one of the worldвЂ™s last absolute monarchies.

Democracy 3 monarchy