We haven’t done any more workshops since Dube, the JusticeMakers team leader, left for Holland for a month-long human rights conference, but the rest of the team has kept us pretty busy – to our benefit and detriment.
Shili took us to interview a traditional Swazi Court president in Manzini one day. There are two courts in Swaziland; the customary court, which is predicated on Swazi tradition and administers justice accordingly, and the magistrate court, which is based on Roman-Dutch law and actually allows lawyers. The traditional court has been criticized for draconian sentencing, gender bias, hasty trials and a slew of other things. Check out the blog post with pictures we did for more info (Reminder: there are videos for all of these but they have to wait until I’m back in the states to upload. I am actually working here). The next day we went to observe a court session. The Swazis don’t get a lot of things promised in their 3-year-old constitution, but they do get speedy trials in the traditional courts. Before lunch, we saw (and video taped, to our surprise) three cases: two assaults and one vandalism (guilty, guilty, guilty). The sentences were surprisingly light, according to Shili. The two assault case defendants got 7 months in jail or E240 (about $30).
A few days earlier, however, we interviewed a woman whose assault case was heard by the same court president. She alleges that she was stabbed in the head by a rival for her boyfriend’s affection (many of the assault cases involve love triangles) and was thrown out before she could provide medical records. For this reason, the JusticeMakers took an interest and are trying to get it transferred to the magistrate court. Check out that post here (video, as always, forthcoming).
We were dismayed to hear that we would miss the biggest event in Swazi culture by about a month. Umhlanga is a seven-day reed/fertility festival in which reeds from all over the country are presented to the king at his main palace and, on the last day, about 30,000 young women dance before the king. (It’s here that he usually takes a new wife. Given the related AIDS and fidelity problems, he’s shown some restraint by not taking a new wife every year. He’s only at 13 now.) There are, however, preparations being made for the festival now and we went to a reed delivery ceremony at the palace in which thousands of women danced and sang.
Since I had enough equipment to appear legitimate, I got on the field with the rest of the press to get some photos and video of the proceedings, including some up-close pictures of the Queen Mother. We had to leave to catch the last Kombis to Manzini before the king took the field.
It was good to get some cultural material for the project but that about does it for the useful portion of the last couple weeks.
Next episode: Swazileaving
It sounds like you've been handling being taken advantage of fairly well. You don't want to offend people, and you've managed to give a neutral answer until someone is too pushy.
ReplyDeleteThe preparations of the reed festival looked very cool.