Keep hands off the DPM – Mangololo

MBABANE – Secretary General (SG) of Mangololo Eswatini has called upon legislators to desist from attacking the Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Themba Masuku in Parliament.

As a result of that, the SG, Nhlanhla Zwane, has said that they were planning to pay a courtesy call to the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Petros Mavimbela, this coming Monday. “We are planning to pay a courtesy call to the Speaker of the House of Assembly of the Fifth Session of the 11th Parliament in a bid to call to order the lawmakers from their continuance in accusing the DPM of campaigning using donor food parcels. First of all, the DPM is a people’s person and that going there with a sponsor of the food proves that there is no hidden agenda,” pointed out Zwane.

Further, the SG, who did not mention any name in particular, alleged that most of these legislatures who were accusing the DPM of using donor food to campaign, they themselves lie to their constituency that they had purchased the food parcels whereas it was donated. “At least the DPM when he visits the communities doesn’t lie that he is the one who has purchased the food parcels, but instead he goes to these communities with the donors in broad daylight. The MPs should desist from labelling the DPM who is a peoples’ person, wrongly,” explained Zwane, yesterday.

Meanwhile, the DPM, this week defended himself following Marwick Khumalo’s allegations that his politics were discriminatory and selective, saying he was not a dirty politician. Masuku reportedly said he had been in politics since 1991 and he was not in dirty politics and he wondered why there should be noise that somebody made a request and what he requested was granted to him.

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He said he had never denied anyone from getting food and when he handed it over to the recipients, he never asked them what they would do with it as he had no business enquiring about that. “I do not stop anything from happening, I give rice to anybody when they had made a request and if it is available,” he said.

Masuku went on to make an allegation that some politicians were getting as much as E50 000 from other ministries, yet noise was made over the distribution of rice.

It is worth noting that Mangololo Eswatini is the new kid on the kingdom’s political landscape, ostensibly formed to oppose multiparty democracy.

One cannot be faulted for deducing that those behind the formation of this movement have found a welcoming and warm embrace from the Bill of Rights enshrined in the Constitution and specifically by invoking the twin freedoms of association and assembly, apparently the same enabling section that proponents of multiparty democracy are riding on in their opposite demand for a plural body politic, to claim a place in the sun.