Swaziland queried on freedom of association

THE mysterious death of PUDEMO member Sipho Jele in police custody and ongoing police brutality was the subject of a heated discussion at the recent ILO conference held in Geneva, Switzerland.

These issues sparked a debate about Swaziland’s failure to uphold ILO Convention 87, that is, freedom of association and the right to organise. This was during the 100th session of the International Labour Conference.

Hundreds of delegates attended the 100th session of the International Labour Conference this year to debate the application of ILO Conventions, ILO fundamental principles and workers’ rights. In the ILO 2011 report on the abuse of rights it is said that workers’ delegates urged the Government to address the human rights crisis, noting workers could not meet, march or use the media freely.

One Swazi delegate was quoted saying, “today, we are called to a meeting, tomorrow we are arrested,” adding that the social dialogue taking place “is nothing more than a PR exercise organised by the government” to give the impression that human and trade union rights violations were being addressed.

Interviewed recently, Secretary General of the union of civil servants Vincent Dlamini, said they reported at the conference that the social dialogue meetings were just about quantity of meetings instead of quality. Meaning issues that needed to be addressed were not given attention.

Also, Swaziland was listed among 25 countries which have cases regarding compliance with ILO conventions. These include Turkey, Mexico, Belarus and Zimbabwe. These were examined by the tripartite Committee on the Application of Standards at the ILO‘s annual International Labour Conference recently.

The Committee on the Application of Standards is one of many committees that met during the conference with the explicit mandate to examine specific cases identified by workers and employers where governments are failing to uphold ILO Conventions they have ratified.