A majority of King Mswati’s security officers who are brutalizing, killing and pushing the citizens to take-up arms don’t have an idea with regards to the pain and suffering that comes with a civil war.
Indeed, if some of them could be forced by circumstances to skip the country, they could live like street kids, eat in the dustbins because their lives are grounded within eSwatini.
As part of our mandate to inform, it is important to enlighten these security officers so that they could understand what really happens in a civil-war, maybe they would understand why it is important to prevent it.
In a civil war, people are killed with impunity, women are raped and gruesomely killed.
People are forced to leave their homes and be refugees in other countries, in most instances, they are accommodated in tents in their large numbers and be exposed to transmissible diseases.
In a civil war, those who kill particularly security officers have no guarantee of life, you can kill in the morning and be killed in the afternoon or evening.
Investors don’t invest in a country struggling with a political conflict, this means a civil war might affect the currency and by extension the economy resulting to serious social challenges.
In a civil war, the law of the jungle applies, it’s either you kill or you get killed.
A country struggling with a political conflict normally faces serious food shortages, this means, in a civil war others die of starvation and be consumed by wild animals in the Mountains.
I am not sure if these police officers, soldiers and warders who brutalize innocent civilians fully understand the price of planting violence, once the seed of violence they are planting starts to germinate, no one will enjoy to live in eSwatini.
Members of the public have started to celebrate the death of security officers, this might not end with a mere celebration, people might start killing police officers, soldiers and warders.
We have seen this happening in the past few months and it might happen again, this country is ‘pregnant’ and might soon give birth to a civil war.
But there’s still time to commit a political abortion and terminate the pregnancy through a political dialogue.
As I conclude, let me emphasize that theirs is no winner in a civil war, the security officers who are killing civilians will one day, remember these words.
Perhaps, by that time they would be sleeping in a drainage in a foreign country, or in the Mountains, forests in fear of being killed by the people they are brutalizing today.
I am not the Commander of the armed forces and I don’t have the power to stop the police, warders and soldiers from shooting and killing civilians but one day, they will remember these words “There’s no winner in a civil-war”.
Those who plant violence must know that there are four seasons of the year and this include a time to harvest what you have previously planted.
Police officers during a protest.