Meet Mzwandile Masuku (@mzwandymas), a Swazi human rights lawyer and a 2023 Oslo Freedom Discussion board speaker. He’s the son of the late outstanding opposition chief, Mario Masuku, who was arrested in 2014 and held for over a yr on expenses of terrorism, sedition, and subversion.
Masuku and his household suffered excessive persecution and reprisals from the regime of King Mswati III, Africa’s final absolute monarch, for demanding that banned political events be allowed as a vital part of democracy. His household’s nationality was repeatedly known as into query and their residence was usually raided by the Military and Royal Swaziland Police Power.
“The primary time I noticed an assault rifle was on tv in an American film as a small little one. I might then see one in actual life shortly after at residence, in the lounge,” he mentioned. “Throughout these raids, we might all be confined to the lounge below the barrel of some 5 assault rifles whereas the senior officers went via each nook of our residence. They might be there until the subsequent morning. In some unspecified time in the future, these raids turned so widespread that they not scared us.”
Finally, the raids would stop and get replaced with 24-hour surveillance, their telephones tapped.
“All of us acquired human shadows,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, Masuku pushed on to make a distinction, launching in 2009 with the late human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko a legislation agency devoted to public curiosity litigation. Collectively, they offered pro-bono authorized illustration to peculiar Swazis going through rights violations and felony prosecution by the state. Masuku can also be a program supervisor of the Basis for Socio-Financial Justice, which promotes civic schooling on constitutional rights and democratic participation amongst rural populations.
Regardless of threats, intimidation, and tried and accomplished assassinations of his staff members, Masuku continues to champion the rights of detained people and advocate for nonviolent democratic reform.
Masuku and different changemakers might be sharing their tales on the Oslo Konserthus stage this June for the fifteenth Oslo Freedom Discussion board.
