Swaziland News lies: when will it end?
If you kept telling lies about your family what do you think would eventually happen to you? Would your family welcome you and be happy that you are around? Would you be trusted by anyone in your family? If your lies resulted in hate and chaos that leads to the death of people, would your family let you keep telling those lies?
Now imagine that your country was your family, do the same rules apply? This is an important question as we consider what to think of Swaziland News. Swaziland News is a for-profit news publication that relies on mass viewership online to justify its profit and need for donations from foreigners. However Swaziland News just cannot stop telling lies about Eswatini, which is formerly called Swaziland.
Through the Hidden Side, we have commented on some of these lies which the public sometimes calls out. Unfortunately lies travel faster than the truth because they are more entertaining, and this is why Swaziland news is still thriving on Facebook. Unfortunately this encourages Swaziland News and its editor Zweli Martin Zwemart Dlamini to keep telling lies, especially if they are very salacious and directly attack the King of Eswatini.
This is very disrespectful to the readers who fill their minds with lies and get emotionally drained because of the anxiety caused by the scary lies. For example, Swaziland News recently published a major lie, claiming that:
“Mswati grants his mercenary who kills political activists citizenship as calls for his arrest intensify in South Africa.”
If you read this story and believe every word, you would have very good reason to be tense and afraid — after all, there are mercenaries in your country killing people for merely having different political views, and these mercenaries are so dangerous they are being targeted for arrest in their own country. Scary stuff! If only it was true.
The sad part about Swaziland News lies is that people still believe them, even when the truth is in front of their eyes. For example, in perpetrating this story, Zwemart uses an image of a letter supporting the citizenship application of one Arnoldus Pienaar, a security expert who has been working in the country for years. The letter is dated 7 July 2022. However, Zwemart has no problem claiming that this application is happening now because “calls for his arrest are intensifying in South Africa”. He knows that people will not really bother with the evidence in front of them, but will rather take what he has written and regurgitate as truth.
To his credit, Zwemart tries to sell the lie by saying that “an independent investigation conducted by this Swaziland News uncovered that the letter from the King’s Office was allegedly backdated to July 2022 to cover-up the ‘emergency’ and influence of the King in the matter,almost all supporting documents are dated January and February 2023.” However, if this is true, why is he only able to produce the “backdated document” and not the rest of the supporting documents from 2023? He does claim to have them, so where are they?
It is sad to see the minds of Emaswati being toyed with in service of Zwemart’s agenda. It is further saddening to see his conduct being allowed to go without any accountability whatsoever by the Government of South Africa where he is hiding, the media, and the people of Eswatini who choose to believe everything he says.
If you want to hold Swaziland News accountable, report their fake stories as such on Facebook, that may be a small act but it is a step in the right direction.
What else can be done to reduce dangerous lies being told about the peaceful Kingdom of Eswatini?
