SWALIMO — a party run by a “Facebook President”
BY THE HIDDEN SIDE ESWATINI
22 March 2023
Eswatini — Swaziland Liberation Movement SWALIMO) founder Mduduzi ‘Gawuzela’Simelane chose Facebook as his main method of communicating with the public. When he was still a member of Parliament and before he founded SWALIMO, he would host live monologues on the Swaziland News page, which he called “Family Meetings”.
In the last few months, however, Gawuzela has not hosted Family meetings at all, and has barely had any appearances on Facebook where he speaks to the public.
Gawuzela’s most recent appearance was on Swaziland Democratic News a few weeks ago where he was trying to justify why his son was arrested in connection with terrorism, and why evidence from the murder scene was found in his home. Instead of absolving himself or his son, Gawuzela further incriminated himself and his son by admitting that he is indeed connected to the main suspects in the case. Before this appearance, Gawuzela had only made one long form video where he shows his face in a couple of months!
The only other SWALIMO-associated page on Facebook has not been active since last year. In it’s brief lifetime the “SWALIMO Mkhiweni Constituency” Facebook page made less than 5 posts in it’s lifetime. Did Mkhiweni lose all interest in SWALIMO?
Upon further analysis, it is easy to realise why Gawuzela is become scarce on social media — he has shifted from primarily marketing to the public to literally buy into his SWALIMO through subscriptions, and he is now marketing to international donors.
When SWALIMO began, the primary source of funds were contributions by members, big and small. The call for Mobile Money donations is plastered as the first thing you see on the SWALIMO Facebook page and website. However, as SWALIMO began to split and the true nature of Gawuzela was revealed to more people, Gawuzela realised that in order to sustain his lifestyle abroad, he had to focus on international donor funding, much like PUDEMO.
Nowadays, Gawuzela only goes on Facebook to defend his position, wearing camouflage clothes to try and elevate the seriousness of his activities to military status. However, whether Gawuzela is trying to defend his son, himself, or the funding of SWALIMO, he always makes it worse for himself by revealing the truth about who he really is — a chalatan hiding behind Christianity just so he can enforce his personal feeling of being a superior person.
The Hidden Side will continue to unfold the extent of SWALIMO activities in the country.
