African Constitutions Are a Big Joke

I have followed with interest the happenings in Swaziland where Parliament had a Vote of No confidence. Going by Swaziland's constitution, cabinet was supposed to resign. But hey, No! Prime Minister Dlamini refused to step down. Going by the Constitution again, King Mswati was supposed to Sack Dlamini as provided. As matter of fact, King Mswati III refused even to meet with the Speaker of the house because he was furious with outcome of the Vote. The vote was passed with a Three-Fifth majority of the house as prescribed in the constitution. Within days of this, the House met on Monday to reverse the original vote. Only 32 members of the House were present for the vote and this fell short of the three-fifths majority the original vote enjoyed. There are 65 members of the House and the 32 present for the vote was only two members over the minimum number who must be present for the House to be quorate. The votes on Monday were not recorded; Speaker Prince Guduza used the ‘Aye or Nay’ voting principle to decide the outcome, so the exact numbers who voted for the reversal can never be known. There are doubts about the legality of Monday’s vote. The Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, reported that on Monday the Attorney General, Majahenkhaba Dlamini had not been able to tell the House on Monday what instrument was being used to allow the vote to go ahead. Chairman of the Lawyers for Human Rights Swaziland Mandla Mkhwanazi reported in the Times,said, ‘My view is that if it takes two to tango, it should also take two to un-tango. By this I mean that since it took a three-fifths majority for the vote to be passed, it should also take the same number of votes to reverse it.’ Now this is a HUGE JOKE if you ask