BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – Senate Deputy President Ndumiso Mdluli has taken an opportunity to lecture his colleagues at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) about how international peace can be achieved.
Mdluli did not only teach on how international peace can be achieved, but he also taught his colleagues on how Emaswati strived to achieve peace here at home, using Tinkhundla system of governance. This was during the 148th IPU assembly, which is currently going on in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting, which started this past Saturday (March 23, 2024), is expected to end today (March 27, 2024).
The assembly was under the theme: Parliamentary diplomacy: Building bridges for peace and understanding. The Deputy Senate President mentioned that during the present time and age, there was no need for countries in the world to sustain diplomacy through power. Countries needed to sustain diplomacy through dialogue that sought to engage one another to resolve differences.
It was Mdluli’s view that dialogue should be used in all platforms and all levels, be they local, regional, or international. He said global and regional structures should be revitalised and people should move away from double standards and start to genuinely support countries in need. He said people should also respect sovereignty of countries and the first line of action offered by those countries.
Speaking about Eswatini’s way of doing things, Mdluli said the country had unique perspectives and experiences about dialogue, which he described as the main tool in diplomacy.
“With a relatively homogenous population and a history characterized by peace, we have navigated through changing times using peaceful means of resolving our differences,” Mdluli said.
“Our system of governance, which we call ‘Tinkhundla,’ is based on a dual structure of traditional and parliamentary governance with the Monarch as head of state. It reflects our commitment to preserving our traditions while embracing progress.”
He said the system entrenched the culture of consultation and representation, not on the basis of wealth, but on the basis of individual merit, as seen and defined by the people at the lowest administrative units, all the way to the parliamentary constituency.
Mdluli said the country’s annual and constitutionally-mandated dialogue forum, called the sibaya, or the Peoples’ Parliament, provided a platform for the public to express freely their challenges, needs, and hopes, directly to the Monarch.
This tradition, Mdluli said, underscored the policy-makers’ commitment to listening to the voices of the people and incorporating their perspectives into decision-making processes.
“In our world today, we need less of the diplomacy that is driven by power and more focused on the quest for mutual solutions,” he said.
in this regard, Mdluli said the world must take seriously the voice of Africa and other regions of the world that have called for the reform of the united nations, especially the critical security council, to make it more representative of the world today and expand participation in decision-making.
Indeed, the UN remained our only truly multilateral platform and the world’s main hope for deepening diplomacy on the challenges that confront its people. It must therefore be based in the principle of equal participation, according to Mdluli.
