 Swaziland, the country with the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world, is witnessing another round of protests. Defiance actions were organized by the Communist Party of Swaziland on Tuesday, April 12. The date marks 49 years since King Sabuza II, father of the current Monarch, took absolute power in 1973. On that day, he repealed the constitution, dissolved the parliament and banned all political parties. The key demand of the protest was an end to the absolute monarchy. They also called for the creation of a people's government with a multi-party democracy and democratic ownership of the economy. Swaziland is the last remaining absolute monarchy on the African continent and one of the few remaining in the world. King Maswati III has been ruling over the nation since 1986, four years after the death of his father, King Sabuza. Currently, Swazi people do not even have the right to elect the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is appointed by the king who also appoints the ministers of the cabinet. Seventy percent of the population languishes in poverty while the king spends billions of dollars every year on personal luxuries such as a fleet of Rolls Royce cars and private jets. The democratization of the economy and the state guarantee of health care and education are also central demands of the protests. Meanwhile, students in various campuses across the country have been boycotting classes since April 7th. They are demanding the transfer of living allowances that remain unpaid for many since the academic year began in November 2021. However, on Monday, April 11th, students were evicted from the University of Swaziland by heavily armed soldiers and police who fired bullets and tear gas at them. Parallel to these actions in neighboring South Africa, the border with Swaziland was blockaded at the Oshaik and Matsumo posts in the solidarity action led by the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union. The latest round of protests come after an eventful last year for Swaziland. A major round of protests began following the death of Thabani Nokomonia in May 2021 in which the police were suspected to be involved. It developed into a countrywide movement for democracy. Maswati fled the country in late June and returned only in May-July. Security forces heavily repressed the protests killing close to 70 and injuring hundreds. Teachers, nurses, civil servants and those in other sectors also staged protests throughout most of last year. Democracy now has become a slogan not only in the urban centers but also rural areas. This year we saw unprecedented protests in Swaziland, the entire country, where we had largely the youth standing up calling for democracy. What has been different of course is that these protests have been so large that they've even spread to the rural areas where the youth in their various communities, the 59 constituencies in which Swaziland is divided into, the youth stood up and raised many demands for the release of political prisoners, for the unbending of political parties, for ushering of the country into a democratic dispensation and of course including the ownership of the economy where the people were saying the economy has to be owned democratically by the people unlike in the current situation where the economy is tightly controlled, absolutely controlled by the monarchy, who is an absolute monarchy. And so from April this year protests started largely led by the students and then they picked up in May when a student from the university was killed by the police. As things stand now we have had even workers joining the protests, particularly nurses and teachers and civil servants coming in to join the protests and the call has been really one, it's about democracy, it's about the democratization of the country and in June this year we saw the Madara's regime kill from June and July, especially 29 July, we had the regime releasing the army and killing close to 100 people if not more. It is difficult at this point to verify the numbers because the regime has been very secretive about it. So we've had nurses even coming out to say they want the healthcare system to benefit the people. So those are the kind of protests that have been going on right now. The communist part of Switzerland has been part of this campaign at least from 2019 when the communist party started the Democracy Now campaign and with the Democracy Now campaign we were at sensationalizing the masses and opening them up to the reality that there is a need to push the struggle to awaken everyone else and this is how it has happened now that we have had the masses of our country actually adopting the Democracy Now campaign and that has been the campaign that has been going on across the country the entire 2021.