 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Swaziland has seen a series of major upheavals in 2021. The country is ruled by Maswati III, the last absolute monarch in Africa. For years, the people of Swaziland have been waging a major struggle demanding democracy and economic rights. This year saw the struggle peaking. The protests on the street were met with harsh repression by the regime. Even as Maswati briefly fled the country. Scores of people were killed and many more were injured. The year was also unique as protests moved beyond the cities to rural areas. Students, workers, doctors, civil servants, a cross-section of society took part in the protests. What explains the mass agitation in Swaziland? How did it spread to such a vast section of the population? Piyos Vilakati, International Secretary of the Communist Party of Swaziland, talks about these issues. 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, where 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 Party 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 aiming at sensationalizing the masses, sensitizing 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. Switzerland is a very poor country in terms of the people. The people are poor but we have a monarchy that is super rich. And over the years, these have been simmering in the people. They have been seeing a monarchy getting richer and richer and them as the people get poorer and poorer. And when the people went to deliver petitions from May to June, when the more the communities went out to deliver petitions to their own constituencies, the regime on 24 June 2021 shut down all protests. They banned all the protests that had been scheduled. And that again was another step which led the people to stand up and defy the regime. And in the rural areas in particular, it has been the youth that has been the driving force. Yeah, that could be working class youth. And of course, here's the peace entry. You will know that in Switzerland, at least 70% of the population is in the rural areas and living under chiefs. And this is where the brunt of oppression is faced, especially with regard to the land question. Because the chiefs have the ultimate right to grant land, but also to evict the people. And these evictions have been happening over the years. And the people now come to a stage where they felt that it cannot go on anymore. Hence the protests now. And of course, the joblessness, the very high unemployment rate, even those who are employed, in fact, are as good as unemployed because they are heavily exploited, especially in the industries, the textile industries, where most women find employment and they are heavily exploited and do not have quality working conditions in those factories. As the protests intensified, the Southern African Development Community called for national dialogue. This has been seen by many protesters as a way to take the edge of the agitation and to modify those on the streets without any concrete concessions. How do the Communist Party and its allies see the coming months? How are the protests likely to continue? Which sections of the population are likely to be at the forefront? Right now, the Communist Party is in its summer school. We are holding it under the theme communist youth to the front. The school is analyzing the entire year. What has happened in the entire year? Because we are saying we are turning up the heat for democracy now. But this element now we are saying communist youth to the front. So we are analyzing the struggle for the entire year. How it has gone? Who are the players that have been most active? Where has there been weaknesses and strengths? And we are rallying the trade union movement to be the one now to stand up and be at the front of the struggle. So the Communist Party, after this school, will be coming out again with key tasks for its activists. And one thing that is important is unity. We are calling for unity among the progressive forces that are fighting. And that includes, of course, the entire trade union movement and the political parties that have come to the fore to organize the people and the student movement and the youth movement, especially. So we are saying that because Southland is largely a very young country in terms of age. It's among the youngest in the world. So you really have the youth as the ones who are going to drive the revolution forward. So we will be going out of the school on the 27th of December and to go and inculcate or reinculcate the lessons that we have learned thus far. And we are going to ensure that in the coming year, the protests, people's protests, we double them up, we double them. And because there's also the creation of the SADAC, Southern African Development Community, which has come in and said that there should be a national dialogue in Switzerland. But we know as the Communist Party that this dialogue is nothing but some ploy to weaken the people, to pacify the people, to push the people back from protesting. Because since President Ramaphosa went to Switzerland early November and issued that statement that there will be a national dialogue in the next three months, the police and the army have been invading communities, brutalizing their people each and every day. Every day they are dragging people out of their houses and assaulting them. So we do not think that there is anything genuine about this dialogue. It is merely another tactic to keep the monarchy at the helm, to maintain him, to strengthen him. Because that's what he has been doing thus far. The attack on the people is aimed at pressing them down and the king maintaining himself as an absolute ruler. So we are calling for more protests now. We are calling for the students to go out to the streets. We are calling for the youth to take charge of the struggle to be actively involved. We are calling for women to also come out and fight and the entire trade union movement, which as the Communist Party, we are working so hard to strengthen from classroom level.