DENOSA Backs eSwatini Democracy Struggle, Stands With Workers
By Thabo Mosia
Pretoria – The Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa has joined Cosatu and other unions in backing the people of eSwatini, and will walk with the Global Week of Action march on Friday, 4 September 2026, from Madiba Park at the Union Buildings to the Swazi High Commission.
The statement, issued on Thursday, is written as a nurses’ union speaking to nurses’ work: the right to organise, to bargain and to raise problems at work without fear.
Why a South African nursing union is on this route
DENOSA says solidarity is not a favour to a neighbour. South African workers were helped by unions abroad during the fight against apartheid. That debt, the union says, now runs the other way.
“South African workers know the importance of international solidarity because our own struggle for democracy was strengthened by workers, unions and progressive organisations across the world. It is therefore our responsibility to stand with workers and communities elsewhere who continue to demand the right to organise, to speak freely, to participate in the political affairs of their country and to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms that should be guaranteed to all people.”
For health workers the link is practical. A clinic cannot bargain if the law treats a union meeting as a threat. Patients suffer when staff cannot speak about shortages or safety.
“As a trade union representing nurses and healthcare workers, DENOSA also understands that workers’ rights, democracy and quality public services are closely connected. Health workers need an environment in which they can organise freely, participate in collective bargaining and raise concerns about the conditions under which they work and provide care without fear or intimidation.”
What the march is walking toward
eSwatini remains Africa’s only absolute monarchy. Political parties have been banned since the 1973 King’s Decree. Pro-democracy protests in 2021 were met with force. Scores of people were killed. Lawyers, journalists and union leaders have faced the Suppression of Terrorism Act. The Trade Union Congress of eSwatini has reported banned gatherings, including a blocked May Day event in 2026. SADC called for political dialogue after 2021, then later took the country off its formal agenda. Emaswati unions still press cases at the International Labour Organization on freedom of association and collective bargaining.
Friday’s column will hand a memorandum at the High Commission in Arcadia. Similar Pretoria pickets have been held before. The demand has not changed: a government chosen by voters, and space for unions to exist in the open.
DENOSA called on SADC, the African Union and the international trade union movement to keep backing democracy, human rights and workers’ rights in eSwatini.
“The struggles of workers do not end at national borders. When workers anywhere are denied their rights and freedoms, the broader labour movement has a responsibility to speak out and stand with them.”
“An injury to one is an injury to all.”
What solidarity can and cannot do
A march in Pretoria does not write a new constitution in Mbabane. It keeps the file open in a week when eSwatini’s own public servants are still fighting salary-review appeals and unions at home face permits that vanish at the last hour.
Nurses on the South African side of the border already treat Emaswati patients in public hospitals. The union’s argument is that the same worker who clocks in at a ward should not have to watch a colleague across the frontier lose the right to a union card. That is the line from Madiba Park to the High Commission on Friday.
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Source: https://centralnews.co.za/denosa-backs-eswatini-democracy-struggle-stands-with-workers/