Swaziland’s Communists Denounce Monarchy’s Taiwan Alliance
The Communist Party of Swaziland has placed the kingdom’s long-running alliance with Taiwan directly inside its struggle against King Mswati III, arguing that Taipei’s diplomatic and economic relationship with the monarchy helps sustain an authoritarian political order.
In a March 20 statement, the CPS condemned Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s planned April visit and described the relationship as support for the Tinkhundla monarchy. The party also reaffirmed its one-China position and framed opposition to Taiwanese diplomatic influence as inseparable from its campaigns against absolute monarchy and imperialism. Those ideological claims are the CPS’s own.
The diplomatic stakes are real. Reuters reported in April that Eswatini is Taiwan’s last formal diplomatic ally in Africa and that Lai planned to visit the kingdom from April 22 to 26 for events surrounding Mswati’s four decades on the throne.
The trip ultimately did not take place. Reuters later reported that Lai cancelled the journey after several African states withdrew or denied overflight permissions amid Chinese diplomatic pressure. Beijing praised adherence to the one-China principle, while Washington accused China of coercion.
That episode shows why a small southern African monarchy carries disproportionate geopolitical weight. Pamphlets has previously examined how China’s expanding role in Africa changes bargaining power and development politics; Eswatini sits at the diplomatic edge of that contest because it remains the continent’s lone government formally recognising Taipei.
For the CPS, however, the question is not only Beijing versus Taipei. Its argument is domestic: foreign alliances should be judged by whether they reinforce or weaken Mswati’s political system. By merging the one-China question with an anti-monarchy programme, Swaziland’s communists are turning one of Africa’s most unusual diplomatic relationships into part of their campaign for democratic and social transformation.
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