Eswatini Is Shutting Down Asian Shops to Distract From a Dying Economy

Ask a shopkeeper in Mbabane or a mother in a rural homestead who is to blame for her empty cupboard, and she may point at the Asian-owned store down the road. That is the story Eswatini's government wants told. It is also a lie, and we should say so plainly before anything else.

Roughly 70 percent of the kingdom's people live below the poverty line. Those are not the numbers of a country that has been invaded by its traders. They are the numbers of a country whose economy has been starved by a political system that answers to one man. Eswatini is one of the last absolute monarchies on earth. King Mswati III holds the final word on nearly everything, and his people have been told for years to be patient.

Now the state has found a more convenient target. Parliament has approved the Citizen Economic Empowerment Act, a law meant to increase ownership and participation by emaSwati, the kingdom's citizens. Under its banner, trade ministry officials have begun closing Asian-owned shops. Some of those businesses were inspected, found fully compliant, and closed anyway. Lawmakers argued openly over whether foreign owners should get three years to hand over their businesses or be stripped of them immediately. The chamber settled on at least twelve months. Then came the detail that should alarm every citizen of this continent: unless the law is formally amended to reflect that timeline, the ministry can keep enforcing its original provisions. A parliamentary promise is not a legal guarantee. Anyone who has watched a regime change the rules halfway through the game knows this trick.

Let us be clear about what is happening here. A government is using the language of empowerment to justify seizing private property from people who have done nothing more than open shops and create jobs. A Mbabane MP asked why foreigners should not be given three years "before kicking them out," and another demanded that rural businesses be "seized immediately." Seized. Not regulated. Not taxed fairly. Not licensed through transparent processes. Seized. When the language of a parliament starts to sound like the language of a mob, the rule of law is already dying.

The inspections also turned up real complaints from employees about days off, annual leave, and overtime. Those grievances matter, and they deserve investigation. But notice the pattern. Labour violations are being used as a reason to close entire communities of businesses, not as a reason to enforce the same standards against every employer, including the ones owned by well-connected emaSwati. Labour law applied selectively is not labour justice. It is a weapon.

The regional picture makes the danger obvious. In South Africa, anti-migrant groups set 30 June as a deadline for undocumented migrants to leave. Their campaign was accompanied by violence and attacks on foreign-owned businesses. Two Ghanaian and two Nigerian nationals were reported killed amid the tensions. Crowds have beaten a foreigner to death, cars have been torched, and shops have been looted. Kenya has also tightened enforcement against foreign traders. Eswatini's crackdown does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a rising wave in which economic frustration is being redirected toward foreigners rather than toward the leaders who failed to build prosperous economies.

We have seen this script before. A government that cannot deliver jobs finds a group to blame. The people suffering most are the ones with the least power to defend themselves, and the leaders responsible walk away untouched. Eswatini's emaSwati are told that their hunger has a foreign face. Meanwhile, the royal family's spending has been a source of public anger for years, and the country's workers send their wages home from neighbouring South Africa because there are not enough decent jobs at home. Ask yourself a simple question: who has been asked to tighten their belts? Not the palace.

The 2021 pro-democracy protests were not about Asian shopkeepers. They were about the right to choose who governs you, the right to speak without fear, and an economy that works for ordinary people. The government's answer is to offer a scapegoat and call it reform. That is not reform. It is distraction dressed up as nationalism.

So what should be done? Start with the rule of law. If Eswatini wants more emaSwati owning businesses, the path is credible and transparent: open business registration, affordable licensing, clear and stable property rights, and access to credit for local entrepreneurs through commercial banks rather than political favours. Support small enterprises with training and mentorship, the way Botswana built a diversified economy around stable institutions and a predictable regulatory climate. Nobody builds a middle class by confiscating the shop next door. You build it by making it easier and cheaper for a young emaSwati to open her own shop than it is today.

Mauritius offers another lesson. Its economic rise came from open trade, strong institutions, and a welcoming investment climate that attracted and integrated people from many communities. Its success was not built on expelling merchants. It was built on rules that applied equally to everyone. Eswatini's leaders should study that model rather than the logic of the bulldozer.

Above all, the economic crisis cannot be separated from the political one. An independent judiciary capable of striking down unlawful seizures, a free press able to expose waste in the royal household, a multiparty system through which citizens can remove governments that fail them: these are not luxuries. They are the foundation of any honest economy. Civil society, business associations, and church leaders in Eswatini must demand that the Citizen Economic Empowerment Act be tested against the constitution and that no business be closed without due process and judicial review. Regional bodies, including the Southern African Development Community and the African Union, must stop treating the mistreatment of foreign nationals as an internal matter. Ghana and Nigeria should press for the protection of their citizens, and every African government should understand that xenophobia is a disease that spreads.

And to the people of Eswatini, we say this: demand the real answers. Demand that the twelve-month timeline be written into law, not left to ministerial discretion. Demand that labour inspections apply to every employer, royal businesses included. Demand the accounting of public money. Demand a constitution that makes the monarch answerable to the people rather than the people answerable to the monarch. Do not let anyone convince you that the man selling you a scapegoat is the man protecting your future.

Your shopkeeper is not your enemy. Your hunger is not the fault of the woman who sells phone credit down the street. Your government has a choice: build an economy that works for every emaSwati, or keep lighting fires under foreigners to keep you from looking at the palace. Africa has seen where the second path leads, and we are not going to pretend we did not see it.

Based on reporting by BBC