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Sir,
It is a human right for every person to be allowed to own property, either, as an individual, or in association with others. This right is guaranteed by Section 19 of the Constitution, which prohibits, in subsection 2, the compulsory deprivation of property unless certain specified conditions are met. The import of this provision is the recognition that all human beings must have their proprietary rights protected.
In the context of disputed land or property, the initial question that needs to be answered is; who has a better title to the property in question. This can either be chiefs in the case of Swazi Nation Land (SNL), who are custodians of such land, a farm owner or juristic person who brandishes title over the disputed land, or a municipality which may claim jurisdiction over the land by virtue of a certain law. This becomes particularly tricky where residential houses have been built on the disputed property.
Land
The person or entity that claims possession over the land may then want to assert those rights, often in total disregard of the other rights of the person or people currently occupying the disputed land. In most cases, as stated above, the latter is the ordinary poor citizen without security of tenure who, juxtaposed with the former, is in a weaker position in many respects and, therefore, vulnerable. It must be understood that the spirit and letter of the human rights framework, locally and internationally, is totally against putting the rights of ordinary citizen at the altar of those of the one with superior title on the land, even it be government. The rights of all the parties, therefore, need to be protected.
There are also violations in the manner the evictions are carried out where you find that they are carried out at night or in bad weather where there is no protection for the belongings of the evictees. We need our government and courts to approach this issue of forced evections with a human rights approach that places primacy to the dignity of emaSwati, especially the poor. Government, in particular, should never be seen as a perpetrator or complicit in this. MM