Swaziland in Transition

The focus of this paper is on the structural and cognitive challenges civil society activists meet in their struggle for democracy in the Kingdom of Swaziland. The research is motivated by an internship with the Danish labour union federation LO/FTF Council and its affiliate in Swaziland, SFTU, while collaborating with grassroots activists who fight for democracy. The research is based on a survey of 100 Swazis and on presentations of two leading democracy activists. The empirical data is contextually analysed with a range of complementary theories within the social sciences. The analysis explains the complexity in the challenges from different approaches both focusing on the power of tradition and political modernisation. It is concluded that the challenges are related to more than rational issues but rather to a set of cognitive and structural factors relating to the power of tradition and the dilemmas in political modernisation.