For many Emaswati, the festive season was not a celebration, but a pause, a short breath taken before the weight of January sets in.
For politicians, however, Christmas arrived differently.
They entered the festive season with certainty, certainty of income, certainty of a pay rise and certainty that their lives will continue largely uninterrupted in the New Year.
While ordinary citizens counted costs and made compromises to give their children something to smile about, politicians celebrated knowing their material security was guaranteed.
Christmas is traditionally a season of reflection, a moment to pause, to take stock, and to consider what kind of future is being prepared for those who come after us.
This is why I believe it is at this point, just after Christmas, when reality returns, that the nation must reflect. Not to debate whether politicians deserve higher pay, because that conversation has already taken place without the public.
That spirit should not end with the holidays. If anything, it should sharpen once the festivities are over and the country returns to its unresolved realities.
The more urgent and uncomfortable question must be asked: does the work done by politicians justify what they now earn, and does it respond to the real needs of the country they govern?
At the centre of that reckoning sits Cabinet.
For months now, the public has been treated to a worrying spectacle of internal discord within the Russell Dlamini-chaired executive.
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Instead of unity of purpose, the country has witnessed infighting, public contradictions and open admissions of sabotage within Cabinet itself. When the prime minister acknowledges that some ministers are working against him, that is not a minor political hiccup; it is a red flag that speaks to dysfunction at the very top of government.
This lack of cohesion has consequences. It breeds paralysis. It prioritises optics over outcomes. It turns governance into performance, busy announcements, glossy launches, exaggerated figures, while the real work of long-term planning and implementation is neglected.
For young people watching from the outside, the message is unmistakable: this is a government more concerned with appearing active than being effective.
In a country grappling with youth unemployment, a deepening cost-of-living crisis, and a collapsing public health supply chain, Cabinet cannot afford to be distracted by internal power struggles.
Yet that is precisely what has been placed on display.
Leadership, by definition, demands discipline, focus and collective responsibility. On this measure, the executive has fallen short and young people are paying the price.
Parliament, too, must shoulder its share of blame.
Members of Parliament were elected to be the people’s watchdogs, to interrogate policy, demand accountability, and place the national interest above factional loyalty.
Instead, what the country has seen is a legislature increasingly consumed by the politics of survival—of aligning with power centres, protecting personal interests, and engaging in politics of the stomach.
Rather than assert itself as an independent arm of oversight, Parliament has too often retreated into camps, choosing sides instead of asking hard questions.
Issues that demand urgent attention, unemployment, corruption, service delivery failures are routinely reduced to talking points, raised passionately in public and then quietly abandoned.
Nowhere is this failure more evident than in the country’s ongoing struggle with corruption.
Corruption is loudly condemned by everyone. It is named in speeches and blamed for every national setback.
And yet, beyond rhetoric, there is little evidence of sustained political will to dismantle the systems that enable it.
The prolonged drug shortage crisis alone is enough to expose this truth, a crisis that directly affects lives, that threatens public health, that has been well documented and widely acknowledged, yet remains unresolved.
If there were genuine determination to confront corruption, this would have been the moment. Instead, the crisis has lingered, reinforcing the uncomfortable conclusion that corruption is tolerated when confronting it becomes politically inconvenient.
Against this backdrop, the recent adjustment to politicians’ remuneration has landed badly, not because the public begrudges fair pay, but because the timing and scale are completely out of step with economic reality.
Honestly, the rise in politicians’ pay, driven by the civil service salary review, is financially unsustainable and detached from the lived experience of ordinary people.
When government finances are tight and the economy is under strain, decisions of this magnitude demand exceptional justification.
Under Finance Circular No. 2 of 2023, the figures speak for themselves. A backbench MP’s annual basic salary rises from just over E613 000 to more than E1 million.
At the end of the parliamentary term in 2028, each backbencher stands to receive an ex-gratia payment exceeding E1 million, by favour, not by performance.
With 79 backbenchers alone, the projected cost approaches E80 million.
These are not abstract numbers. They represent resources in a country where young graduates roam the streets jobless, where hospitals struggle to stock basic medicines, and where economic opportunity feels increasingly concentrated among the politically connected.
This is why the issue is not whether politicians deserve to be paid well, but whether there is a credible link between reward and results.
Have jobs been created at scale? Has corruption been decisively confronted? Has governance improved in a way that citizens can tangibly feel?
For most young people, the honest answer is no.
For young people, those realities are unforgiving. Unemployment remains entrenched. Corruption continues unchecked. Public institutions strain under the weight of mismanagement and political indifference.
Yet despite this, young people continue to hope, to organise, and to imagine a country that works better than the one they have inherited.
That resilience is this nation’s greatest asset, but it is not limitless.
As the New Year approaches, politicians must ask themselves whether internal squabbles, political convenience and self-preservation are worth the growing cost to public trust.
They must confront the uncomfortable truth that leadership is not measured by salary adjustments or polished announcements, but by outcomes that improve lives.
The youth is not asking for miracles. It is asking for seriousness. For accountability. For leadership that understands that public office is not a lifestyle upgrade, but a responsibility that must be earned daily.
Christmas and the Incwala season remind us that renewal is possible, but it is not automatic. It requires humility, discipline and work.
As the festive lights are packed away and the country steps into a new year, politicians would do well to roll up their sleeves, not for appearances, not for politics, but for the future of a nation that is increasingly unwilling to be placated by promises alone.
