In the sweltering heat of Lobamba last week Friday, everyone converged as though there was an orchestra on show — early, on time and ready for the splendour ahead. And everyone dressed the part.
There was a beautiful cohesion about the spectacle lying ahead; security checkpoints were nicely detailed and efficient — things were pretty smooth.
Parliament, of course, was about to be officially opened by His Majesty the King, whose Speech from the Throne marks the beginning of the real job for government. It is a big deal for everyone, not least those whose job is to work for the people.
Yet as soon as the event is about to start, or end, or long after it has ended, we pivot to the same needless observation — one MP was conspicuous by her absence once more.
As soon as this became the point again, I thought long and hard about the continued boycott of Parliament by Siphofaneni MP Nomalungelo Simelane — known to most as LaZwide — which, to be honest, now raises a question that grows harder to ignore with every passing session: to what end?
Politics, at its most basic, is the art of showing up. LaZwide’s posture toward the opening of Parliament reads, in this country and in this constitutional moment, as an affront to Their Majesties.
Because, honestly, it can’t be anything else.
Her absence has also ceased to be a shock to the system and become its own tedious ritual — better interpreted as dereliction of duty dressed in the skin of protest.
She is making a point, certainly (or at least we would like to think so). However, if there is any point to be made, it increasingly appears to be that she can no longer be bothered to do the job she was elected to perform.
Let us be clear: LaZwide did not appoint herself to Parliament. She was elected.
That distinction matters.
The people of Siphofaneni trusted her to represent their interests at the highest level of the national legislature. They did not do so on the basis of a platform that said, plainly, “I will not attend the opening of Parliament.”
Nor did they vote for a candidate who would refuse to represent them in front of Their Majesties.
There was no such Inkhundla resolution. No community gathering where elders agreed: go, but do not enter.
If such a mandate exists somewhere, it has never been made public — which begs the obvious question: where does the MP get her mandate to boycott Parliament?
Without a constituency resolution, LaZwide’s continued boycott shifts from political strategy to self-service.
Personal conviction, however deeply held, has its limits when the seat belongs not to the MP, but to the constituency.
Representation is attendance.
It is committee work, constituency visits, votes cast and arguments made on record.
Repeated, visible absence risks collapsing protest into posture.
Which raises the obvious question: what is the gain?
What message is being delivered — and to whom?
Boycotts can function as flares that force national conversations to pause. But politics is not static.
The country has moved through cycles of tension, dialogue and exhaustion — such that an MP’s choice to be absent may no longer carry the weight it once did.
Or worse, it may carry the wrong message entirely.
The most uncharitable interpretation is that she no longer values the people who sent her.
That may not be her intention, but politics is half intention and half perception.
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When constituents see their MP absent from the chamber — while colleagues sit in orderly lihiya projecting unity even amid disagreement — they may reasonably ask whether absence strengthens or diminishes their voice.
The stronger argument deserves to be stated plainly: presence is not surrender.
One can walk into that chamber and still dissent — in debate, in committee and on the official record — in ways that absence simply cannot achieve.
A legislature, however imperfect, is a site of contestation. To vacate it voluntarily is to forfeit the very platform that Siphofaneni placed in her hands.
And the people of Siphofaneni deserved to have been asked for their say.
Right now, it risks appearing like nothing more than a middle finger to their faces.
In a system already criticised for offering limited space to alternative voices, removing yourself from the available arena only makes that arena smaller.
Principled dissenters are valuable.
But dissent requires method — explanation, communication and clear goals.
Without these, it drifts into ambiguity, and ambiguity rarely serves anyone.
Which brings us to perhaps the sharper observation: the silence of her colleagues.
There may have been the misconception early on that this was a bold and admirable stand.
But if anything, LaZwide is now making a mockery of the entire spectacle of MPs arriving in one beautiful lihiya as a symbol of unity.
Our politicians can arrive in Parliament projecting cohesion and shared values, while remaining content to ignore the elephant in the room.
There is quiet hypocrisy in a legislative body that prides itself on unity but refuses to hold its own members accountable for non-participation.
By failing to address LaZwide’s conduct, colleagues allow their collective dignity to be undermined.
If one member can opt out of agreed norms without consequence, the rules of engagement become optional.
Silence reads either as fear or strategic avoidance.
And avoidance corrodes institutions just as surely as open confrontation.
A Parliament that cannot articulate its internal disagreements risks appearing hollow.
Ultimately, LaZwide’s incoherence is the deeper problem.
By participating in routine legislative work while snubbing ceremonial functions, she has created a fractured political identity.
The position does not permit half-measures.
You are either working within the system to improve it, or you are outside it.
Trying to occupy both spaces simultaneously risks occupying neither.
The deeper question is not whether one MP should attend one ceremony.
It is what representation means in Eswatini at this moment.
Is an MP primarily a symbol of resistance, or a conduit for constituency interests within the existing framework?
Can she be both?
And if she chooses resistance, how does she ensure that the people who sent her are not the ones who pay the price?
Protest by absence has run its course.
It is time for Nomalungelo — whose name speaks of rights — to decide whose rights matter more: hers or those of her constituency.
If the former, then Siphofaneni deserves someone prepared to wear the lihiya with the full weight and responsibility it demands.
Otherwise, if you ask me, this has descended into a kind of lazy political grandstanding that probably no longer deserves the inches we have accorded it.
But after today — who cares really?
