Background
Ambrose Zwane was born on April 30, 1924, son of a King’s Counsellor, at Luhlokohla Ngqulwini in the Manzini district of Swaziland.
Ambrose Zwane was born on April 30, 1924, son of a King’s Counsellor, at Luhlokohla Ngqulwini in the Manzini district of Swaziland.
Educated first at Ekuphumuleni Mission School at Bulunga mountain then at St Francis School, Mbabane, where his uncle was head teacher. From 1939 to 1943 he attended St Joseph’s Roman Catholic College in the Manzini district and its head, Father Botha, paid for him to go to South Africa to Inkamana High School run by Benedictine monks at Natal.
After First year medicine at Fort Hare University College he went to Witwatersrand University in 1947 and graduated MB ChB on December 5, 1951.
His first medical post was house surgeon at the Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital in Zululand in 1952. From January 1953 to May 1959 he worked at Mbabane Government Hospital then joined Hlatikulu Hospital in south Swaziland. In both hospitals the racial discrimination was underlined by his salary: 75% of his white counterpart. A year later he resigned and spent a few months as a general practitioner at Ermelo, Transvaal, South Africa. He came back to Swaziland in June 1960 and turned to politics.
His first election challenge was in 1967 at the General Election. His party gained more than 20% of the votes but all the seats went to the Imbokodvo movement. After a long tour which took him to China, Kenya, Egypt, Italy, West Germany and Britain he returned home in January 1968 and stayed in Swaziland until the elections in May 1972, nursing his constituencies and resuming work as a doctor in general practice.
After his election victories he became leader of the Opposition in the House of Assembly. He called for a “One Man One Vote” constitution and an end to the nominated seats. Although a revolutionary organisation the NNLC accepts a constitutional monarchy with the Ngwenyama as king providing he does not “dabble in politics”. He took a strong stand on behalf of transit rights for freedom fighters beyond the so- called refugee facilities.
On May 2, 1973 he was arrested and imprisoned at Malkerns jail under the 60-day detention without trial regulations imposed when King Sobhuza suspended the constitution on April 12, 1973.
Dr Zwane had protested to the OAU that there was “no independence” in the country.
On the foundation of the Swaziland Progressive Party in July 1960 he became its General Secretary and represented it in March 1961 at the 3rd All Africa Peoples’ Conference in Cairo. When the party split into four factions he founded the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress on February 24, 1962, at Kwaluseni with the object of working for “a nationalist, democratic, socialist and Pan-Africanist State within the fraternity of African States and the British Commonwealth”.
Arrested on June 26, 1963, on charges of fomenting a strike, he was subsequently acquitted. After attending the OAU conference at Lagos in February 1964 he was offered external offices in Ghana, Egypt and Tanzania.
First Swazi to graduate as a doctor. First Swazi to challenge the Establishment’s Imbokodvo movement and break its monopoly by winning three of their 24 seats at the elections in May 1972. A man of intense convictions as a Roman Catholic and as a politician. Opposed alike to influence or interference from Britain, South Africa, Russia or China all of which he has visited. Dedicated to Pan-Africanism as launched by the late Kwame Nkrumah who gave him £2,000 for his party funds. A tall, earnest freedom fighter with a melodious voice for singing hymns.
