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Political leadership — a cause of instability?

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Continued from last week

In the fighting that followed, approximately 40 LDF soldiers died resisting SANDF troops who attacked Katse Dam and Makoanyane barracks.
Focussed on this resistance, SANDF failed to prevent fleeing demonstrators and soldiers from looting and putting parts of Maseru, Mafeteng, Mohales’ Hoek, and Roma to the torch.
The country would take years to politically and economically, recover from this man-made calamity.

One-party Dominant System, 2002-2012

Attempts to deal with a part of the causes of political instability—First Past The Post (FPTP) (the electoral model that the country had adopted since independence) and its perceived ‘tendency’ to ‘exclude’ from parliament parties with a sizeable following and a culture of disputing and contesting election results— all led to the establishment of the Interim Political Authority (IPA) in 1998 to create a more appropriate electoral system.
The IPA came with proposals for a new electoral model, namely, the Mixed Member Proportional which is a mixture of FRTP and Propositional Representation (PR), with a view for parliament to be inclusive.

This is the context against which the 2002 general elections were held, the outcome of which was a landslide victory for the LCD winning 79 out of 80 constituencies, the exact number it had won in the 1998 elections, which, had resulted in chaos and political instability in the country.
The difference was that at this time the size of the parliament was 120—constituted by 80 FPTP members and 40 PR members.

The enlargement of parliament was done, in large part, to appease political elites with hope that political stability would be established. The cost of an enlarged parliament to the fiscus was huge but the question was whether the price of peace was not better than that of war.
However, as we all know, despite the huge costs Basotho paid and are paying for political stability, Lesotho political elites’ greed and struggles for power continue to exacerbate political instability.

In many ways, the 2002 elections provided an opportunity for Lesotho to establish a stable democracy and to erase, from its history, the instability that had dogged the country since independence.

The general acceptance of the new electoral model as inclusive and representative of all shades of political opinion was hailed as its main achievements. Prime Minister Mosisili would describe it as “molleloa” meaning ‘the best (ever)’ in one of his political rallies. The elections’ outcomes of 2012 and 2015 would show the fallacy of this description, as will be seen below.

Scholars of elections, such as Makoa,(2012: 4), however, observe that “ the advent of the MMP system may have just heralded a shift in focus or opened a new side of political conflict in Lesotho rather than being a cure for it.”
Six years later, and following the 2007 general elections disputes, political instability ensued as losing parties wrangled over the allocation of propositional representation parliamentary seats because the new model was abused by the political elites. LCD went into an alliance with the National Independence Party (NIP) and won the poll.

The newly formed All Basotho Convention (ABC), which went into an alliance with Lesotho Workers Party, challenged the election outcome. As a result strikes, stay-aways and protests followed as the opposition sought to overturn seat allocation.
Violence ensued as supporters of government and opposition supporters clashed. Elements of the army were also reported to be involved in this violence on the side of the government.

SADC, in the person of former Botswana President Quett Masire, visited the country to mediate disputes on allocation of parliamentary seats. His mission failed and he withdrew.
In the midst of this impasse, political instability manifested itself, as Prime Minister Mosisili survived an apparent assassination attempt when the State House was attacked by mercenaries in the dead of the night in 2009. The same mercenaries had, on the same night, attacked the Makoanyane barracks and seized army vehicles.

Three mercenaries were killed in the exchange of fire with the police on the outskirts of Maseru the following morning while seven were charged in connection with the attack on Mosisili and found guilty and jailed.
As these events were happening, the ever-present power struggles within the congress ‘movement’, characterised by internal wrangles within the LCD as two factions, Lija-mollo and Litima-mollo, supporting the Leader of the party, Mosisili and the Secretary-General, Metsing respectively, fought pitched battles to capture the party. When the leader and his supporters realised that they would not win, they split from the LCD and formed the Democratic Congress (DC) which hived away a large number of members of parliament to form a minority government. Political stability was a casualty.
It was also during this period that the LCD government, in order to buy support from parliamentarians, not only increased their remuneration but also introduced a lot of obscene perks.
These included the interest-free loan of M500 000.00 from commercial banks, guaranteed by the government. There was also the purchase of government vehicles by the ministers and Principal Secretaries, at the nominal price of M4 000 for Mercedes Benz sedans, and M2 500 for luxury Toyota sedans after three years of use (Lesotho Government Gazette Extraordinary, 19th June, 2006).
These ‘perks’ were justified by saying that increasing parliamentarians’ remuneration was in order to attract persons of high calibre to national politics. In fact, the opposite has happened.

Instead of attracting persons of integrity, national politics has attracted a majority of persons willing to play sycophant to the few who exercise real power. Further, the perks have attracted, to Lesotho politics, individuals—‘political leaders’ and their supporters—of greedier dispositions who are driven more by motives of self-enrichment than public service.

During the life of the LCD government, instances of public funds being laundered through tenders for both party and personal gain were investigated by the Lesotho National Assembly Public Accounts Committee. The results of that investigation are a matter of public record.
The report shows that nepotism, kickbacks, opaque and irregular procurements, and conflict of interest were used by the political elite to fund themselves and their parties in complicity with several dirty corporations.

It was during this period, 2007-2012, that a conducive environment emerged in which the investigative institutions such as auditors, police, anti-corruption agencies acquiesced to this skulduggery.
In such an environment, many public servants felt free to also indulge in this gluttony, masquerading as independent suppliers and overcharging government for goods and services illegally supplied. For example, the Prime Minister’s office reportedly bought a consignment of cans of fruit juice for each of which the government was charged M100, instead of the normal retail price of less than M10.

Unstable Coalition Governments, 2012-2016

The first coalition government was formed after the 2012 general elections which produced a ‘hung parliament’, where no single party had a majority to constitute government. Coalition partners ABC, LCD and BNP had 30, 26 and 5 seats respectively, forming a simple majority of 61 seats out the 120 seats that constitute the Lesotho National Assembly.

The four years of Coalition governments which followed the ten year one-party dominant government was a welcome change to most Basotho. It was hoped that the political elite had, at last, come to their senses and were then committed to an inclusive nation-building process and economic development. Alas, that was not to be, as political instability became more pronounced than ever before in the political history of the country because political elites vied for power at the expense of the people and embarked on bitter and mostly bloody struggles to get on top.

Examples of these self-serving struggles from the first Coalition (2012-2015) were the prorogation of parliament in June, 2014, the attempted coup of August, 2014, by the Commander of LDF, Tlali Kamoli, following the decision by prime minister to fire him and replace him with Brigadier Mahao, the LDF night attacks of the 30 August, 2016, on Police headquarters where Sergeant Ramahloko was brutally killed, attacks on Mabote police station, on the home of new Commander of LDF, Lieutenant- General Mahao, and on the State House.

The latter resulted in the Prime Minister Thabane and the Minister of Sports, Chief ’Maseribane, fleeing to South Africa.
The first coalition government effectively collapsed in June 2014 when the LCD signed a new alliance with the DC, which had won 48 seats in the 2012 elections. Before the 2012 elections, the LCD had ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the DC in the event of a failure to secure the requisite parliamentary majority.

The ABC-led coalition was a marriage of convenience which was driven by an “anti-Mosisili sentiment.” Both the ABC and LCD were hostile to working with the DC or expanding the coalition to anyone else.
This arrangement was inherently unstable because the coalition faced challenges of governing with a one seat majority; it was difficult to pass legislation requiring two thirds majority and factional politics subsequently characterised the coalition driven by their historically antagonistic relationship.

More importantly, this “coalition became personality-driven with a standoff between Thabane and Metsing over the division of spoils” (Motsamai, 2015:7).
The second Coalition government of 2015-2017 was equally unstable because of its exclusion of the ABC which had won 46 seats. Within three months of a new coalition government being formed, Thabiso Tšosane, a prominent businessman, and a member of former Prime Minister Thabane’s party, was killed by unknown people in May 2015.

This event was followed by the execution of Lieutenant-General Mahao, former LDF Commander, by the elements of the LDF, in June. Fearing for their lives, three opposition leaders, Thabane, ’Maseribane and Rantšo fled to South Africa, while a number of LDF members were rounded up, arrested and brutally tortured for alleged mutiny. Other LDF members fled into South Africa.

These are signs of political instability since 2012. SADC has been occupied with efforts to manage and resolve the perpetual conflict in Lesotho. In fact, Lesotho has been a prominent conflict agenda item at SADC Summits and Extraordinary Summits to-date.

Following the murder of Mahao, SADC, (at the invitation of the Coalition government), established a Commission of Inquiry headed by Justice Mpaphi Phumaphi from Botswana. It sat for three months in Lesotho and South Africa and presented its findings. During its investigations and after presenting its report, the coalition government threw all manner of obstacles either under its own hand or using agents, particularly the army, to frustrate and tarnish the image of the Commission.

To-date, only one of the Commission’s recommendations, namely, the release of Lt. General Tlali Kamoli from the Command of the LDF, has been implemented. Makoa’s (2012:2) observation on the first Coalition that the key motivation behind its formation was the quest for office and state power applies to the second Coalition, perhaps to a very large extent.

For example, while in the first Coalition the combined number of cabinet ministers and deputy ministers increased from 23 to 30, in the current Coalition the number has increased to 38. The payoffs and the spoils, or benefits, of cabinet positions have been captured by Mboweni (2014:2) when he observed that:
In this country (Lesotho), which is poor and with a small economy, control of the government is key to the most primitive forms of wealth accumulation. Access to a ministry means the ability to loot the state’s resources in order to enrich oneself. It is as crude as all that.
Once someone becomes a minister, their social status changes, their control over tenders and other state resources is enhanced, and “aluta continua!”
So the very thought of losing state power drives even the best men and women to go absolutely berserk. That is the fundamental basis upon which we should understand the continuing instability in Lesotho.

Conclusion

Based on the events of the last five decades, it can, arguably, be said that Lesotho is confronted with a significant leadership challenge which has been at the centre of the country’s political instability. That leadership challenge needs to be urgently addressed and elevated as a priority issue of concern to all Basotho—ordinary citizens, political parties, civil society groups—regional and continental bodies, as well as development partners.

Collective action is required to stop and reverse the trend of poor leadership and generate a new crop of leaders. Currently, all those at the helm of the Lesotho state seem oblivious to the fact that “leadership is a privilege and an opportunity to serve others . . . (rather than) an instrument to assert their dominion and oppression of others” (Murithi, 2007:9).

Lesotho needs leaders who demonstrate ability to manage state affairs conscientiously and efficaciously, a consistent commitment to advancing the conditions of their compatriots, selfless devotion to the principles of democratic governance and an attitude of service.
Granted, that Lesotho’s problems cannot be reduced to poor national political leadership alone. However, men and women who have ruled Lesotho since independence have been so obsessed with self-advancement and have been so lacking in the sense of national duty that they have had neither the will nor the talent to face squarely this nation’s other problems.

Current national political leadership prefers the status quo and have been completely blinded by self-interest and by the benefits that accrue to them from the status quo.

T. H. Mothibe

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Insight

Shining Like Stars: Part One

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Last week, in a piece titled “Hope Springs Eternal”, I wrote about the relative values of (leftist) political commitment and Christian faith in a world that is beset with violence, poverty and oppression. Now I’m offering a review of a book by Lindsay Brown titled Shining Like Stars: The power of the gospel in the world’s universities, which explores the work of evangelical students in propagating the Christian faith in some of the world’s most dangerous countries, such as Columbia, China, Russia, Sudan and the DRC. Countries where despair seems to be a pretty rational response to the lives that huge numbers of people are forced to lead. I shall concentrate on cases where that effort to spread the Christian faith is allied to a commitment to agitate for better political and social conditions.

As an aside, I begin by quoting Will Shoki, editor of the invaluable online opinion journal Africa is a Country. I know I’ve mentioned him at least once in previous weeks, but that is because they are so good. In a piece Shoki wrote for the edition of March 4th this year, he records the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s reference to “the courage of hopelessness”, whereby “it is only when we despair and don’t know anymore what to do that change can be enacted.” Shoki adds: “I have never been quite sure what this means — in fact, I have never been quite sure what Zizek means about anything.” Which is to say, Zizek is a pretty difficult read, but his work is a nut it’s well worth cracking.

Be that as it may. Let us turn again to the question how, in a harsh world largely run by greedy, selfish, murderous brutes, a dedication to the message of the gospels and a commitment to political and social transformation can be a joint life-saver.

Lindsay Brown, the author of the book I’m reviewing, was for many years General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). Towards the end of his book there is an Appendix in which he lists around 150 student organisations worldwide that are affiliated to IFES. Many countries where IFES-allied groups have a strong presence are only nominally Christian, many others (for example, China and the Gulf States) are hostile to the gospel. In Lesotho — where neither of these impediments holds — the relevant body is called the Scripture Union of Lesotho, Tertiary Ministry (SULTM); as Brown’s book doesn’t touch on Lesotho, I’d be very interested to hear from my readers about the activities of SULTM.

The first chapter of Shining Like Stars is titled “Never Underestimate What Students Can Do.” This begins by recounting the story of Daniel and his three fellow captives in Babylon under the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, the story that ends with three of the young Jews being saved by their faith when they are cast into the burning fiery furnace. Then there are reminders of the long history of evangelism in western Europe, followed by the observation: “world mission is less and less about westerners going elsewhere to serve Christ, but about believers from everywhere going everywhere . . . for example, during the twenty years of civil war in Chad its displaced students, sent by the government to study in other countries, founded IFES movements in Niger, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Burkina Faso.”

One of the first of many testimonies the book contains is, however, from a female British student of Russian, identified simply as Elizabeth, who travelled as an evangelist to one of the -stan countries, former Soviet republics of Central Asia (which of the former -stans this was isn’t specified). It was a perilous but highly successful mission. Elizabeth records: “My birthday was fun. I had five cakes and three parties. They really know how to make cakes here!” Not much peril involved in that, you might say. But then Lindsay Brown notes that many sensitive words in Elizabeth’s testimony have the letter “x” inserted in them and explains that this was to escape electronic surveillance.

And so it seems being an IFES evangelist can be a bit like being James Bond, except more graceful. The second chapter in Brown’s book is titled “Our Sovereign God and Human Courage” and that’s where I’ll pick up the story next week, as well as detailing the activities IFES evangelists organize to attract students to the gospel. And then — after all, the chief focus of this piece — how they strategise evangelical work in relation to the advocacy of political and social transformation.

To be concluded

Chris Dunton

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Insight

Hope springs eternal

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Given the abysmal state of the world today, what is it that keeps one going? I mean, just look at the mess we’re in. The cowardice of world leaders faced with the challenge of climate change —world leaders most of whom are, of course, in thrall to capitalism (for when it comes to our mismanagement, that’s what really rules the roost). The appalling violence in Ukraine and the Middle East. The apparently endless misgovernance of countries as diverse as Lesotho and Nigeria. How does one not give into despair?

Me, I have an interim resource and a vastly more profound one. The former is my commitment to left-wing socialism, a conviction that life on earth can be vastly improved by following the principles of Marxist-Leninism (not — an important qualification — the corrupt form of those principles that moulded dictatorships such as the Soviet Union). The second resource is faith in the message of the Gospels, the embracing of our Lord Jesus Christ. For with this, the ills of the world pale into insignificance. Which is not — I absolutely insist — to refuse the responsibility of political commitment to ease the suffering of millions on earth, a duty we have while we’re still stuck on the bloody place.

Of those two resources, one allows a limited, constrained kind of hope, the other a hope that is boundless.

To expand on the notion of hope, recently in these pages Bishop David Ramela quoted the great Czech author and political leader Vaclav Havel, who became President of his country after resisting Soviet oppression in acts of dissidence for which he was imprisoned. Havel, as quoted by Bishop Ramela, wrote: “I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart . . . I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.”

Hope as distinct from optimism? Well, a couple of references here. First, the great Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (like Havel, imprisoned for his beliefs, in his case by Mussolini’s Fascists) wrote of the need to maintain “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” In other words, any reasonably intelligent person knows that things are going to screw up, but must act as if this were not the case. And another Marxist, the British critical theorist Terry Eagleton (the mentor of your columnist, incidentally, when he was an undergraduate — and ever since) has written a fine book, Hope Without Optimism. I shan’t go into that here, but shall review it in this column in a few weeks’ time.

Turning to the relationship between political commitment and the Christian faith, the evangelist preacher Robert Sheehan once commented: “Many Christians put more weight on political programmes and economic packages than on the power of the gospel in the nation. Do you?” The answer, I would hope, is “no”, but “quite a lot of weight all the same.” And I’m going to sign off this week with a lengthy quotation from the New Testament—namely, Ephesians 2: 14-22—which has to do with the relationship, in the time of Paul’s evangelism, between Jews and Gentiles. It is a passage — to refer to my piece some weeks ago on the Gaza crisis — that one would like to read to the Hamas leaders in Palestine and to Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu before banging their heads together.

“For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordnances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace. And that he might reconcile them both to God in one body, through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place in God in the Spirit.”

Joining, harmony, hope.

Chris Dunton

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Insight

Reading and emotion

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What does a good piece of writing do? How does a piece of writing evoke emotions in you? Well, reading is a good art that can stimulate and sharpen our sensibilities. In this instalment we focus on the emotional journey triggered and enabled by good literature. While other books may educate us and sharpen our cognitive abilities, that is the abilities to think and solve problems, reading literature of fiction does more; it stirs our emotions and sharpens our affective capacities.

By affective capabilities, we refer to the abilities to feel and tune in to our emotions and sensibilities. Life, after all, is not only about heart facts and reason. Life is about feeling and experiencing and the ability to put ourselves into other people’s shoes. Reading literature is so liberating and humanistic! Reading art in all its many genres grounds us in the varieties of human experiences and engenders in us tolerance, understanding and empathy.


Stories have a way of taking us on journeys real and imagined which stories transform us from the inside. These stories allow us to visit far-flung places and meet new people and feel their environment. Art has a way of mending bridges because through stories we come to understand people who may seem different from us. And at times we may have felt hatred and dislike for them and their way of doing things. But through reading about them, we hear their stories. We experience that which they are experiencing. We begin to see them from the inside out, and we get to know what lies underneath their skin, so to speak. That’s why they say that we can only begin to make sense of the world once we have reduced the whole world to stories. Let’s write a small story together and ascertain how it would move us. Let’s go.


“He trudged on thinking how he would approach Mwandionesa. Her warm and coy smile flashed before his eye.


Slowly mustering up a morsel of self-belief, Themba trudged along the battered, winding road in the heart of a thicket of musasa trees in the Musirizwi enclaves in Chipinge, south-eastern Zimbabwe. Like a heavy burden, a gnawing sense of failure nibbled at his conscience and a sense of uselessness clung on the air with unrelenting defiance. The stain of failure, the feeling that his people and he were inconsequential had taken lodging in his entire being. That is why he found a sense of solace only from isolating himself in his flimsy cocoon of loneliness like the proverbial ostrich which buried its head in the sand. He would have an occasional home-brewed beer called chikeke and thereafter lock himself within the labyrinth and sordid visceral being.


A gaunt bird flew overhead and he heard its flapping feathers amidst the thickening doom and darkness. “Bird”, he retorted to its presence, “what would you do if you were ever crushed by the label of failure.” A soft, warm tear tricked down the rugged terrain of his face. “Makauyo went to Egoli and returned without a name to himself, Khuyumani, too, lies buried in the bowels of the soil with nothing to show” he said as if he were speaking to the bird.


As he touched the cold handle of the door to his heart clutching a small, whimpering puppy in a cardboard box, he could hear the breathing of Mwandionesa and her stabbing, moist eyes asking him without a word where he has been for the last three days. He stood for a moment which seemed like an eternity. With false bravado, he mustered a not-so-convincing, frail knock. Mwandionesa, heavy with child, slowly made for the door and slid it open. Themba did not know what to do. He loved her but he did not know how to express it, like a person bereft of a language. Mwandionesa rummaged her pots on the dying embers of a hearth and gave him respectfully a plate with sadza and a small portion of chicken. A tear escaped-one, two, and another! She broke down, a downpour of tears streaming down her lips. “Themba, ngendaa yei weidaro mwamuna wangu? Indaa yei ndiripe Dube? Indaa yei weiita mukuba wekunzerereka kungaitei imbudzi irikumakaba isina unousha?” (Themba, why do you treat me in a manner? Why do you behave as if you are a stray goat without a shepherd? If I have wronged you I am prepared to appease you”).


“Look at me, Themba,” she demanded as a visibly pregnant and swollen stomach bulged through her threadbare blouse. The puppy whimpered plaintively. With hesitation Themba went to where Mwandionesa stood. With his furrowed labour-weary hands he touched her waist and led her to their mat of reeds made of “umhlanga” as she was fond of referring to reeds. She did not protest. A glow, a faint glow burnt in her eyes as she eased comfortably on his lanky chest. She fumbled for his hand and shepherded it to the lower regions of her belly and said, “He was kicking all these days you were away.” Themba was engulfed in a flurry of emotions; guilt as well as pride. With deliberateness, Mwandionesa said, “this boy will be called Thando. Yes Thando. He will build this homestead and more should you feel that you don’t have a home.” Themba nodded in agreement.
Themba began to feel the warmth of her presence as her succulent breasts pressed against his lanky chest and slowly closed his eyes…”

What a gripping tapestry which evokes a lot of emotions! It’s a story that stirs a lot of emotions; from empathy, sadness and an inner glow in the heart at the end. As the story begins, we feel Temba’s struggles, fear and hopelessness. He seems to be carrying a huge emotional burden and a crushing sense of defeat. I hope you have also seen Temba’s bid to reassert his sense of being and purpose through his desire of caring for a puppy – we could actually feel it whimpering. And the new hope ignited at the end of the story and affirmations of hope and new beginnings! The birth of a child always brings with it new beginnings – hope springs eternal!
So here we are! Stories are so humanising. Learning to read art in all its genres evokes emotions in us. It sharpens our affective side and warms our hearts.

Vuso Mhlanga teaches at the University of Zimbabwe. For almost a decade and half he taught English language and Literature in English at high school. Send your comments and questions to: mhlangavuso85@gmail.com

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