BNP pushes pensions for militia

MASERU – THE Basotho National Party (BNP) deputy leader, Machesetsa Mofomobe, wants former members of the party’s militia, Lebotho La Khotso, to receive pensions.
Lebotho la Khotso (Army of Peace) was a group of BNP vigilantes that has been accused of rights violations when the party was in power.

Its main target were Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) members who were accused of supporting Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) guerrillas.
Mofomobe told a weekend rally that it is unfair that LLA veterans were receiving a pension from the government while their own veterans from the Lebotho la Khotso were not.

Although the Lebotho la Khotso were not militarily trained they were armed and waged a brutal crackdown on dissenters in the late 1970s and early 80’s.

Mofomobe said the government should give the Lebotho la Khotso members pensions because “they worked for this country instead of bombing bridges like the LLA did”.
He said he is going to write Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro telling him that “giving the LLA pensions and not giving the Lebotho la Khotso is not fair”.
“The LLA specialised in blowing up bridges while Lebotho la Khotso was stopping them,” Mofomobe said.

The BCP leader Attorney Thulo Mahlakeng told thepost that should Mofomobe’s suggestion of paying Lebotho la Khotso members pensions reach parliament “I will not support it with my two hands”.
“We will never heal if the BNP leadership is of this mentality, that people who were specifically engaged to persecute those with different political opinions should be paid for doing that,” Mahlakeng said.

“It is common knowledge that the Lebotho la Khotso was a group of cruel BNP members who mercilessly victimised and tortured fellow villagers merely because they differed in political beliefs,” he said.
Mahlakeng said the Lebotho la Khotso members were not recruited to fight crime in the villages throughout the country “because if it was so it would include people from other parties, including the BCP, because all were affected by crime”.

“It was the organised state-funded persecution of a party by another.”
Mahlakeng said it is wrong to compare the LLA with Lebotho la Khotso because they served different purposes, one good and another bad.
“The LLA was founded to restore democracy after the BNP leader and Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan suspended the constitution and banned political activities,” he said.

“The LLA fought to lift the suspension of the constitution so that Basotho could enjoy the rule of law in a democratic dispensation.”
An LLA ex-combatant, Lebohang Sekotlo, said the reason he skipped the country and joined the LLA in exile was because “I was running away from the cruel Lebotho la Khotso”.

Sekotlo said he recalled vividly how the Lebotho la Khotso members marched to a man’s field of crops and killed his span of oxen while pulling the plough.
He also said he recalled when the Lebotho la Khotso went to a village, killed a man and took his body to one of the party leaders “as evidence that they had killed the man he did not like”.
“People were even ordered not to attend the man’s funeral,” Sekotlo said.

The government, which was then led by a former BCP member Pakalitha Mosisili, began giving state pensions to LLA veterans in 2012.
They are paid by the Ministry of Finance through the Pensions Unit every month.
The LLA was the armed wing of the BCP, which fought a low-scale armed struggle against the BNP government of Chief Leabua Jonathan in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The LLA took up arms after Jonathan suspended the constitution and declared a state of emergency during the counting of ballots in the 1970 elections, which some say it was about to lose.
The ex-combatants have been demanding compensation ever since Lesotho returned to democratic rule under the BCP in 1993.
Successive governments had ignored the ex-combatants’ call for compensation.
In 2012 the government decided to look into their welfare by creating offices that would coordinate their affairs.

Nkheli Liphoto