Chieftainess demands apology from Mapesela

MASERU – CHIEFTAINESS ’Matlhokomelo Matsepe of Ha-Molipa in Kolonyama says she is hurt after Defence Minister Tefo Mapesela insulted her over the radio.
She wants Mapesela to go to her village to personally apologise to her.
The Kolonyama MP, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Habofanoe Setšabi, had to go to the village to apologise on behalf of Mapesela.
But the Chieftainess insists she wants Mapesela to come to Ha-Molipa to apologise.

What sparked the furore between Mapesela and the village chief is the clash between him and the villagers during the Christmas holidays when he personally fined them after their cattle grazed on his wheat fields. Mapesela went there with a band of armed soldiers.
Chieftainess Matsepe heard that a woman she did not know talked about the incident over one local radio and she called herself ’Matlhokomelo Matsepe.
“It wasn’t me,” she said.

Mapesela angrily responded over the same radio saying he cannot respond to “a woman who is calling herself a chief but condescending to me” (ea ntlaoelang hampe).
He called her a delinquent chief. In Lesotho men are chiefs and not these delinquent women chiefs, the minister said.
“I was stunned when the minister opted to insult me yet I was fighting in his corner when he came here to impound the cattle,” she said.

She said her husband was also supporting Mapesela for what he did because he said the people who did not like what he did should come forward for the negotiations.
She said the minister is still in possession of the documents that show that the people have agreed to pay him.

‘Matlhokomelo said the minister had their numbers together with her husband’s and they were expecting him to call them if he thought they were doing or saying anything bad.
“But he never did that and he instead went to a radio station and called me names. I am very angry with what he did and my husband is also angry,” she said.
When contacted last night, Mapesela said he was responding to a person who pretended to be a chief.

“So if ‘Matlhokomelo is not the one who was talking about me on the radio station, then she must go to the police and sue a person who used her name badly,” Mapesela said.

Thooe Ramolibeli