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How is the coalition government doing?

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I can bet my last Loti that you will get as many answers to this question as there are voters in Lesotho.
Some will say the government is doing well and some will argue that the government is not doing well.
This is because the answers given when answering this question are subjective i.e. what individuals perceive from personal experience. There is therefore no wrong answer.

This means that those who say the government is doing well are just as correct as those who say the government is floundering.
It’s a fact that no government ever reaches all the people at the same time. Areas and people are reached in batches. Nor do governments satisfy everyone’s needs completely because societies have a multiplicity of needs.
Good governments recognize this fact. They therefore prioritise the most important and most common needs citizens have. They then immediately get down to work to serve their masters – the people.

Bad governments however, lack such wisdom. They scheme instead, how best to quickly capture the state. The haste is necessitated by the need to loot for themselves and their cronies as much as possible while still in government.
These thoughts went through my mind as I listened in as two friends sat debating the question I have asked at the top. One guy felt the government was doing well and the other strongly disagreed.

Government is doing well guy: – A culture of impunity (sponsored and sanctioned by the government of the day back then) had taken root in Lesotho. Ridding Lesotho of this scourge was therefore the number one priority. Everything else would come after.
As things go now, the rule of law is being re-established. Impunity and state sponsored terror have been rolled back. Basotho no longer live in fear except of course for the criminals who now realise that their time is up.

These efforts have created an environment conducive for foreign direct investment and much needed donor funding. The stage has been set for Lesotho to once again fully benefit from donor funding and including AGOA.Private investors are also now more likely to pump their money into the economy. Pensioners now have a decent monthly pension. They are now better able to meet their basic needs.
Work is progressing well to improve the livelihoods of some of society’s most vulnerable members i.e. orphans. As a result, a better and more caring society is being birthed.

Patients requiring dialysis treatment no longer have to cross the border to go to South Africa. This life saving treatment is now available right here in Lesotho. Lesotho TV is no longer captured. At this point, the guy with the view that government is floundering jumped in.
Government could be doing better guy: – Everything you have said is nothing but hot air. Nothing has changed. Different jockey. Same horse.
Lesotho TV is still captured. It’s the same as it has always been. There is still no balanced coverage of national news and events. If you watch LTV, you would think Lesotho has no opposition parties. It’s now captured by the 4×4 coalition government and not by Liphiri as before.

There is still political instability. Where is Metsing and his buddies? Where is that journalist woman? Didn’t they say they fled fearing for their lives? Whether true or not is beside the point. Their fleeing has created the perception of instability. This instability is likely to extend to parliament. Consider for example the clowns disguised as MPs who want to pass another motion of a vote of no confidence.

These people have no regard for the ramifications and negative impact this could cause this country. Only clowns would broach such a thing at this juncture. If SADC fails to honour its commitment to send the promised troops to Lesotho, wait and see what becomes of the 4×4 coalition’s efforts to bring criminals to justice. The stability you speak of will be more fragile than it already is. Those who fear taking accountability for their criminal actions, will resist strongly and cause us more problems.

The public service is still being politicised. None of us except perhaps the powers that be have any clue the criteria used when making important appointments in government. Are you aware of any new Bills submitted to Parliament to signal changes in government direction, policies or programmes or anything of the sort? No, you are not. That’s because there aren’t any. This government is just carrying on where the useless Liphiri left off. They are just as pathetic.

How many new job opportunities have been created in the economy since this government took over? How many are likely to be created in future due to new policies we did not have before? My sister, who graduated from Roma a few weeks ago, is now sitting at home. And there, she is not alone. She joins lots of other despondent graduates in the village. There are slim prospects for future employment for any of them given how things stand now.
As a small business owner, I still struggle to get paid for services I have rendered government. All that fanfare announcement to surcharge PS’s for late payments was just hot air.

The hassle I now go through each time I cross the border between Lesotho and South Africa is the worst I have ever experienced. These delays have a massive cost impact on my business. I don’t see tangible evidence that government is concerned by this.
People go to hospitals in this country out of desperation and not the belief that they will be cured. Those who want to be cured and can afford it, cross the border to seek medical care in South Africa. Just look at the mess at Tšepong.

What has the new government done to improve access to good health services? What? One dialysis machine?
How many of our current Ministers do you think visit our own hospitals and clinics when they take ill? I think none.
Access to running water for many households in Lesotho continues to be a challenge and there are no signs that things will improve going forward. By the way, why is it that we sell our water to foreign peoples before first making sure that our own domestic requirements are satisfied? How smart is that?
Subsidies for agricultural inputs and mechanical operations? When do we receive these? The planting season has long started and we are still waiting.
Look around, most roads are still as crap as they have always been. I wonder how many new roads have been rehabilitated or tarred these last few months. Fokol has changed maan!

Every day you hear stories of children and grandmothers being killed and raped. What rule of law are you talking about when corruption remains rampant but arrests and convictions “dololo”. Where are the plans and strategies by government to deal with the backlog of cases in our court system? Where are these plans? All we see are Ministers crisscrossing the country at our expense to meet officials and to familiarise themselves with their portfolios.

Nonsense. That’s what you should have done when in opposition. As government, you hit the ground running by implementing your policies.
This government like its predecessor, has no clear policies.

Basotho urgently require jobs, decent treatment when they require medical care, they want water and good roads, they want to plough their fields so that they have food for themselves and their families.  They want good quality education for their children. They want all criminals behind bars and nowhere else. These things they want today not tomorrow.

I am not seeing signs that these things are arriving or will be arriving quickly enough. That’s them –i.e. the two friends discussing the question “How is the 4×4 coalition government doing so far? The point of all this is not to show who the better debater is. Because that’s a pointless exercise. The point here is that it’s not what government or opposition leaders tell you about government successes or lack thereof.
What is your personal reality as you get on with the business of your life every day? Are you feeling and experiencing “change’? That’s the point. That’s what I want you to think about.

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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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