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They sold dreams and delivered nightmares

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The recent cabinet reshuffle is an opportunity for the All Basotho Convention (ABC) to realign its mandate with the needs and expectations of the electorate ahead of the 2022 general elections.
However, the ABC finds itself in a conundrum having sold big dreams in the 2017 elections and committing a string of fundamental mistakes since taking over power.

I guess the question that the ABC needs to honestly ask itself is the following: what are we going to report back to the electorate in 2022? Have we delivered on any of the dreams we sold back in 2017? Will the electorate ever believe our story? Maybe those are the real questions the ABC NEC and the current reshuffle needs to address.

The ABC has no one else to blame but itself for this dichotomy. The current infighting, factionalism and two centres of power are not going to help anyone but will work to undermine the authority of Dr Majoro. They do not only undermine the PM but also undermine the rule of law. The ABC seems to be eating itself from within like a cancerous virus.

The coming 2022 general elections will undoubtedly be the most challenging elections for the ABC. Not only for the ABC entirely but also for the majority of political parties such as the Democratic Congress (DC), Basotho National Party (BNP) and the Alliance of Democrats (AD).
In fact, most political parties that were somehow aligned to the ABC will be judged harshly for the sins they’ve committed in the current term. Unfortunately, most of the prominent political parties have had a hand in being part of the government since the 2017 general elections. The mistakes committed during the tenure will be used to form a basis of judgment by the electorate.

Those mistakes have somehow undermined the “dreams” sold during the 2017 election campaign. They’ve also undermined the mandate of improving service delivery, the fight against corruption and the eradication of hunger (sera sa motho ke tlala) of which became a unique selling proposition of the ABC to the electorate.

Unfortunately, the ABC has failed dismally to deliver on the top three of the dreams sold in the past elections. Service delivery is at its all time low, corruption is rampant and there is no prospect on the horizon for jobs and eradication of hunger. Those are not the only problems facing the ABC but the electorate will also judge how the Covid-19 pandemic has been handled.
There are also challenges that seem to be rampant such as stock theft and petty crime. The ABC seems to be in limbo as to how to handle the stock theft problem.

What about the day-to-day service delivery matters such as issuing of passports and drivers’ licences, maintenance of traffic-lights and roads (potholes)? These are challenges that the electorate interacts with on a daily basis.

The question on the minds of the electorate is : Is the recent cabinet reshuffle meant to realign the ABC and coalition partners in delivering its mandate to the electorate?
I would say the recent cabinet reshuffle has been greatly welcomed with a few compromises here and there. In fact, it was inevitable. It just had to happen.

For example, the blunders committed by the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA) and the BNP to a large extent have gone to undermine Dr Majoro’s authority as the head of the ruling coalition government. The revocation of the licence of Vodacom Lesotho was an act of arrogance and a blatant disregard of and defiance towards the Prime minister.

I wrote about this issue before the current coalition was formed last year. I said party leaders have to be mindful not to overstep their boundaries and act as co-Prime Ministers. They have to remember that they are coalition partners and have to answer to one Prime Minister.
Currently, it’s as if there were four Prime Ministers and each political party leader acted in silos with authority to do anything they wanted. In my view and whether you like it or not, the BNP acted recklessly over how it handled the LCA and Vodacom Lesotho debacle.

So reckless was the matter that it even had a shock onto the stock of the Vodacom Group on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. That even led to an impact on the value of the Rand. Yes, investors are that sensitive with their money. A mindless act such as that one is seen as a risk in the eyes of investors.
The Vodacom Lesotho issue has now become a foreign affairs matter between Lesotho and South Africa. We can’t negate the fact that Vodacom is one of South Africa’s biggest exports into Africa.

The pending Vodacom Lesotho issue is very serious and a very sensitive matter between the Lesotho Government and the South African government.
But the biggest sin of all time is the wool and mohair nightmare. This is by far the biggest blunder committed by the ABC and I don’t know how the ABC will redeem itself from this situation.

The problem is that the wool and mohair impacts directly on to the electorate right at the grassroots level. In my opinion, this has been the most careless and selfish act that could have been committed against the poor.
The wool and mohair system was working well. Maybe not to the liking or approval of the authorities in government and politicians but it ticked all the boxes when it came to the farmers. They knew how it worked and managed to put food on the table.

Now, you come as a politician and disrupt the entire system by pretending to fix it. Now, tell me; how will the ABC wash itself from this sin because the rural electorate is very bitter and angry as hell?
Not only is the rural electorate angry towards the ABC but also the electorate in urban areas feels let down by broken promises repeatedly made by the ABC. Where are the jobs? What happened to the fight towards corruption?

What about the monkey on the back of the ABC named John, the symbol of corruption in Lesotho?
Will the ABC manage to shake an affiliation of John from its back and reclaim to be a party ready to fight corruption? It’s not only the problem of John but a stain from the former first lady as well? These are serious issues to consider and answer back to the electorate.

Unfortunately, like the African National Congress (ANC), the ABC has gained a reputation of being a corrupt political party and this puts a dent to all its coalition partners to seem be to part of the corruption. In fact, this includes all of them, such as former coalition partners like the Alliance of the Democrats (AD).
Will the AD shed the image of corruption allegations levelled towards it regarding the failed sports and stadium projects? Only time will tell because the electorate seems to forget quickly.

Corruption is seen as the biggest problem that Lesotho has in modern times. It is even bigger than the current Covid-19 pandemic. The electorate has become smarter, savvy and more knowledgeable, thanks to the media and to a large extent social media platforms.
Gone are the days where politicians could speak fabricated truths (lies) to the electorate. The electorate is now empowered to make its own informed decisions, whether deep in the rural areas of Lesotho or the urban areas. The electorate is smatter, more informed and well connected. Thanks to apps like WhatsApp and Facebook.

But what will the ABC now do regarding the human trafficking allegations made towards its coalitions partners? This is a very difficult issue for the ABC to ignore and claim to be an issue of its coalition partners. The human trafficking scandal is a challenge that the Democratic Congress (DC) needs to overcome before the 2022 elections.

The human trafficking allegations have become a very serious matter more especially that they now impact directly on the prospect of the AGOA pact being renewed and the Millennium Challenge Compact-two Grant being granted to Lesotho. Yet again, these issues hit the very desperate and poor people on the ground.

In conclusion, the ABC was given a golden opportunity to change the history of Lesotho for the better but messed it up big time!
This is nothing personal towards the All Basotho Convention (ABC). It is merely an echo of voices on the ground.

‘Mako Bohloa

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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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