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What makes political parties tick?

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On Friday 30 July 2021 a Facebook friend, Mokhosi Mohapi, posted on Facebook. I saw the post before going into a meeting and wanted to engage on the issues raised but I could not. This week I want to focus on what makes political organisations successful.
Mohapi starts his argument by raising very important questions.

“Are politics here in Lesotho based on any doctrine? If so, does this mean the 40 or so registered political parties all have a doctrine to be followed or do they simply exist because in the aftermath of an election party leaders have better chances of getting to Parliament through Proportional Representation allocation? I might not be active in politics, neither have I academically studied politics, but I work in a very politically driven environment.

Oops politics are about choices taken amidst alternative choices. However, in the party-political stratosphere I am unshaken in my view that Lesotho politics is about advancing oneself closer to a parliamentary seat hook line and sinker. Political doctrine should influence national governance. National governance should be about national economic policy. Now if this is correct, given that I stand to be corrected, if a political party does not have its founding (principles) based on a particular doctrine, isn’t it why Lesotho is at such crossroads because almost all the popular parties today lack the required political doctrine? For instance, why are party political leaders always praised when they verbally castrate each other?

When last did you hear a party leader quoting from their party’s policy document? Is it because it does not exist? Have you seen that party policy documents exist only on the eve of national elections as election manifestos? And all the manifestos make no mention of coalition government set-ups and deliveries. It is then correct to say without concrete political party doctrines, there will never be stable governments in Lesotho except for the current “Blackmail” type of coalition governments where coalition partners set out to exploit the army or police or DCEO to force other partners to stay in government when gross malfeasance take effect.

Most politicians are there because they would have probably tried anything and everything in life to survive and failed and see politics as the only avenue to stay alive. Just look at all or rather most political party players, don’t you see desperado in them? Do you see any who has the charisma, acumen and vision to get Lesotho out of its misery or do you see misery trying to get Lesotho into further misery? I know many are going to choose the nearest exit and won’t want to debate. Reason being, as Michael Jackson sings………. “Man in the Mirror” But gentlemen, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed fool is king, argued Mokhosi Mohapi.

I am disappointed that this post did not get much attention which it deserves. I am saying this because I believe this is the root of our problem. Most of our political parties are without doctrine, culture, values and belief systems. The All Basotho Convention (ABC) is a classic example of a political organisation that did not have a doctrine, no values and no belief system. They created a culture where anything was and is still acceptable. They used anything to get into power including jumping over fires in Durban, South Africa. When in government anything became acceptable and that has destroyed the organisation.

Last week I said a political party is a permanently organised association which, through common activities, aims at comprehensively influencing the national decision-making process, in particular by participating in elections. Elections should be important to any political organisation but they should not exist for elections. However, in this country most political formations become alive only during elections. When there are no elections, they are dead.

Political parties have the same organisational characteristics as interest groups, social movements, business, non-profit and civil society organisations. While these particular types of organisations share fundamental communalities and challenges, such as the need to engage citizens and aggregate their demands, as well as the objective to shape public policy and public opinion, either directly or indirectly unfortunately they are often viewed as different. Politicians have a different set of standards for political parties and other organisations. Unprofessionalism, disorganisation, and lack of a winning culture have become normal in most political parties.

Have you ever wondered what makes great organisations? In the past 20 years I have worked for non-governmental organisations, church organisations, business organisations and have been a member of different associations. I have seen what makes effective organisations. It starts with the culture of the organisation being clear and concise. Clear and concise not only to the internal, but to the community. It all starts with clearly defining your culture.

Leadership needs to be chosen wisely to ensure an organisational fit that aligns with the organisation’s core beliefs. When the leadership is passionate and promotes their core values, those values will be continued through the people they attract to the organisation, leading to higher organisation morals and efficiency. It is important to note that understanding the organisational goals, objectives and culture in addition to finding the correct fit is that distinct difference.

A great organisational culture is the key to developing the traits necessary for political party success. Great revolutionary movements had strong binding cultures that kept them going even in difficult times. What is this organisational culture we are talking about this week? Organisational culture is the collection of values, expectations, and practices that guide and inform the actions of all members. Think of it as the collection of traits that make your political party what it is.

Why is culture so important to political parties? Organisational culture affects all aspects of politics, from the importance of time (punctuality), keeping promises to the electorate (trustworthiness) and loyalty. When organisational culture aligns with the members of the organisation, they’re more likely to feel more comfortable, supported, and valued. Political parties that prioritise culture can also weather difficult times and changes in the political environment and come out stronger.
Culture will determine the kind of membership your political party will attract. Culture is a key advantage when it comes to attracting talent and outperforming the competition.

Most political parties do not have core values which are vital in shaping the organisational culture. Those that have it is important that they live by these organisational values.
Organisational values are the foundation of the culture. While crafting a mission statement is a great start, living by the organisational values means weaving them into every aspect of the political party.

Political parties should keep culture in mind from day one. When a member’s perspective doesn’t match the political party culture, internal discord is likely to be the result. Some political splits are caused by this mismatch. Political parties should recruit members who are willing to learn their culture and reinforce it during the probation period and beyond. Practices and procedures must be taught, and values should be shared.

As I conclude let me ask, have you ever gone for a ride on a super-fast modern train? Have you noticed it runs on a track? Like a train on a track political parties must have values, culture, ideology or belief system that ensures they function well. Does your political party have the collection of values, expectations, and practices that guide and inform the actions of all its membership? If the answer is no, why do you continue to support such a party?

Ramahooana Matlosa

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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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