Any ‘investor’ who claims to start a company or project to create employment is a wretched liar who should be laughed out of any office. Companies are in business for profit.

The rest of what they allege to be their motive is a politically correct mumbo-jumbo sold to politicians who are either naïve or accomplices in some sinister scheme to milk cheap loans or kind from the state.

That sounds crude but it’s true. Companies will gladly make profits without hiring anyone.

Many are forever looking for ways to cut labour costs by loading more work on a few employees or finding machines to do much of the work. When they cannot make profits they fire workers.
Businesses are not formed to help anyone but their shareholders to make money.

Trade Minister Shelile obviously knows this as someone who worked with investments but the politician in him prevailed last year when he allegedly arm-twisted the LNDC to give millions in loans to two textile companies that claimed to be itching to create more jobs and help Basotho.

It is now clear that Shelile played Father Christmas with the LNDC’s money because the companies have not repaid the loans. Luqys Manufacturing was blessed with M2 million while Duty Free Incorporated hit a M10 million jackpot. Mairoon Adams, Luqys’s managing director, now says she borrowed the M2 million for a project to empower Basotho (Matlafatsa Basotho).

There is always a ‘but’ when loans are not paid. Adams claims a legal dispute between the LNDC and another person has crippled the project and her company has lost M600 000.

You would think she was some messiah whose mission to empower Basotho have been sabotaged and she didn’t plan to make even a cent out of that loan.

Mention ‘Basotho’ in the same sentence with ‘jobs’ and our government will move mountains to help you. Textile companies have mastered the drill: get cheap government funding by claiming to be helping Basotho and then plead poverty to avoid paying the loan.

The equation: Good intentions plus manufactured ‘misfortune’ equals no repayment. You don’t need to prove viability. Political muscle is enough to get the money under the guise of helping Basotho.

It is not for nothing that Adams now paints the LNDC, the company she owes, as the reason she cannot pay up. The ground is being cleared for a legal battle in which Adams will argue she cannot pay the LNDC because it caused her losses.

Adams would not peddle such a sob story if she owed a commercial bank. Adams’ company would have been liquidated sooner than she could say ‘Eva’.

But there are no consequences for not paying back the government.

No company has ever been liquidated for such a trivial issue.

Textile companies dangle jobs to spook the government into giving them loans and other concessions. When it’s time to pay, they plead poverty while insisting they are not making profits but just keeping machines running for the sake of employing Basotho.

The truth that the government will only admit after being willingly pickpocketed is that Lesotho’s textile industry is beyond redemption. It is glaringly uncompetitive, saddled by high labour costs and the country is too far from the port. Blame the proudly incompetent ABC government for jerking up the minimum wage to M2 020.

It costs more to deliver a consignment from Maseru to Durban than from China to Durban.

There are no real incentives for the sector apart from cheap rent on factory shells that most companies haven’t paid in years. Little wonder no one has any appetite to invest in Lesotho’s textiles.
So this noise about reopening firms will remain just noise until textile companies change their business models.

Ministers passionate about helping textile companies should use their own money and see how it ends. It’s their right to play Father Christmas but they must give gifts bought from their pocket.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com

Boom! Oh, booooom!

Man down! Man down! Man down!

Prof Mahao has bit the dust. After much dillydallying, Uncle Sam has thrown the Prof under the bus.

The uncouth might be tickled but Muckraker, always refined, pleads for a prayer for the Prof.

Where you do it doesn’t matter. You could be in a toilet, bar, shebeen, up to some hanky-panky or wherever. Just pray that he swallows the rough political lessons foisted on him over the past two years and accept his varnishing political fortunes.

As the postmortem begins, many will say the Prof’s biggest blunder was to trust Phapano enough to hire him as his principal secretary of Energy. Indeed, he fought tooth and nail for Phapano to get the job.

Muckraker thinks the Prof’s biggest mistake was to overestimate his political weight. He spent much of his short stint as a minister threatening to quit and pull the BAP out of government if Uncle Sam didn’t fire or transfer Phapano. He thought he mattered and at some point he did. There was a time when Uncle Sam was on the ropes as the opposition tried to spank him out of power.

But his troubles were as short as a mini brief. Once the Court of Appeal ruled that the 9th amendment, the opposition’s molamo against him, was unconstitutional, Uncle Sam was back in business.

But even as the dynamics changed drastically, the Prof persisted in portraying the BAP as the 100-pound gorilla in the coalition government. The reality was that the BAP was a little monkey wearing a gorilla costume.

When the Court of Appeal killed the 9th amendment, little-monkey-BAP was not only stripped of that gorilla costume but also splashed with water.

From thereon, the BAP was the little wet monkey perambulating the corridors of power at Uncle Sam’s mercy. Yet the Prof thought he could still threaten like a huge gorilla. He confused pity for fear.

And for a moment it seemed he would be further indulged and mollycoddled.

Uncle Sam stopped that and yanked him out of the cabinet on Tuesday.

And Prof can’t do anything about it because he has lost control of his BAP MPs who have already said he is alone. Phapano remains the principal secretary and is gloating about his victory.

Maqelepo, his deputy, can only be removed from his cabinet position by a yellow plant. He won’t follow the Prof back to the misery of being a mere backbencher.

In politics, you don’t make threats unless you mean it and have the means to execute them.

If you say you can quit you should be ready to quit and be capable of quitting in a way that has a real impact.

The Prof could do neither but kept threatening to quit.

In the end, he was fired. Now fired without quitting he is belatedly executing his threat to pull the BAP out of the government, which is pointless because the MPs, the people he thought would gallop for the exit as soon as he is fired, are not coming along. Which is to say he is getting only two chickens out of this divorce while Uncle Sam keeps cows, houses and children.

But make no mistake: Phapano will meet his match one day.

For now, he can have a spring in his step and thump his chest as the man who beat a whole Professor hands down. It has been a year-long walloping and Phapano made it look easy.

The Prof had no answer apart from threatening to quit for months until he was fired.

Yet Phapano would be fooling himself if he thinks his victory over the Prof makes him a master of political scheming.

Prof is an astute academic but politically he is a teenager.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com

Muckraker predicted that Spotty, Plat Corp’s dog, would bark again this week.

And sure enough, Spotty is howling with unprecedented vigour.

Just when we thought we’ve heard enough of the squirming of the Plat Corp gang and their Spotty, we are now subjected to the most ridiculously inane brand of fearmongering and warped logic.

Remember being told that the Plat Corp gang were innocent victims of a spiteful DCEO and the thieving talents of Lishea and her husband Tšenase?

We were sold the dud story that Plat Corp and its directors have no laundering bone in them because they are a reputable ‘conglomerate’ here to create jobs.

The unsolicited sermon being that far from turning Lesotho into a laundry machine for their money, the Plat Corp chaps are angels persecuted for just trying to do good.

It is unclear how we were expected to react to that preaching but Muckraker suspects the purveyors would have been thrilled by an ‘Amen’. After all, we are supposed to be collectively too naïve to understand highly complex matters like fraud and money laundering.

Fraud is neuroscience and money laundering is rocket science. All beyond the comprehension of our small minds.
Hooray!

The only problem is that even someone with a brain the size of the punctuation mark ending this sentence doesn’t buy that story even though it has been repeatedly barked into their ears by Spotty.

The joke is now on Spotty but it is too late to slow down. So the barking has to go on, and on.

Whether anyone is still listening or not is another matter. Master Plat Corp has ordered proper barking and their wish should be granted.

And so again, without asking, we are now being told that Lesotho should tread carefully to avoid biting the hand that feeds it. The reasoning goes something like this.

Some of those in the Plat Corp gang are Britons and Americans. America is Lesotho’s largest donor.

Therefore, Lesotho should treat the Americans nicely because America doesn’t tolerate its citizens being harassed. You are right if you think that smacks of desperation.

That is how high the stakes are now raised in this criminal case. Wanting someone to answer fraud and money laundering charges has now been elevated into a potential diplomatic fuss that could lead to a withdrawal of aid. A warrant of arrest is now harassment. You cannot make up this nonsense because it is being barked at the market for all to hear.

So how did we get to these deafening screams over the warrants?

The warrants would not have been issued if Plat Corp bosses had come to Lesotho as their lawyer had promised the court. Now that they haven’t, we are being told that they are not on the run because they were never here in the first place.

That’s some crippled logic but it’s okay because we understand the insanity and insanity of what they are saying: You cannot be a fugitive if you have never been to a police station, even when the police are looking for you.

Don’t laugh because this is a legal argument cooked by some senior lawyers.

Their other argument is still bizarre but equally comical.

They are saying they cannot be said to be on the run because they have been cooperating with the DCEO to come to Lesotho. Follow this one carefully because it takes the cake.

They are saying they have always been willing to come here but just wanted the DCEO to assure them that they would not be detained and to clarify how much bail money they should bring because they are foreigners.

This ‘negotiation’ over the bail terms is incomplete because the DCEO did not respond, they say.

Which is to say they want to come but they will not come because the terms of their coming are not agreed on.

That is the holy grail of their fight against the warrants: I am not a fugitive but just keeping my distance because the institution that wants to arrest me hasn’t agreed to my special conditions for my arrest.

You read that right: A suspected thief of cattle is wanted by the police but says he will not be surrendering himself until the police promise to serve him his special meal of papa ka likahare, a quick massage, a high five and some motoho for dessert. Why?

Well, because the suspect is of a special clan and should not be treated like a common thief or the other riffraff who is arrested, appear in court and apply for bail.

Nka! Ichuuuuuuuuuuu!

muckraker.post@gmail.com