MASERU

POLICE Commissioner Borotho Matsoso has recalled 45 suspended officers after their criminal cases remained stuck in the courts for years.

Commissioner Matsoso said some of the officers have been on suspension for between “five and eight years” but have continued to earn salaries and benefits.

Matsoso said the government paid nearly M2 million to the officers while waiting for their cases to be finalised. He said the recalls are meant to reduce “the erosion of public funds”.

“So, the government was losing big,” he said.

He however said officers facing rape charges have not been recalled.

“The people involved in rape are difficult to convert.”

Among the 45 recalled officers are murder suspects.

Commissioner Matsoso said that the decision was based on a thorough assessment of the circumstances under which each officer found themselves accused of murder.

“Some might have carelessly handled the guns and caused the deaths.”

He was however quick to point out that the recalls “do not mean that these police officers are off the hook as investigations are still continuing”.

He said some of the investigations have dragged on for years.

The delays in the police officers’ criminal cases is symptomatic of the huge backlog that has choked Lesotho’s courts for more than a decade. Some suspects have been on trial for years.

In some instances, the prosecution has been forced to drop cases after witnesses either died or disappeared.

Cases of suspects being intimidated or eliminated are not uncommon. Some suspects have also jumped bail or died.

The judiciary has blamed the backlog on the lack of judges and magistrates.

In some cases, defence lawyers and prosecutors have been accused of incompetence or deliberately frustrating cases.

The police too have been accused of rushing to bring suspects to court before completing investigations, forcing the prosecution to keep requesting postponements.

Majara Molupe

MASERU

LEBOHANG* has two jobs, a junior government job by day and a sex work by night.

Instead of standing on street corners and alleys like other sex workers, Lebohang is called by her clients for appointments at their homes and lodges.

“I have two phones, the one for friends and family and the other for my clients,” she tells thepost as she sips coffee at an upmarket restaurant in Maseru.

After weeks of coaxing, Lebohang has reluctantly agreed to meet thepost’s reporter after work on a Friday. She keeps glancing at her phone during the interview.

“I am sorry, I am expecting a call,” she says.

And sure enough, the phone rings. A few moments later her client disembarks from a cab and she waves a neatly manicured hand, inviting him to her table.

“He’s Ghanaian,” she whispers as she signals this journalist to go away. The interview abruptly ends.

When we meet over the weekend she warns us to quickly get on with the questions because one of her clients might call anytime.

Weekends are her busiest time, she says.

She tells thepost that she is into sex work to supplement her salary, but she refuses to say how much it is.

“One’s salary is their secret.”

The single mother of two boys of different fathers, says she wants to keep her children “in schools that matter” hence she cannot quit sex work until they are through to university.

She says she started sex work 17 years ago, first working along Kingsway Street at night.

As she got experienced she started “doing it the more professional way”, which is getting her clients to call her for appointments at their houses or a lodge.

“I decided to join prostitution in January 2007 when my landlord threatened to kick me out of my rented two-roomed house,” she says.

“I was pregnant with my first child at that time and the father had dumped me to marry another woman.”

The child’s father later migrated to South Africa and never returned, leaving her to fend for the boy.

“I went to the street pregnant and managed to get many clients and within no time I was able to pay rent and buy food.”

“I never looked back and I have no regrets.”

She worked on the streets until 2012 when one of her clients, a prominent politician, got her a junior position in the government.

“I couldn’t get a high-paying job because I don’t have university education.”

“My job is permanent and pensionable but the salary is so low that I can’t build any bright future for my children with it,” she says.

Lebohang says she has not experienced many setbacks in sex work “because from the onset I recruited some policemen to deal with difficult clients”.

She says ever since she joined the government her business is more profitable because she has managed it better than when she was working on the streets.

“I am able to take care of my body and I maintain my good looks, which makes me more attractive to the kind of clients I’m after.”

Asked if she does not encounter violent clients or rapists who refuse to pay for services, she says “no, that’s for low-class prostitutes from the streets, where I was once”.

“My clients know that I’m not very desperate. People who see me with them think I’m their girlfriend while actually I’m at work.”

She says her target is foreign men and middle-class locals “who understand that I’m in business”. She prides herself in “not sleeping with riffraff”.

Lebohang says on good weeks she makes M5 000 per week, charging between M500 and M1 000 a night, depending on the client’s generosity.

thepost spent two days with a 35-year-old primary school teacher north of Maseru who also sells sex “in a desperate attempt to stay afloat in economic hardships”.

She holds a Diploma in Primary Education from the Lesotho College of Education and earns about M9 000 from her teaching job.

“But it is not enough to cover my financial needs,” she says.

The mother of three says what makes things tougher for her is that her husband works in the textile factory where he earns very little.

“I am the only one in a family of seven children who went to school and works.”

“My family is expecting me to assist them with some money.”

Similarly, she says, her in-laws are also expecting money from them “because they also depend on my husband”.

Unlike Lebohang, she is not choosy about her clients. She says her first clients were street vendors.

“What is the difference with their money because it has the same value as any other money?” she says.

“I do not mind what people are saying about me. They have to mind their own business.”

“As long as we engage in safe sex, I do not have any problem.”

Her husband does not know of her side job.

“He doesn’t ask questions when I offer him food on the table.”

She says as time went by she garnered many other clients who gave her better money than the street vendors.

But what really pushed her into sex work, she reveals, are multiple debts she has with various loan sharks in the city.

“The deductions going to the loan sharks would leave me with nothing,” she says. “I am drowning in debt.”

Another sex worker, working as a marketer for a local company, says she is earning a low salary and cannot afford all her needs.

“We have to be well presented since we are the face of the company we work for,” the marketer says.

She says women, unlike men, are fond of fancy clothes that are beyond their means.

“We are not in prostitution because of sexual desire or seeking sexual satisfaction,” she says.

“We simply want these men to give us money after sex so that we can plug some holes in our finances.”

“The economy is rough. It’s bad,” she says.

The high cost of living is pushing women into sex work in various ways, whether on the street, work premises or online.

Lately, there has been a tendency of women who post their contacts on social media telling men that they are available.

Lepheana Mosooane, the Executive Director of Key Affected Population Alliance of Lesotho (KAPAL), says the reasons that drive women and girls onto the streets are the same as those that drive the working women.

Mosooane is quick to mention that they are “not working with prostitutes but sex workers”.

He says they work with females aged 18 years and above where they advise them to access health services.

“We assist them to report any violence against them,” Mosooane says.

Mosooane says they also assist them with financial literacy to manage their earnings from sex work.

KAPAL is an organisation that works to improve the lives of key populations by addressing the negative societal attitudes and perceptions that lead to the violation of their legal, medical and social rights.

It operates only in Maseru.

*Some names have been changed.

Majara Molupe & Caswell Tlali

MASERU- A High Court judge has ordered the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) and communities around the Mohale Dam to agree on the modalities of compensation over their land that was taken over 20 years ago.

The LHDA conceded before Justice Molefi Makara last Thursday that it has not paid the communities the expected compensation.

The communities’ lawyer, Advocate Borenahabokhethe Sekonyela, said they are yet to agree on how the communities will be paid their monies “in a way that will be fair and transparent”.

At least 11 cooperative societies had dragged the LHDA to court accusing it of diverting their compensation funds to development projects without their consent.

The villagers accused the LHDA of “unlawful misuse of communal compensation money for development”.

In a founding affidavit, Chief Koporal Motanyane of Ha-Joele, told Justice Makara that the LHDA “unlawfully diverted (the compensation money) by using it for so-called development purposes such as installing electricity and water pipe system”.

Chief Motanyane said their livestock do not “graze on electricity and drink water from such pipe systems”.

He said the LHDA used their money to pay contractors of its own choice without their participation.

The contractors, he said, were paid “very exorbitant amounts for installation of such electricity and water systems which are not known to applicants”.

“In some cases the (LHDA is) still threatening to further unlawfully divert the said money earmarked for communal compensation of the applicants by using it to pay (its) own contractors for so called development,” Chief Motanyane said.

He said the LHDA has not compensated them individually and collectively for their lost grazing land, medicinal plants, and other life amenities.

Chief Motanyane said in 2012 the LHDA, with the assistance of the Commissioner of Cooperatives, invited the communities of Mohale catchment area for meetings at Christ the King High School in Roma where they were “directed to form cooperative” societies.

The LHDA, the chief said, promised that it “would pay such communities compensation for their communal resources as affected communities through such cooperatives”.

“Many other villages in the Mohale catchment area also formed and registered similar cooperatives as applicants,” Chief Motanyane said.

“Many have also not been paid any monies by the (LHDA) despite demands just like the applicants, hence this court application,” he said.

“Some have even died before receiving their compensation.”

Chief Motanyane said they were forced to form cooperatives “for development instead of receiving compensation for the benefit of their individual members as required by law”.

He said the LHDA’s decision to force them to register cooperative societies for development was prejudicial to them and contrary to the cooperatives law.

He complained that individual members of the cooperatives were not allotted to have a share capital contributed into the accounts of the cooperatives.

Secondly, he said, members were denied the right to reap dividends from the cooperatives in terms of the law.

Thirdly, he said, the members were denied the right to borrow from the cooperatives in order to improve the lives of their families, leaving them destitute.

Chief Motanyane said by forcing them to form village development cooperatives “completely negates the voluntary nature of cooperatives and their rights to freedom of choice and association with whatever cooperative of their choice, which may not even be in their village”.

He said some members, some of whom are now dead, were denied the right to have their own heirs nominated in the development cooperatives and could not enjoy their full rights in terms of the cooperatives law.

“As if that is not enough, the (LHDA) has been threatening to sue some of the applicants….for lawfully disbursing funds to improve the livelihoods of their members,” he said.

The chief said the LHDA arbitrarily denied them projects of their choice.

Tente Tente, the LHDA boss, told the court in an affidavit that the LHDA used to compensate the affected communities by providing fodder for their livestock.

“This endeavour was met with a lot of challenges which prompted the LHDA to revise its compensation strategy,” Tente said.

The new strategy, he said, was annual cash payments to the affected communities through their legal entities represented by their appointed leaders.

“It needs to be mentioned that these communal payments are meant to be used for the development of the affected communities,” he said.

He said the communities were not forced to form cooperative societies but were advised “to register legal entities of their own choice for purposes of giving effect to the communal compensation”.

He said around 2003 the LHDA started paying annuities to the bank accounts of their registered legal entities until 2013 when it was “forced to halt direct payments of annuities to the legal entities”.

“Between 2003 and 2013, the legal entities were receiving outstanding communal compensation funds or annuities directly from the LHDA,” he said.

The reasons to halt this, he said, were that “committee members siphoned the funds meant for communal benefit”.

“As a result, some of the projects that were embarked upon by the affected communities could not be sustained due to malfeasance by the committee members,” he said.

He said the committees “were unable to account for the use of the disbursed funds for various reasons that included deliberate embezzlement of the funds”.

Staff Reporter