Lesotho’s leaders play at politics, civil servants sit disconsolate in bars and a blanket of despondency
AT Sparrows and at the Lancers Inn, two popular downtown bars where civil servants and the sundry elite of Maseru gather every evening to down beer and gossip, they talk of Lesotho as a land of “political wonders”. They joke about what they call “a political circus”, and lament that they are surely the laughing stock of the world.
The circus in question is that the prime minister and leader of the ruling Basutoland Congress Party (BCP), Dr Ntsu Mokhehle, crossed the floor with 40 members of Parliament to form a new political party, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). That left the BCP with only 23 members of Parliament, forcing it to be the official opposition.
Since the Parliament of Lesotho is composed of 65 members, Mokhehle still commands the majority and remains the prime minister. It is business as usual with the same Cabinet ministers. “There is no change of government,” he insists, “only a realignment of political forces.”
“His name, Ntsu, means Eagle,” says one senior civil servant at Sparrows. “But he should have been named Fox, for he has out- foxed and out-manoeuvred his own party.”
A debate ensues among the watering-hole regulars: is this a coup or not? Those who support the BCP say it is indeed a coup.
“A coup of a special kind,” says one. “Ntsu has perfected political science.”
It is not clear to me what he means by this. But everyone seems to agree that indeed that is what Mokhehle has done. There is consensus that his maverick action has no precedent in any political science textbook.
Even in the bar the rift that exists within the ruling party at a national level manifests itself. The BCP supporters are divided into two groups that seem to harbour a lot of bitterness towards each other. They argue among themselves about the implications of Mokhehle’s action, while the Basotho National Party (BNP) supporters relish the broedertwis, which they hope will bring them into power in 1998 when the next elections are held. In the last election, they did not win a single seat.
Soon after the BCP won all the seats in the 1993 elections – after 20 years of what many refer to as the “despotic regime” of the BNP and seven years of military rule – two tendencies emerged within the party. One was known as the Pressure Group. It was composed of “progressives”, and was led by the deputy president of the party, Molapo Qhobela, and party chairman, Tseliso Makhakhe. The other group, led by Ntsu Mokhehle and his brother Shakhane, was known as Majelathoko (conservatives).
The division became wider when Mokhehle sidelined Qhobela and chose Selometsi Baholo as the deputy prime minister. Qhobela was further left out of the management committee of the national executive. That angered his followers.
Then one court case followed another, with the Pressure Group trying to remove Mokhehle from the leadership of the party, until finally the High Court of Lesotho ruled that his term of office had expired anyway, and that the BCP should call an annual general meeting on July 28 to elect a new national executive. When Mokhehle broke ranks with the BCP he was its interim leader, pending the outcome of the general meeting next month.
“That is why the man formed his own party,” says our senior civil servant. “He realised that he didn’t stand a chance of being elected back into the leadership of the BCP. He was therefore going to lose the premiership to either Qhobela or Makhakhe. You see why I say he’s as wily as a fox?”
Indeed, the other watering-hole regulars agree, this was a cunning move to hold on to power. Whereas in Parliament he claims that he has formed a new party, which was duly registered at the Law Office, in the villages he denies that the LCD is a new party. His lieutenants are holding meetings in the countryside, informing gullible villagers that he has merely changed the pre-colonial name of the Basutoland Congress Party to Lesotho Congress for Democracy.
He is quoted as saying in one of the local weeklies, “This is not the first time that the BCP has changed its name. It was first called the Basutoland African Congress when it was founded in 1952. It changed to BCP in the late 1950s. Now that we have achieved our liberation and we are in a democratic era, it is only right that the party should have a name that reflects the times.”
The proof is in the flag. LCD’s flag has the same colours as the BCP’s, albeit in a different order. A silhouette of an eagle, to symbolise Ntsu, has been added.
“So this is his personal party,” says our civil servant, gulping more beer. “The man has delusions of grandeur. We see in him the same megalomania that characterised African despots of the post-independence era.”
But others disagree. It is not so much megalomania as it is political strategy. The BCP was personified by Ntsu Mokhehle. Many villagers cannot separate the two. A flag of this nature is the most eloquent symbol to convince the BCP-supporting peasants that the new LCD is, in fact, Ntsu’s party.
Well, perhaps it is both megalomania and political strategy.
Clearly the watering-hole regulars, the majority of whom are civil servants and university academics, are not happy with the status quo. So what do they plan to do about it? Will they join the stayaways and demonstrations that the BCP leaders are organising? Did they participate in the demonstrations outside the royal palace to demand that King Letsie III dissolve the government?
“You must be crazy if you think we care,” says our senior civil servant, who turns out to be a principal secretary (the equivalent of a director general in South Africa) in one of the ministries.
“The country has gone to the dogs already,” he says. “As long as I get my salary at the end of the month …”
“And our 10%,” adds an academic. The rest of the pub regulars laugh.
The 10% that causes so much mirth is the bribe that senior civil servants are reputed to demand from construction companies and suppliers of various goods and services to the government before they can be given contracts.
Often tendering procedures are bypassed when a contractor has paid 10% of the value of the contract to a principal secretary of a ministry or a director of a government department or parastatal. There are very wealthy people in Maseru who are derisively known as “Mr Ten Percent”. Indeed it has been said that the shortest route to being a millionaire in Lesotho is to join the civil service.
People talk of a blanket of despondency that covers the whole country. “There is no creativity in this country,” says our academic. “Our lives are empty. We live only for the day. That is why you see these civil service chaps spending all their lives in the pubs. They are here from the time they leave work at 4.30 – sometimes much earlier – until closing time at midnight.”
They talk of the brain drain. Many professionals are leaving for South Africa. It is the easiest thing to get an identity document in South Africa. Many Basotho people have relatives there anyway.
“Oh, yes,” says the principal secretary, “our people occupy top positions both in the private sector and in government in South Africa. We continue to build that country in the same way that we built it over the decades with our sweat and blood in your mines, farms and factory. Now we give you engineers and bankers whom you never had among your black citizens because of apartheid.”
It seems to me there is no commitment to make the country work. And yet there was so much hope that things would change for the better when the BCP came to power in 1993. There was so much hope that the corruption that started in the days of the BNP government soon after independence in 1966 would come to an end. Yet, by the admission of the civil servants themselves, corruption continues unabated. What went wrong?
Candi Ramainoane, editor of the popular weekly, MoAfrika, says: “Mokhehle went wrong because he did not have a programme of action based on his party manifesto that helped him win the election. He failed to pass legislation on reconciliation in order to bring the Basotho together who – although there is no problem of ethnicity here – were divided along the lines of Catholics and Protestants, chiefs and commoners, civilians and the military, BCP and BNP supporters. Instead the government became very arrogant in Parliament and at public rallies.”
Mokhehle also failed to root out corrupt officials of the previous governments, and to integrate his former guerrilla army, the Lesotho Liberation Army, into the armed forces of the land. The reason for this, according to some of the watering-hole regulars, was that he did not trust his own people. He was aware already that they were tired of his leadership, and would sooner overthrow him. Therefore he wanted them as distant from him as possible.
“Mokhehle’s government failed to deliver!” declares our principal secretary, without even a hint in his voice that the failure of the government “to deliver” is, in fact, his failure as a senior official of the government.
Mokhehle’s supporters, on the other hand, claim that he failed to deliver because his government was continuously destabilised by the military and the police who created many strikes and mutinies.
The biggest fear now is that Mokhehle is going to clamp down on the motley newspapers sold in the streets, at the busstops, and in front of Maseru Cafe. Some of these – in all their ragtag glory, with misspellings and bad grammar in every paragraph – are published by various political parties. Others are independent.
Candi Ramainoane has already experienced the wrath of the government. “They will not tolerate independent thought,” he says.
Mokhehle’s cabinet has issued a directive to all government ministries and parastatals – the main source of advertising revenue for all independent media since the country has a weak industrial base – not to advertise in his well-written and better-typeset MoAfrika.
His offices have been attacked on a few occasions, and he has been publicly threatened on Radio Lesotho by a Cabinet minister.
Our watering-hole civil servants may take the developments in their country nonchalantly, but the politicians are not taking things lying down. They vow that there will be no stability in the country until Mokhehle is kicked out.
Dr Khauhelo Raditapole, a former minister who resigned from the Cabinet in protest against the dismissal of Makhakhe and Qhobela from the Cabinet, says, “We are not accepting the status quo that we are now the opposition. We are not against the formation of a new party, since it is their democratic right to do so. But the new party must not usurp the mandate that has been given to the BCP to lead the country up to the next election. What Ntate Ntsu has done is immoral and unethical.”
Hence the demonstrations and stayaways. Many have already happened. More will come. They promise to make the country ungovernable. And the military vows that it will remain neutral since it accepts any lawful government.
The power struggle continues. In the meantime, life goes on in Maseru, at its own unhurried pace: Drivers drive on the wrong side of the road in any direction they like, and park in the middle of the road whenever they feel like it.
A journalist receives his 1988 Best Sports Journalist Award in June 1997 – “I am surprised it took so long to announce the nomination,” he is quoted as saying in one of the newspapers.
Radio Lesotho announces that Mokhehle was given a unanimous vote of confidence in Parliament, with 40 members voting for him, and 23 for the BCP. It is not clear whether Radio Lesotho is trying to manipulate information or doesn’t know the meaning of “unanimous”.
Deep potholes swallow cars on the main street, and dozing secretaries and receptionists dish out rudeness and general bad attitude to clients who have the gall to demand service.
While the leaders play their political games of power, economic development stalls, and Lesotho remains the poorest country on the sub-continent.