Howard Barrell
Over a Barrel
When good intentions land you belt- high in excrement with nothing firm underfoot, it is probably best to delay wondering what persuaded you to walk into it.
Self-flaggelation can come later. Now is the time to plan a way out – so that you emerge as dry as possible, preferably alive and with your dignity of purpose intact.
That is the challenge of Lesotho right now. South Africa has to find a way to get its troops out quickly and, simultaneously, to help bring enduring democratic stability to this tiny, captive neighbour. Indeed, such is the fury that Lesotho citizens now evidently feel against South Africa, it may be that stability can return to that country only once our soldiers have withdrawn.
The many other questions – about whether there was a credible alternative to the military incursion into Lesotho last Tuesday; about the quality of intelligence available to South African troops involved; about why there was no preparatory political propaganda to assure Lesotho citizens of our soldiers’ benign intentions; about why South Africa sent in a military force less than a third of the size of the Lesotho Defence Force and smaller even than the mutinous section of it; about the quality of the political control of the intervention; and about how our president, deputy president and minister of foreign affairs saw fit to remain outside the country when the incursion occurred – these are all on the agenda for later.
No doubt we will all have a lot more to say on these things. For, if the first casualty of war is truth and the second is the soldier or civilian who is wounded, then the third is probably modesty. It is amazing how quickly an armed conflict turns everyone into a military expert.
Now, however, we need to focus our thoughts on getting out of the shit. How do we manage flight with honour? Honour, in this case, means South Africa must continue to carry the responsibility for Lesotho it assumed last Tuesday – until it can transfer it into credible and dependable hands.
The clearly expressed feelings of many Lesotho citizens suggest that, in any shape or form, the Southern African Development Community (SADC)will not win their confidence. They see the SADC, incarnated as South Africa, as a reckless invader partial to the ruling party.
We may therefore have to conclude that there is little chance that the SADC will find any real acceptance as an honest broker between the warring political parties. There may be even less chance that it will be able to attract down from the hills and into negotiations the hundreds of heavily armed Lesotho soldiers who may already have developed ideas of waging some sort of guerilla campaign. There is every chance that the SADC will fail the credibility test.
Dependability, the second criterion, excludes the usually inept Organisation of African Unity and, probably, also the United Nations. The United States – if it could be bothered – should also stay out of Lesotho. Its solutions to others’ problems seldom travel well.
We should, therefore, look elsewhere for a safe pair of hands. Two suggestions, which would be quite easy to combine, commend themselves.
One promising potential peace broker is the Commonwealth. Many of its member states are small, young and poor enough to have real and evident sympathy with Lesotho’s plight. All are familiar with the fragility of post-independence political institutions. And the Commonwealth has achieved a relatively high success rate in its mediation and peace-keeping operations.
Moreover, all those most intimately involved in the Lesotho crisis are Commonwealth members. Lesotho is. So, too, are the three countries charged with guaranteeing democracy there under a 1994 agreement – Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In fact, all but a couple of members of the SADC also belong to it. This overlap could be exploited to persuade the Commonwealth to start a confidence-building programme among Lesotho’s antagonists and to help restore stability in that country.
A second potential mediator is the Roman Catholic Church. Almost all Lesotho citizens are members of it, and it carries great moral authority. If some leading local church leaders are seen as partisan, their brothers in the South African Catholic Bishops’ Conference could probably be persuaded to help moderate conflict.
There is also a third institution, whose role South Africa may care to reassess. It is the Lesotho monarchy. South African officials have been briefing journalists against King Letsie III ever since the invasion began, accusing him of siding with and hiding the rebels in return for promises from the opposition parties that they would increase his constitutional powers if they came into government.
South Africa should cease undermining the king. He could still be persuaded to play an important unifying role as a peace process gathered pace.
And finally, on the question of honour, South Africa would probably have to be willing to contribute money – below a stated maximum – towards the upkeep of a Commonwealth force and the reconstruction of Maseru, Lesotho’s capital. If you or I are horrified at the prospect of this, we would do well to ask ourselves what the costs could be of the alternative: a long and indecisive military campaign in Lesotho.
Now to the question of flight. Withdrawal of South African forces before these or similar arrangements are in place, is likely only to compound our own difficulties and those of Lesotho’s people. If South African forces were to remain there, this could be just as disastrous.
What is clear is that South Africa broke the three classic rules the gurus of strategy usually impose on foreign military interventions. Our incursion into Lesotho did not have a specific, tightly defined political objective. We may have had the requisite political will for the intervention, but our political leaders failed to ensure that the units sent in had all the necessary means, and more, to do the job at hand. And we did not have a clear exit strategy; instead, there is a very real danger we could now get bogged down in Lesotho.
Getting out of this mess requires boldness and clear decisions. If government leaders now equivocate and delay, or whine about an absence of alternatives (which it is their business to create), they owe it to us to admit incompetence and to leave office. Military experts or not, our Constitution allows us to enforce our own judgment on that.