LAST SA TROOPS LEAVE LESOTHO

THE last of some 250 South African and Botswana soldiers stationed in Lesotho for a year to help rebuild the country’s fractured army left the country on Tuesday. The military instructors — known as the Southern African Development Community Training Team in Lesotho — started withdrawing from Lesotho at the weekend. They were sent to the country in May last year when some 2000 troops from South Africa and Botswana withdrew after quelling massive political unrest in September 1998 focussed on opposition claims that the May general election was rigged in favour of the government.