‘Bid to join government rattles ABC’
Staff Reporter
MASERU – A “secret” decision by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the former ruling All Basotho Convention (ABC) threatens to rattle the former ruling party after it publishes a resolution to unconditionally support the tabling of the National Reforms Ombudsman Bills in Parliament.
This, ABC has done without publicising its decision to join the Government uninvited. While NEC insiders say the decision has mysteriously remained under wraps despite being passed in a highly charged meeting, the unconditional support for reforms has made waves on social media and popular radio talk shows.
Public Eye got insider information from a source within the higher echelons of the party who declined to be identified for fear he would be targeted.
“The decision to join government without any invitation from the ruling parties was taken at a rushed meeting of July 16, 2024, which was chaired by the deputy leader after the leader tendered a last-minute apology.
“The decision was passed by a majority of six to three in a meeting that was not fit to proceed without the quorum of 11 and not 10, out of 23 members. The 23 comprise 10 national office bearers, the 10 district representatives, two league representatives, plus one for the provinces. The leader and all the 10 district representatives and one for the provinces did not attend.
“They are not publishing the NEC majority decision to join government because they are ashamed of it. Instead, they published the non-existent decision to support the reforms unconditionally as a proxy, instead of the proper decision to voluntarily join government without any invitation,” said the member who attended the meeting.
While some of the sources were unwilling to come out in the open, Youth League chairman in the NEC, Keketso Sephohle, explicitly confirmed to Public Eye that the meeting indeed took place and expressed his reservations, advising such discussion be postponed.
He added that, in his view, it was premature for the party, which was still developing instruments of governance, to immediately consider joining the current government, thereby repeating mistakes of the past.
On Wednesday, July 31, 2024, the PRO of the ABC, Mphonyane Lebesa, flanked by the youth league secretary, read to a media briefing of the statement announcing ABC’s decision to support the tabling of the reform bills, which the party and the opposition bloc of parties in Parliament had hitherto insisted should proceed only when the government shows genuine commitment to the process.
What the opposition mainly wants is for the government to desist from making political appointments to senior public service offices and reining in the security cluster chiefs who jointly threatened MPs in a public statement when they tabled a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister last October.
ABC’s ‘baby’
The statement provided an elaborate history of the Reforms, boasting that they proceeded in earnest only under the party’s government of 2017 and were completed under its second government of 2020 under the same Parliament; therefore, the party had the prime responsibility to protect the Reforms as its “baby.”
However, ABC leaders stopped short of making any reference to the sensitive issue of the necessary conditions that must prevail for a conducive prosecution of the process.
In an interview on radio the following day, ABC spokesperson Mphonyane Lebesa was asked if the former ruling party had since abandoned the opposition bloc’s position regarding the conditions required for the reforms to proceed.
He responded that these conditions could be discussed while the process went ahead. When a listener called in and repeated the question, Lebesa said the party had not said it had dropped them.
Security cluster threats
Last month, the leader of the Basotho National Party (BNP), Machesetsa Mofomobe, protested in Parliament against the utterances of the commander of the LDF in his address to a military parade, allegedly threatening MPs who had posited a question in the House about the number of the command-grade army officers who were on post-retirement contracts of service.
Last Friday he also protested on the floor against the deputy commander in a speech to an army awards ceremony, allegedly threatening judges who entertained cases of victims of the army anti-crime expeditions into the villages.
During the same ceremony Prime Minister Sam Matekane instructed the forces to repeat in the villages what they had demonstrated in the field while on tour of duty in Mozambique.
Mofomobe and other opposition leaders insist such utterances do not bode well for the execution of the reforms and were the very acts that had necessitated the call for reform of the security sector.
‘We can’t be left behind’
ABC party leader Nkaku Kabi told People’s Choice FM listeners on Monday this week that the party had the right to decide on an independent standpoint despite the opposition bloc’s common position.
He also took the opportunity to deny what he called rife noises in the air that his party was signalling that it was going to join government, saying in any case the government was still going to pass those reforms, which needed a simple majority because they had the numbers.
“We want to be counted as having been there too when it happened. After all, the reforms are not the property of government or opposition; they belong to the Basotho, and the Basotho want them completed.”
Political economist, Nthakeng Pheello Selinyane told Public Eye that this move smacked of the party endearing itself to the government, as it omitted glaring government anti-Reforms actions like the alleged attempt to order the DPP to throttle prosecution of the former commander Tlali Kamoli and former Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing (as alleged in the DPP affidavit fending off her impeachment) in a number of cases.
These involved, among others, the nocturnal besieging of the first ABC leader and prime minister, Thomas Thabane, in a night raid in August 2014, as recounted at the Phumaphi Commission.
Pork barrel politics
“It is tragic. It is as though they are saying Thabane should have been finished off once and for all in that fateful night,” says Selinyane.
“This is typical pork barrel politics where personal gratification overrides the interests and well-being of rank and file members, including the most sacred right to life in the face of the ravages of LDF lawlessness, which the prime minister was refuelling even only a day before Mr. Lebesa’s press conference, and about which it maintains a silence of complicity and approval.
“The ABC ruled for another two years and 10 months after the completion of the national consultations and deliberations report stating what citizens wished the administration of the country to look like, and the party did literally nothing about any item therein, even those that needed no laws but simple administrative action.
“Therefore, it cannot suddenly claim extraordinary parental love for these reforms as the sole reason for breaking ranks with its opposition allies on matters of principle and seeking the warmth of the armpit of government under the pretext of right to own opinion,” he added.
Some NEC members are, however, adamant that the party only resolved to mediate the differences between the government and opposition for acceleration of the reforms, not to abandon collective opposition demands, and there was no resolution to release a public statement that what should have been announced was the decision to voluntarily join government.
“We do not want to be seen as divided in public, but that statement was never sanctioned. Why are they shy to announce the decision to join government, and why are they even denying it in public?” said another who cannot be named, saying even the critical language of the assessment of the party options was censured as malicious and disrespectful in the meeting.
The “they” is said to refer to the leader, the national chairman and former minister Kemiso Mosenene, Lebesa, and his deputy Tšeliso Lerata, who has also been appearing in radio interviews selling the statement.
Mosenene is said to be the chief of operations to consummate the project of joining government, even promising the unconvinced Committee members specific government job portfolios, like membership in statutory commissions, as though he is already holding the reins of power.
Fissures in cash-strapped party
On the other hand, youth league chairman Sephohle is reported to have expressed a different conviction but voted according to what he called his league’s instruction to support, while the women’s league chair, ‘Makelebeletsoe Sello and Secretary of Minutes Lekonehelo Mothala joined the fray.
The Secretary-General Thebe Mokoatle and his deputy Tšolo Khechane and Mosenene’s deputy Ishmael Mpana voted to oppose, while deputy leader Samonyane Ntsekele in the chair had to be hauled out of his hole of resistance by Mosenene, who promised to make him a commissioner but still did not cast a vote on the day.
While the divisive decision might rattle the RFP ranks where jogging for positions on the cabinet deck has been rampant—with rumours of a pending expansion of the cabinet to appease the various warring factions—it might also project the ABC as desperate for the proverbial breadcrumbs from the rich man’s table.
ABC insiders say apparent desperation for resources is the central plank, if not the sole pillar, of the argument by those who advocate for joining government.
The party recently issued a public appeal for well-wishers to contribute to its upkeep through mobile phone money transfer donations.
Those in support of joining the government cite the dire state of the party’s finances for payment of rent and maintenance of administrative staff and routine provisions. They also hold out what they call a palpable prospect of the party being unable to hold mere conferences, let alone mount a viable campaign for the 2027 elections.
In the past, the party has had busloads of supporters scooping all grades of well-paid public jobs in its name, with weighty rates of monthly dues prescribed by the party in return for the favour, but the party was unable to collect such dues as the beneficiaries defied the party leadership structures.
Testing the waters
Last week the party’s former chairperson, former minister Chalane “Tsoapos” Phori, issued what was widely viewed as a water-testing video, supposedly reminding the party’s WhatsApp groups that the meeting of the NEC with constituency officers (chairpersons, secretaries, and treasurers) one week after the October 2022 general elections resolved that the party should join the already formed government of RFP, AD, and MEC, but that decision was inexplicably not implemented at the time, yet it remained unchanged.
Some applauded him, while others retorted that the belated decision was rebuffed by the RFP, whose bigwigs went on to belittle the party on social media.
The sceptics also say the government has shown an abiding contempt for ABC, and its appalling record of unclean, discriminatory, and unethical governance didn’t hold a promise of reviving the fortunes of the ABC if it joined it in government.
Incidentally, while still a member of the NEC late last year, Phori made a similar video that ruffled feathers within the party while the party was still in the thick of the plot to collapse the hardly-year-old government with other opposition parties.
Red herring
This would seem to have been meant to prepare the unsuspecting members for an unforeseen twist of events where the ABC would have abruptly left the fold of opposition well before the shock departure of the BAP, which drew widespread tongue-lashing among critical populations of conversation about public affairs.
Shortly thereafter, the ABC leader Kabi gave a series of radio interviews, declaring that he had rejected the latest advances from the Prime Minister Matekane to take up his invitation since that would only bring him prestige and personal perks without benefiting his party.
Insiders close to these developments, however, have since revealed that Kabi and company had in fact accepted the offer, but the “contemptuous” RFP top honchos returned a much less appealing and vastly toned down offer when they wrote back giving a confirmation of arrangements.
In some circles that consider themselves the nerve centre of serious conversations about the party’s future, a marriage to the RFP is considered suicidal given that it has putatively committed gross errors of policy and brazen contempt for its partners, including apparently fanning or assisting in their internal fractious standoffs.
Others feel that the DC cannot be rewarded with premiership by partnering with it, holding the prospect of its leader if a vote of no confidence succeeds, whereas it supported the ABC’s rebellious prime minister Moeketsi Majoro when he defied party directives, refused to be recalled, and overcame a vote of no confidence, forcing the party to declare that it was leaving government.
Yet others view that as a weakness of the party itself, which was taken advantage of not only by the DC but also by the BNP, which before and after that has always been with ABC but deserted it in the hour of greatest need.
The intermittent wildcat return to the October 2022 resolution is seen by others as compromising the party to its potential abusers by clinging to a point in history whose rationale has since been overtaken by events that, among others, have gravely impaired the prospect of mutual respect between the parties and appeal of the main ruling party to morally upright and ethical citizens and administrators of national affairs.
Outright lie
ABC insists talk of divisions in the higher echelons of the party are all lies.
In an interview with Public Eye yesterday, ABC spokesperson Lebesa dismissed as an outright lie that the party’s NEC is divided over the issue.
He said a few days back they reached an agreement, which is on record from the minutes of the meeting, that the issue of reforms is a national issue that needs to be discussed with other parties.
“As the party, we have walked this journey of reforms since 2017. It is also a lie that has been going around stating that Members of Parliament are divided, as some have attended reform workshops while others said they will not. This is just people who are adding confusion to the party. What we have decided is to see to it that the issue of reforms is solved accordingly.
“We are working together as the opposition on this issue. What people would want to see is the ABC divided or being the party it used to be in the past, but as the committee, we resolved that we would change our ways and acknowledge the mistakes we made in the past. This is just people who want to stir confusion, and they were not aware that ABC would change their ways,” he said.
