A soldier dies with strapped boots
NTHAKENG PHEELLO SELINYANE
This is a proud salutation said at funeral of men under rifles who fell on the battlefront facing the enemy fire for God, king, and country; who didn’t flee from battle, to be found tunicless and barefoot among women and children hoeing the fields far from the gruesome theatre of war.
But the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) now twists the meaning when the current post-retirement Commander extends the age of his retirement from 55 years to 62 in a Bill currently in circulation, way beyond even that of the “extended” civilian public officers.
Army commander, Lieutenant General (Lt Gen) Mojalefa Letsoela was appointed to this portfolio in January 2018 at the age of 53 (exactly 52 years and five months), and reached the age of retirement in August 2020; while his three-year contract expired and was renewed seven months later in January 2021.
So we can say, after his second renewal in 2024, he is in his second post-retirement contract.
If his contract renewals are consistent, he will be 62.5 years when the current one ends in January 2027, and he will certainly be seeking that as his first retirement and deserving of a first post-retirement contract.
To substantiate my speculation, the commander can go from telling a Sunday newspaper that he has been directed by the powers that be to release a Colonel to be the new director-general of the national anti-corruption body, and then dispatch that self-same Colonel (calling him by that title!) to take up post as a Brigadier the next day.
This shows that what I am proposing is neither farfetched nor out of kilter with the moral fibre of our army chief.
His deputy, Major General Matela Matobakele, who was born in 1961 has his fingers on a full decade of service beyond retirement age at the time of writing.
In the maiden Lesotho Defence Act of 1996, all soldiers and officers of the army, regardless of their rank, were required to retire at 55 years, with an option of early retirement any time after 20 years of pensionable service, or attainment of 40 years for soldiers and 45 years for officers; or both soldiers and officers might be retired by commander or minister respectively after 20 years of pensionable service.
A 2002 amendment reduced the retirement age of soldiers and non-commissioned officers by 10 years to 45 years, while leaving the commissioned, or commanding, officers at 55 years of retirement.
The Bill as presented to parliament on March 31, raised the retirement age of the commander and his deputy (Lieutenant General and Major General) by seven years from 55 years to 62, and that of the lowest soldier (Private) by three years from 45 to 48 years.
The top officer cohorts below the commander brackets are raised by a range from 57 years for a Lieutenant and a Captain to 60 years for a Colonel and a Brigadier.
For the non-commissioned officers, those above the rank of Private but not commanding any units, the proposal was to raise the retirement age of a Corporal and a Lance Corporal from 45 years to 50 – 52 years; while those of Sergeant and Warrant Officer II were to be increased to 57 – 60 years.
The rationale for the Bill was elaborately spelled out at an extraordinary media briefing of April 1 instant, being a day after its tabling in parliament, by the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Limpho Tau, whereas the prime minister is also the Minister of Defence among others; where he also presented to the media a revived schedule “correcting” all the lower soldiers’ retirement ages to 55 years wherever they were stipulated below that age in the Bill.
The following week he withdrew the Bill for this “error,” with a promise to return it later. He started out by pontificating that human resource stability and security of tenure was the most important element in the maintenance of an army, as it stabilised the forces psychologically to focus single-mindedly on their constitutional mandate.
But the bill simply raises the years of retirement, and that cannot be said to be ensuring security of tenure, as opposed to say transitioning from fixed-term contract to permanent and pensionable employment, which all army personnel already enjoy.
The minister said they realized immediately upon ascending to power in November 2022 that the years of retirement in the LDF were too low, though he doesn’t say by what logic, and they went about studying the region’s countries and found that this was true in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
I put it to him that the only thing about the army which was on the minds of activists, politicians and analysts at the time was the army apparently being weaned from its erstwhile self-wildness and recent signs of relapsing, and how sustainable that was; and their consideration was how they could harness that for their own mischievous ends, hence this project of rewarding the command which has shown unbridled incursions into politics since the advent of this regime – from threatening parliamentarians when they sought to change the prime minister to taunting them for asking questions about the army in parliament, and thinly threatening a coup if parliamentary change of government materialised.
While the three countries of South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe which are used as the benchmark all have higher retirement ages for the top commanders, all being between 60 years and 65 years, it is only in Zimbabwe where these ages have been increased from this January, to reach a whopping 70 years for the top command; and it is only there where the army has been notorious for upending national democracy for nearly 30 years now, the same adventure which the LDF has been intermittently trying its hand at for at least 18 years since 2007.
The picture for the lower officers is a mixed one among these three countries, where in Botswana the Private and Lance Corporal retire at 45 and 47 years respectively, and from the corporal to Warrant Officer 1 the ages spread from 52 to 60 years; in South Africa they use a universal age of 60 years for all these ranks, and in Zimbabwe they are going to use a universal age of 65, raised from 50 this last January.
This mixed picture says there’s no ideal format but dictates of one’s choice, and we are following the Zimbabwe example with all its notorious hallmarks. Remember it was here that the army back in 2008 openly declared that there would be no peace in the country if President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF ruling party wasn’t declared winner of a national election; and in 2017 dispatched Mugabe and installed the current president, who has since won two controversial elections in 2018 and 2023.
Whereas the minister mentioned the goal of attainment of international standards through retention of personnel with broad experience on the job, and enjoying extended exploitation of specialised skills like medical, legal and chaplain cadre; he also said the government had instructed the army to evolve a 7-10 years’ strategic plan, which hardly speaks to repository of the experience which he says he wants to retain through extension of retirement age, since this highly overaged command is clearly unaware of such a plan, which has become the hallmark of organizational integrity throughout government and public corporations and institutions.
Whereas the minister also told the media that the amendments were not meant to benefit the current commander and his deputy, that’s neither here nor there; as those under their spell are to gain seven years of extended stay and entrenchment of the degenerative culture that the current crop has sown and continues to spread.
The irredeemability of this crop is witnessed in the commander himself who, under the last Mosisili regime of 2015 was the chief executioner of the rogue commander, Lt Gen Tlali Kamoli, now standing trial for treason; converted and went straight under the second Thabane regime of 2017; quickly reverted to crooked ways under the Majoro regime of 2020, and now struts the Lesotho stage like a colossus and a king of the jungle while citizens are supposed to crawl under the giant shadow of his supposedly impregnable self.
Whereas his deputy was at opposite end from him under that “executioner” regime, they have since quickly found each other at the apex of the command, commonly threatening state institutions, violating citizens’ rights of security of person and property, and churning out personal threats to private citizens and civil society in public speeches.
Some 10 years after the Phumaphi Commission and still ongoing marathon court trials of rogue army commanders, we’re still steeped deeper into the dross of gross army improprieties by the day.
All these happen despite the fact that at his inauguration in February 2018 Commander Letsoela made a heart-rending Saul-to-Paul conversion and apology speech which the Sunday Express simply headlined, “We Are Sorry: LDF.”
There he said it was “an open secret that during the past four years the army became a parallel government and a law unto itself, inflicting pain on the same nation that it was supposed to protect.
We had the members of the LDF who committed very heinous acts and this was the start of instability in Lesotho. As the army we refused to abide by the rule of law and threatened the nation. Today I take over the baton, fully aware of those atrocities, and that many suspects are before the courts of law. We are really sorry for the pain inflicted on the families and stand here to ask for forgiveness for the army’s past.”
He was further summed up as having said he would ensure that there was no repeat of “senseless shooting and killings” and the army “behaves in a manner befitting of its mandate,” and stayed “professional, law abiding and does not encroach into politics.”
Seven (7) years after Letsoela’s apology, he and his ilk are still ploughing the same old furrow, laying bare the raw “experience” warranting extension of retirement age to reap their accumulated wisdom.
But I salute him for saying the hideous acts of the army were the beginning of instability in the period of reference here, being from the second year of the first coalition regime of 2012 which the army was praised for cutting short by the deputy prime minister of the second coalition of 2015 who is also on treason trial, into the beginning of the third coalition of 2017, which saw the arrest and arraignment of his boss and his own short-lived conversion.
I found it hair-raising that, in the army whose command is precipitously poisoned as the LDF, this bill introduces a condition that the minister’s instruction to an officer to proceed on retirement, with a year-long notice, will not take effect if the officer is on an assignment (“in active duty”) or has been notified to get ready for assignment, until one month after completion of the assignment or cancellation of such notification.
For the first time this says officers will retire on their own will, or only as predestined, a materialisation of Commander Kamoli’s mantra to Prime Minister Thabane, “I am here to stay. I will leave when I want!”
Surely it can’t be put in the law, but it already is, that in a sensitive place like the army, and an intractable one like the LDF for that matter, an officer cannot be retired because he’s on assignment or merely waiting to proceed on assignment. Whose assignment, which cannot bend to the state’s decision to reorganise its army’s command? What if it is the like of such assignment which has prompted or necessitated the state’s decision?
I don’t know what motivated the 2002 amendment, but our rulers hardly tinker with the law for the greater public good. Not least under the return of the emboldened LCD regime through the 2002 polls, in the wake of the 1998 post-election riots where the foot soldiers’ refusal to disperse opposition protesters from their weeks-long vigil at the palace gates seeking to annul its victory led to invitation of the South African Defence Force that proceeded to stay in the country until after the transition.
Ours is not even a fighting army, with the exception of the recent forages into Mozambique as part of a SADC brigade to contain insurgency in the Cabo Delgado region; so it might not have been motivated by considerations of maintaining a fighting-fit army.
It is more plausible that it was meant to punish the foot soldiers who putatively sided with the opposition in the 1998 standoff while the loyal top command like the commander Lt Gen Makhula Mosakeng received the grand trophies like his own appointment to the Senate in the next parliament of 2007.
The raise of the retirement age for the juniors is certainly a sweetener which would definitely not be obtained without coming as a package with the raise for the rotten head, which some observers think is a “mutual washing of hands” thanksgiving to the current crop of command and its hangers-on. It might well be deserved for the soldiers who were forced to retire in their prime, as the minister contends to the media.
Perhaps it was the suppression of the retirement ages of all these lower ranks at a gaping 10 years below that of the commander ranks that brought us the sight of young men of clouded judgement, emotional impulsiveness and teenage display of power in high command.
Immediate to the mind come the duo of Brigadier Bulane Sechele and Colonel Tefo Hashatsi who tragically died in a standoff where they were seeking to overrule the commander’s cooperation with the police probe of the Phumaphi Commission-related crimes in the army, and their preceding notoriety best brought out by that commission.
Soldiers might come within a touching distance of the all-too-low retirement age at a time when they become prime candidates for cultivating through mentoring and training to be leaders of the organization; and have to be plucked in emergency evacuation style into command ranks before they are ready to assume roles of leadership.
Surely in those 10 years between the ages of 45 and 55 of retirement you can identify and prepare for transition to leadership a person in the first five years, and then plant them progressively in leadership in the next five years, then retire them. There is no reason why anybody has to overstay in sensitive position like military leadership, especially in a context like Lesotho.
But maintaining men in uniform for these years requires an in-depth repurposing and professionalisation of the LDF beyond its current mainstream activity of providing bodyguards to ministers and government executives; which the current commander flies like a kite and abuses like a spoilt toddler does a meek pet.
Countries like Fiji earn a lot of foreign currency from deployment in international peacekeeping, while the LDF did a lot of chest-beating out of its tour in Mozambique; and they could come in handy in anticipatory action and remedial interventions in disaster risk management, including fortification and reconstruction of critical national infrastructure, and being meaningfully and sincerely engaged in busting of armed gang violence exemplified by the so-called Banna ba Likobo (blanket-wearing men of violence), transforming its current youth boot camp into a transparent and credibly supervised national youth service programme, and nestling eminent national sporting codes, where it once had lasting impact on the martial arts over many years for example.
Incidentally in recent years the army has enjoyed a lot of goodwill in the corporate world, including parastatals, even as it was running open battles with the opposition and rights groups for its intrusion into politics and murder and torture of civilians.
Right now even aspects of the army’s internal mandate where the LDF has in recent years made traction like helping in emergencies and busting crime are prostituted and traded on the market of emotions; where recently the army diverted requests for assistance to the Ombudsman, after defrocking her of army bodyguards in retaliation for her investigation into alleged army human rights abuses.
While the whole spectrum of our people have pinned their hopes on the national reforms to at least formally resolve some of these challenges, the minister shocked everyone when he told the media that the reforms might take 20 years to complete and the army’s needs can’t await such.
Whereas the Bill that contains the institutional and procedural frameworks for exactly these matters has been in the Senate for months now, and the leaders of government and lawmakers seem in no hurry to see it through.
Completion of the reforms topped the prime minister’s 100 days’ list of October 2022.
