Who needs Paramount Chief in our constitutional monarchy?
NTHAKENG PHEELLO SELINYANE
It all came to pass on the National Assembly floor in the week of May 5.
In a strange manner that is now common with our lawmakers here, the Member of Parliament for Mokhethoaneng and Chair Of Chairs of the Portfolio Committee Mokhothu Makhalanyane stood up on a point of order, and when given a chance instead cartwheeled and went on a wildcat, heart-rending cry against media reports that Senators were crying foul against National Assembly’s alleged refusal to promulgate a draft law for the creation of the office of Paramount Chief, a portfolio designated for the kings of Basotho under British colonial rule, who went on to assume the crown title of King at independence, beginning with the current monarch’s father, King Moshoeshoe II.
Eminent lawmakers stood up one after the other bitterly decrying the “fact’ that they had not even once sighted any material brought to Parliament containing such proposal, they were maligned by the Upper House in the media for supposedly refusing to legislate such an office into existence.
It was Karl Marx that wrote some time in 1848 that all great events of history happen, as it were, twice; the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.
Indeed, the furtively played out cat and mouse orchestral manoeuvres in the dark, to borrow a British rock band’s mischievous name, about recreation of a colonial-time office of paramount chief and its grafting onto our constitutional monarchy would be tragic if it were not so farcical.
The current furore about its return is making its second coming in this Parliament. The first time was in the immediate aftermath of that dramatic October 2023 vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister which very nearly made history of failing this regime even before its first anniversary.
When the dust settled in that short-lived, very acrimonious which saw in its trail the breakup of the opposition bloc with the country’s fourth largest party, the Basotho Action Party, joining government; the SADC as usual fielded one of its notorious oversights missions here, currently styled Panel of Elders Oversight of Lesotho Reforms, to reset the government-opposition relations which has over the years been intermittently done by reference to the imperative of completion of the reforms – the prime minister had veiny promised to achieve within the first 100 days in office.
It didn’t find its way into the final sheaf of constitutional amendments which the National Reforms Authority (NRA) of 2020 sent to the National Assembly, which fell through when the 2017 parliament was dissolved without their full passage in July 2022. Its exclusion was despite it being in the final report of consolidation of national resolutions from community consultations, styled Multi-stakeholder National Dialogue Plenary II Report which informed these amendments.
Second it failed to find its way into the National Assembly’s own final sheaf of drafts styled the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution Bill alias The Omnibus Bill, despite the various insertions and excisions which the lawmakers took liberty to contrive, presuming upon what they called their exclusive right to legislate for the country.
It was ironically during the recall of Parliament from dissolution to resuscitate the ill-fated Omnibus Bill in August 2022 that the Upper House of parliament, notably the Principal Chiefs who comprise two-thirds majority of the Senate, raked up dust for its inclusion at this late stage – which would necessitate taking the Bill back the National Assembly for its inclusion or contriving some form of addendum to the existing bill in the lower house and bringing it is as express delivery for eleventh hour appending.
We understand this is the scenario that is being replayed at the time for writing. It is now trite history of course that the bid to redeem the Bill was torpedoed by the appeal court judgment that annulled the recall of Parliament.
Thus the proposal missed the train yet again, for a record third time. It again failed to book its berth on the drafts when after the aborted No-confidence Motion of 2023, in 2024 government and opposition ultimately agreed to re-table the draft at received from the NRA, then cut it up into three parts of simple majority, two-thirds majority and national referendum clauses – which is what has brought us to the current hue and cry. It will be a fifth time lucky if it does make it through this time around.
But why has this suggestion been so unlucky, and how and why did it end up among the final national resolutions if it is so unpopular?
The reason is perhaps its awkwardness, and the difficulty of articulating and justifying it.
In the final Plenary II report it is neither articulated nor justified. It simply says, “Chieftainship: Resuscitate the position of Paramount Chief.”
It is noteworthy that it is not even called an office, whereas this is the colonial office of the Basotho King was not called by that name under colonial rule as only the British king was seen as deserving of that title, and that is King Letsie III of today. So if we were to talk about the dividends of national independence to the various segments of community, the family that was paramount chief under colonial rule has already taken its cut and comfortably perched at the apex of our society
in the royal palace.
Others who are styled principalities now direction for the country we have been used to create effect over the years. They enjoy this status while retaining that of routine administration of local affairs on daily basis which is discharged by their spouse or their preferred next of kin in their name; a conflation of statuses which is unknown in modern democratic governance, where the law makers are also the administrators of the law that also applies to them which is arguably they conflict of interest at responsible for the current friction and confrontation.
When the resolution simply says “resuscitate paramount chief’, reference is to the self-same office, not even creation of its like, and that is the position of current head of state. As such, by definition that creature cannot come to pass.
So those who would have that office conceptualized and implemented otherwise than as observed historically, have an obligation to present their case; which has hitherto not materialized despite their representation on the opinion gathering National Dialogue Planning Committee (NDPC), the “drafting” NRA, and the sectoral consultations which supplemented the nationwide and diaspora hearings on all themes and aspects and facets of the reforms.
Apparently nobody is ready to bell the cat here. Nobody has so far presented a graphic textual modelling of the insertion and routine functions of this office in the edifice of the currently subsisting national governance.
But what were the functions of the colonial paramount chief? It was the apex of administration of customary law which applied only to his Basotho subjects and not to British citizens in what was Basutoland. These might apply to customary marriage, initiation, liremo, maboella, matsema, and bojalefa, among others.
Now, we all know that currently we do not have two separate streams of law applied to two separate nations, headed by two separate heads of such nations, where one would be King Letsie III for one nation and the Paramount Chief for another.
His Majesty the King, who is yesteryear’s Paramount Chief, is the head of the legislature and the executive authority, beneath which lies the national bureaucracy or civil service which administers the laws that apply in equal measure to all sections of the citizenry whose lives have any aspect that attaches to the content of such laws; where the chiefs are part of national bureaucracy whose placement and functions in that milieu have evolved with the progression of our national democracy.
This is borne out by their unionisation and recent march to parliament under the banner of a trade union for improvement of working conditions.
No wonder the specific national resolutions on reforms regarding the chiefs, with clear instructions and directives, appear under the heading of the public service where for legislative amendment it says “Clarify the roles of Chiefs and local counsellors in service provision”; whereas the specified challenge is “inadequate fiscal decentralisation and lack of capacity of stakeholders”.
Further down under the same heading, under the challenge of “overlapping mandates of local government authorities and chiefs” there are only administrative prescriptions of “(1) ensure that heirs to chieftaincy get adequate and relevant training before assumption of office, (2) capacitate local government authorities and chiefs in place, with relevant skills for improved service delivery, and (3) clarify the roles of chiefs and local councillors for harmonization of working relationships.”
Here, unlike the paramount chief which simply falls under the sky, the prescriptions address dorky out inadequacies.
The senators own prescription which does not name any inadequate that seeks to address, simply says “Amend the constitution to provide for the Office of Paramount Chief, we shall be in the Office of the King, to coordinate and facilitate induction of prospective chiefs in accordance with the Constitution, and as may be prescribed by an Act of Parliament.”
These things are already done by the office of Director of Chieftainship and Director of Decentralization in the Ministry of Local Government and prescribed as administrative measures to be carried out but the ministry of the public service in the final report of the reforms.
Other suggestions from the Senate relating to chieftainship repeat the need for clarification of separation of roles between chiefs and councillors, and go further to prescribe that chiefs should make up a minimum one third of members of the councils, and that all chiefs should be on the councils in their areas.
But the King, in whose office the chiefs want to plant their own captain the Paramount Chief, does not administer laws or do routine administration which we have always known as being executed exclusively by the chiefs in the villages until the age of modern elected and bureaucratic local government which goes way back to the Eden of the 1959 Local Government Proclamation and the elected councils of 1960 born thereof, which were after independence dissolved by the first national government apparently for being overwhelmingly dominated by the main opposition; and their slow resuscitation in the 1989/91 military regime’s community development committee later renamed councils, through the democratic era 1996/98 local government laws that prepared the ground for the 2005 first council elections, down to the 2016 decentralization policy document that sought to create municipalities in the 10 district administration headquarters.
The chiefs have always been wary of local government, viewing it as threatening their power and influence especially in land and natural resource management where they had gained notoriety for wanton corruption and fomenting community discords; and their suspicion and fear for diminishing prestige were exacerbated by the democratic era law decreasing their number on the council, where the Chiefs have had to vote for a limited number of that peers to represent them on the councils as opposed to before, the reversal of which is one of the 15 demands of senator that have blocked the passage of the first tranche of the Omnibus Bill, styled Tenth Amendment, for over a year now.
In their campaign for the post of Paramount Chief through national press pages, the principal chiefs explicitly finger local government as a political stratagem to abolish chieftaincy, hence seeking refuge in the Office of the King.
But, unlike the chiefs and kings of imperial times, there is no continuity between our contemporary constitutional monarch and the chiefs who are civil servants by virtue of the position they occupy in the grand scheme of things.
The executive authority in Lesotho vest in the King who exercises it through elected representatives of people, formed into cabinet.
The chiefs answer to the executive authority through a minister, customarily responsible for internal affairs now renamed Home Affairs, and were placed under the new portfolio of local government when decentralization began.
They belong to the second tier of our public administration or government, whereas the king is the apex, perching even above the first tier; yet they want an office or a post in the Office of the King!
They scoff contemptuously that they cannot answer to a politician, apparel euphemism for a commoner; they want to create their own gods of copper not the one that they are given by the constitution that is the covenant of the Basotho.
They say they need someone who will adjudicate over their conflicts who is not a politician, which should be read to me a commoner, whereas all lawmakers including themselves are by definition politicians, and they pride themselves in being lawmakers.
They say they cannot take their cries to somebody who clearly hates them and is actively seeking to abolish them, as seen in the progressive erosion of their powers and prestige through encroachment of local government, which is a whole decade late in the implementation of is latest commendable Amendment of existing laws yet still leaves them bitterly tearful.
Before making the transition to the next phase of this conversation, I feel obliged to positively pronounce that the chiefs in the Senate have failed to make their case for creation of the office of Paramount Chief which removes them from subjection to national administration and renders them an appendage of the monarchy, presumably with the privileged of immunity associated with that lofty office.
Incidentally, this resolution is written together with one for “inclusion of the heads of the Baphuthi, MaXhosa, Bafokeng and Matebele clans in the Senate” and the one for “re-designation the position of the Chief of Thaba-Tšoeu and the Chief of Likueneng as Principal Chiefs” whereas these are currently designated Ward Chiefs and not deserving to be on the Senate by birth like the 22 but our Chiefs though this duo always make it as nominees reserved for the King.
These two points, just like that of the Paramount Chief, have not been given the effect of draft laws.
They are of course not the only ones out. Other points like most eminently a transitional justice commission, have also fallen by the wayside though some have been suggested for ‘recall” by the Senate, which does not have the power of initiation of legislation – which initiation happens to be one of their list of demands.
The BNP leader Machesetsa Mofomobe charged in the National Assembly on Tuesday May 27 instant that the chiefs in the Senate had “abducted the Bill and held the national law-making process to ransom in order to obtain their demand for the Paramount Chief simply because they are of a different type of blood”, as the Government withdrew the Eleventh Amendment Bill in order to satisfy the demand of a letter from President of Senate to the Minister of Justice and Law that the Bill be withdrawn to include the demands of the Senators before the latter could pass the Tenth Amendment Bill in their hands without the Paramount Chief and their other demands.
With this shameless standoff, this barbarous tug of war, one can only cringe at the prospect of granting the Senate the constitutional prerogative to initiate legislation which is now solely started in the National Assembly, as included in their demands.
The reference to blood type was an allusion to the presumption that all the principal chiefs who are Senators by birth are descendants of King Moshoeshoe I, widely viewed as the founder of the Basotho nation though many quarters challenge that discourse.
