Situation Report: Lesotho General Elections 2002: Prospects for the Future, Chris Maroleng

LESOTHO GENERAL ELECTIONS 2002: PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE

Chris Maroleng, May 2002

On 25 May Lesotho is set to hold general elections, the third such event since democracy was restored to this mountain kingdom in 1993 following seven years of military rule. As this day draws nearer greater attention is being focussed on this tiny independent enclave within the Republic of South Africa, anxiously hoping that the debacle that occurred after the 1998 elections does not recur in this small mountainous Kingdom. The 2002 elections are not just a watershed moment for this country and the Southern African region but for the whole of Africa, as it attempts to sell the idea to the rest of the world that democracy and good governance can come from within this continent through initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). The successful conduct of these elections is important as they come on the back of the controversial polls recently held in Congo Brazzaville, Zambia, Madagascar and Zimbabwe. Yet another failed African election could spell the end for NEPAD, which most analysts’ claim failed its first important ‘litmus test’ in the African response to Zimbabwe`s 2002 presidential elections.

The Kingdom of Lesotho, which gained its independence from Britain on 4 October 1966, is best described as a constitutional monarchy with an unstable democracy. It can be argued that the instability that obtains in this country can be traced to its historically shaky political structure. It is also important to note that in any analysis of Lesotho one cannot ignore the fact that the kingdom`s external relations are dominated by its economic and geographic dependence on South Africa.

Back to the Future

Historically the political space in this country has been dominated by two main political parties: the Basotho Congress Party (BCP) which was founded by Ntsu Mokhehle in 1952, with the aim of bringing self-governance to Lesotho and ending racially discriminatory practices that were primarily imported from South Africa; and the Basotho National Party (BNP) which won the first elections under universal suffrage in 1965 led by Chief Leabua Jonathan, who also went on to become Prime Minister.

Following the second election after independence in 1970, Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan declared a state of emergence and annulled the outcome of these polls following his apparent defeat by the BCP. Subsequently Jonathan suspended the constitution and abolished the National Assembly, resorting to rule without recourse to representative institutions. These political events led to opposition leaders such as Mokhehle and the King Moshoeshoe II (Bereng Seeiso), going into exile. The exiled BCP under the leadership of Mokhehle would later form an armed wing, the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA), which launched a number of nuisance raids into Lesotho from South African soil. These developments merely served further to narrow the domestic support base of the BNP, and entrenched the regime`s relationship of dependence vis-à-vis the Pretoria government.

All five registered opposition parties boycotted the next general election in September 1985, allowing the BNP a clean sweep without a single vote being cast. The deteriorating political and economic situation inside the country and strained relations with South Africa resulted in the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) intervening in the political arena on 20 January 1986, a few days after the LDF’s top leadership returned from consultations in Pretoria.

Major General Metsing Lekhanya led the military coup that toppled Chief Leabua Jonathan, and it was General Lekhanya who would later establish a five man Military Council that effectively ruled the country. The other senior officers in the Military Council included close relatives of the monarch King Moshoeshoe, who insisted that the interim nation assembly should be dissolved and executive and legislative powers should be invested in the monarch. Relations with South Africa improved at this stage, but all internal political activities were banned and the constitution remained suspended.

The close association between King Moshoeshoe and the General Lekhanya was ended after ambitious members of the royalist faction within the Military Council provoked an open power struggle between the king and the military. Lekhanya swiftly neutralized this threat by centralizing all power around himself, stripping the monarch of his powers and removing all royalists from office. This resulted in the King fleeing into exile in Britain in March 1990. In a an attempt to fill the vacuum left by Moshoeshoe, Lekhanya responded by passing a decree deposing Moshoeshoe II and installing in his place his eldest son, the 27 year-old Prince Mohato Seeiso, who was formally sworn in as King Letsie III. While Moshoeshoe’s removal was designed to limit the political influence of the monarchy, it ensured that the crown itself would remain a political issue.

At the end of April 1991 General Lekhanya was removed from power in a bloodless coup and replaced as head of the Military Council by Colonel (later Major-General) Phisoana Ramaema. The main instigators of the coup were the rank and file within the LDF whose ire had been raised when they were offered more than a 22% pay increase, which they felt compared poorly with the fabulous sums rumored to be made by those closer to the center of power. This resentment coincided with the perception in the force’s hierarchy that Lekhanya was losing his ability to protect the LDF’s corporate interests.

Political developments in South Africa since 1990 had stimulated greater openness in the public political debate within Lesotho, and had also signaled the removal of Pretoria’s implicit support for a conservative military regime in Lesotho. Further, indispensable foreign donors and influential governments stepped up their pressure on the regime for the introduction of accountable government.

All this pressure resulted in the Military Council lifting its ban on political activities in May 1991and approving a draft constitution largely modelled on that of 1966, which would also set the ground rules for elections. In 1992, under an amnesty, many political figures including the former king, Moshoeshoe II and the BCP’s Ntsu Mokhehle returned to Lesotho from exile. The elections that were eventually held on 27 March 1993 were won by the BCP, which took 54% of the seats in parliament under the first-past-the-post system, and Ntsu Mokhehle was sworn in as prime minister after the elections were declared largely free and fair. Interestingly enough, Letsie III was confirmed as the constitutional monarch ahead of his father, Moshoeshoe II, who had recently returned from exile.

This ‘honeymoon’ period in Lesotho politics was short lived, and as early as 1994 the government began to experience problems in its relations with the army and police, whose discontent was stoked by opposition elements. As part of an internationally brokered settlement, the BCP agreed to a national dialogue with the opposition and reinstate Moshoeshoe as the monarch in place of Letsie in January 1995. Moshoeshoe’s reign as a restored monarch was short, as he was killed in a car accident in January 1996, after which Letsie again became king.

The internal differences within the BCP also began to emerge as key members of this party began to position themselves to succeed the ailing Mokhehle. When the BCP leader`s term in office was about to come to an end, his rivals sought to replace him with his deputy, Molapo Qhobela instead of Pakalitha Mosisili whom Mokhehle favored as his successor. However, Mokhehle still had an ace up his sleeve; he carried out his own internal party coup by quitting the BCP in June 1997, taking the majority of the MPs and all the cabinet members into a new party, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), and continuing as prime minister.

All these prior political machinations augured ill for the 1998 general elections, which was held under the auspices of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). All the major political parties contested these elections that were held on 23 May, which were eventually won in a surprising landslide victory by the LCD. This party took 78 of the 79 contested seats but only just over 60% of the popular vote. Even though these elections were received a qualified free and fair assessment from independent observers this victory provoked a legal challenge from the main opposition parties in around 20 constituencies. Widespread protest over the election results began to escalate in the months that followed, resulting in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), establishing the Langa Commission to investigate the conduct of the elections. The political situation continued to deteriorate, and there was a mutiny by junior army officers. The Langa Commission, which released its findings on 17 September 1998, found that even though there may have been many administrative and practical problems with the 1998 election there was no widespread fraud. However, the commission’s calls for a re-run of the elections led to an upsurge of popular protests and another apparent coup attempt, which saw the senior command of the LDF flee to South Africa.

The growing civil unrest in the country lead to the chaotic deployment of an intervention force made up of troops from South Africa and Botswana, under the auspices of the SADC. This action, code-named ‘Operation BOLEAS’, eventually quashed an incipient mutiny and accompanying dissent, but 75 lives were lost including those of a dozen South Africa soldiers, leaving a devastated capital in the process. The two armies were part of a troika, with Zimbabwe, on a mission to bolster Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili’s government, at the latter`s request. After the civil unrest had been ended, an Interim Political Authority (IPA) was set up to review the electoral code and recommend changes to it. From these findings it was agreed that the next general election (on 25 May 2002) would be based on a system that retained the existing 80 first-past-the-post constituency seats, supplemented by an additional 40 seats allocated on a proportional basis. Most observers believed that this would create a more representative parliament in Lesotho, which would include minority parties, thus preventing the recurrence of the sort of protests that occurred after the 1998 elections.

The Current Situation

On the surface it would appear that all is in place for the up-coming election for which 832 000 voters were registered by September 2001. A voter education campaign is also currently under way, informing the electorate about the technicalities of the new electoral system (the mixed member proportional system) that includes elements of the old first-past-the-post system and proportional representation. This system has not been tried before in this country, and is a cause for concern in the eyes of many observers. The Head of the International Election Monitoring Group in Lesotho recently expressed concern that voter education about the new electoral model left much to be desired, as many registered voters, including leaders of political parties did not fully understand how it operated, which could result in voters being misled. This is primarily because insufficient time was allocated by the Independent Electoral Commission to teach voters about the new system, the blame for the delay laid partly on the Interim Political Authority (IPA) and the Parliament who took a long time before they could reach a consensus on the suitable electoral model and the passage of the Electoral Act, respectively. Meanwhile, in an attempt to prevent any further disturbances by the military, the SADC and an Indian army unit have been training soldiers from the LDF in the hope that they can turn Lesotho’s troubled military into a more professional force.

There is some cause for concern, however, if one looks at the internal dynamics of the respective political parties in Lesotho. This is primarily because domestic politics in the kingdom are largely based on building leadership personalities, and it is for this reason, rather than disputes over policy or ideology, that each of the main parties has experienced leadership challenges and severe internal divisions in recent years. One of the most important of these divisions resulted in the split in the LCD, which led in September 2001 to the formation of the Lesotho Peoples Congress (LCP), currently under the leadership of a former Deputy Prime Minister, Kelibone Maope. This followed the LCD annual meeting in January 2001, where disputed results of the election of the National Executive Committee brought into the open long-standing differences in the party. Twenty-six MPs immediately joined the LPC, making it the LCD’s main challenger in the forthcoming election. While the LCD is still expected to win the election, a strong showing form the LPC leading to a vibrant opposition in parliament hopefully will strengthen democracy’s weak roots in Lesotho.

Early indications were that the BNP and the BCP were not expected to mount much of a challenge in the elections. According to sources within these parties, the leaders of both parties are more concerned with securing control of party structures in the run-up to the elections, so they can influence the choice of candidates likely to benefit from the introduction of elements of the proportional representative system. However, since the BNP’s annual conference in March 2001 Metsing Lekhanya, a former leader of the military regime, has strengthened his grip on this party and is now expected to do relatively well.

On the other hand, the struggle for control of the BCP has been particularly intense. This in-fighting led to the formation of two factions lead by Ts’eliso Makhakhe and Molapo Qhobela respectively, both of whom resorted to the courts to pursue their leadership claims. In January 2002 the court ruled that Qhobela’s election at the 2001 annual meeting was illegitimate, and Makhakhe, who had himself been replaced by Qhobela at a special meeting in 2000, should resume leadership. This decision did not go down well with Qhobela, who instead chose to leave the BCP and has recently formed his own party the Basotholand African Congress (BAC).

Therefore, even though things may seem to be going well in this tiny mountain kingdom there is still potential for more disturbances should the political peace not be preserved and respected. This is because the structural problems in Lesotho’s political system by and large still remain unresolved, and many still cause future political instability. The introduction of the new mixed member proportional system of elections may weaken the parliamentary system and allowed for frequent changes of government. Even though this system provides for the inclusion of minor parties and marginalized groups, it may also further reinforce the fragmented nature of Lesotho’s politics, as parliamentary seats are distributed more thinly across the political spectrum.

The threat of future political instability in this country can only be removed if a concerted effort is made by both internal and external political actors to understand the need for a change in Lesotho’s political culture. Given the political climate over the past year or so, this task could be almost impossible to achieve in the short term, because the run-up to the election has been marked by continued feuding within as well as between the leading parties. Personal exchanges of a virulent and public nature have been the stock-in-trade of leading members of the Lesotho political class since the resumption of democratic competition. This trend shows no signs of abating. Until the cycle is broken, a return to the past undemocratic dispensation that prevailed in Lesotho is not impossible. Such a turn of events will reverse the progress towards good governance and democracy that have been achieved to date, and this will surely augur badly for the Basotho and future African regional initiatives such as NEPAD. Only time will tell if Lesotho will indeed ‘go back to the future’. However, this is all very much future music and one hopes against hope, that a peaceful election and a period of effective government will follow the forthcoming political contest.