Reflections on the slain Lesotho commander
Correspondent | Friday July 8, 2016 15:48
By means I cannot now remember, I came to know he was some fellow who had forgone to go to University in 1977 in order to work and raise school fees for his siblings. As human beings, we tend to admire this selflessness in others; and we tend to admire those who value such.
We started University education together, in the spring of 1978. In the years that followed, I found that we subscribed to similar understandings and interpretations of the basis of human action, human relationships, and human interactions, and that we subscribed to similar understandings and interpretations of human reaction to their social and natural environments. We differed a little in that, people who subscribed to these interpretations on campus were in two groups: the less public, on the one hand; and the noisier, rowdier, more outspoken and more public, on the other. You can guess which one of us belonged to which group. This subscription to similar tenets of the human experience turned us into comrades and friends.
When Maaparankoe came to University, in the 1980s, I think, as he had done in 1977, Nqosa looked afer Maaparankoe in ways that must have meant he forewent some of the indulgences that newly-working and single people wish to enjoy.
Knowing people in ways I have described above cannot, but, have the effect of binding you to them one way, or another, and make you feel their suffering to an extent that is inevitably limited.
It is these personal relations, and these personal experiences, that made me feel that I had to participate, however inarticulately, when people who I have known in these ways wanted to meet and remember a person they loved, and to turn his tragic death into a source of debate and inspiration in the search for answers to end economic inequality and political intimidation in this country.
Hearing of the murder of Maaparankoe
On the late afternoon of 25 June, 2015, I was already at home, after work, when I received a cellular ’phone call from Dr Makoala Marake, asking if I could rush to Mahlabatheng where, he said, soldiers had killed Maaparankoe. If you live on the outskirts of Maseru, like me, the immediate place that comes to mind, when somebody mentions Mahlabatheng, is near a public transport-stop, also known as ha makhotsa. Off, I went. On arrival, I found no sign of anything of the kind described by Makoala having taken place there. It occurred to me that Makoala might have been meaning Mahlabatheng, on the way to Roma, at the junction to Mokema. Off, I went. Again, I found no sign of any incident there. I went into the village and asked villagers. None had even so much as heard a gunshot. Only later, did I learn of the exact spot where other soldiers had killed Maaparankoe.
Some of my last encounters with Maaparankoe
On at least two occasions, I met Maaparankoe at Johannesburg International Airport on his return from some assignment or other, to which he had been sent by Lesotho government, African Union, or Southern African Development Community. On all those occasions, we talked at length about political situations in Lesotho or the region. One of those occasions was after events of July, 2007, when fear was widespread in Lesotho because not for the first or last time, politicians had unleashed elements in the army to terrorise other army personnel and intimidate society at large. To my question how perpetrators could be identified and arrested, he told me that perpetrators were known, and that people who had attacked the Prime Minister’s residence were also know, and that the Prime Minster and his colleagues also knew who had sent those who attacked his official residence that winter.
What I found most remarkable about Maaparankoe, in these conversations, was his level-headedness. He displayed a character and intellectual abilities of a lawyer, a professional soldier and a diplomat. Running through all this was another character of his which I knew from his student days: the patriotism that he had been schooled into in left-wing student politics at the National University of Lesotho.
He definitely represented some hope to many of us who have struggled with the idea of Lesotho governments maintaining an army. As we all know, there are at least two questions that make this idea a subject of debate. First, given Lesotho’s meagre resources, should the country be spending so much on an army when there are such difficulties funding education and health, in both of which the country has fallen significantly behind? Secondly, over the years politicians in Lesotho have used the army as an instrument of entrenching themselves in power and intimidating those who speak against bad governance and corruption. The question then becomes: should this nation continue to support an institution whose existence, in Lesotho’s context, can serve no other purpose than that of a politicians’ tool against society? Maaparankoe was a man with whom you could hold debates on these questions, and count on perspectives that would put the public interest ahead of narrow political interests of individual politicians. There aren’t many such soldiers in the leadership of Lesotho’s army today.
When, on 25 June, 2015, I learnt that he had been murdered, I knew that he had been killed by those who knew he was a better human being, he was a better diplomat, and he was a better army-leader. In an obituary for Ntate Ntsukunyane Mphanya, recently, I asked those who understand these things to explain, to us, why it is that the crooked and mean among us rule us, while the best among us are relegated to the margins, and even killed, as in the case of Maaparankoe and others.
Lesotho in June, 2015
After parliamentary elections of February, 2012, a coalition government, consisting of three political parties, was formed. We are not quite sure what the agreement between the parties said, or what the understanding between the parties was. What became clear to us, the public, was that the Prime Minister seemed to conduct himself in accordance with powers that the Constitution gave him, while a section of his coalition partners felt he was undermining the agreement. Among actions which the PM took was to make appointments, and to sack Ministers. As we know, most of these decisions were ignored. It is important to remember that the section of the PM’s partners who were unhappy with his actions never accused him of acting unconstitutionally in these appointments and sackings.
Alongside the Prime Minister’s appointments and dismissals in cabinet and the public service, crimes of corruption began to be investigated, and those found to be involved brought to the courts to law, to be prosecuted.
These are the circumstances that led to the collapse, in 2014, of the coalition government, formed only 24 months earlier: it would seem that, those who were due to face the music in the courts of law mobilised elements in the army to their aid. This is at least part of the explanation for events of late August, 2014.
In brief, individuals who were suspected of economic crimes did not want to face the music in the courts of law; and those duly sacked from some ministerial position, or other, successfully refused to leave. In addition to mobilising elements in the army to their aid, they also re-established contact with erstwhile enemies, with some of whom they shared, in common, the fact that they faced corruption charges in the courts of law. The result of these efforts was that groups and individuals who cordially hated one another, were able to find one another in a sordid bid to avoid answering for criminality of which they were suspected.
The little that I became aware of regarding Maaparankoe’s position in these goings-on, was that, he advocated professionalism of the army. That is to say, the army should stick to its constitutional role as protector of the nation against its foreign enemies; and the army should stick to its constitutional role as protector of national sovereignty. None of these—the nation, national sovereignty—were under any threat.
To the party-politicised elements in the army, however, constitutionalism itself was the enemy because it did not serve interests of individuals and groups who had secured the aid of these elements. To party-politicised elements in the army, and to politicians they supported, advocating constitutionalism was tantamount to taking sides with the enemy, and those, like Maaparankoe, who advocated constitutional rule were also enemies of these individuals and groups. In May, 2015, a coalition government was established under the leadership of individuals, some who had corruption charges pending in the courts of law. By that time, the man who was to become our foreign Minister had already threatened Basotho with a bloodbath. His words, quoted in an appositely-titled article, “DC sends a chilling warning”, which appeared in Lesotho Times of September 11, 2014, have become etched in the memories of most of us: “...if [Thabane] succeeds in his current bid to replace Lieutenant General Kennedy Tlali Kamoli with Brigadier Maaparankoe Mahao, then cry the beloved country. The atrocities and bloodbath that will befall this country will completely dwarf those of 1970.” [Lesotho Times, 11 September, 2014]
Puzzles
Having followed exchanges that took place regarding leadership of the military after May, 2015, and the assassination of Maaparankoe a month later, we must all have formed some opinions, or other, about his murder. Like everybody else, his murder generated all manner of emotions, thoughts, questions and puzzles in me. Through various experiences, including the Judge Phumaphi Commission of Inquiry, grand political theorising, or social-psycho analysis, some of you may have found some form of resolution, or other, to their emotions, thoughts and questions.
Political theorising might have yielded insights into how the murder of Maaparankoe fitted in current politics in Lesotho, that is to say, how his murder was a political strategy used to achieve some aim.
Social-psycho analysis might have shown how, and to which sector of society, murder of others is a source of pleasure; how we, society, have reacted to Maaparankoe’s murder; and it might explain the manner of the reaction of his killers. It would not be difficult for social psycho-analysts to find cruel regimes to whose psychology we may be able to compare the psychology behind the brutality of our regime.
However, political scientists must continue to find it difficult to fit our political elites’ conduct of politics within most known existing political science theorisation. If they are able to do so, it must be only in very broad outline, and to the barest minimum extent.
I have not yet found resolutions to some of the things that puzzle me. I would like to share two of these.
Firstly, against the background of the fact that individuals and groups who had opposed the previous coalition government, including prophets of bloodbath, had formed a coalition government of their own, and installed the man they wanted at the head of the military, the question then must be:
Why kill a man who, to all intents and purposes, posed no threat to anyone?
They may have determined that he was a better soldier, a better diplomat, a better patriot, and a better human being, but he was no threat to anyone. They may have regarded him as an enemy because he sided with their other enemy—that is, constitutionalism—but he posed no threat to anyone. Why kill him?
I do not believe that he would have resisted any duly executed removal from the army. His removal from the army could have been done without killing him.
Secondly, in 1993, this country adopted a constitution that re-established liberal democracy as a political dispensation by which Basotho were to be ruled. Unlike economic liberalism—which can be truly brutal—on paper, political liberalism is largely humane and allows for rights, freedoms, and establishes checks-and-balances and processes precisely to assist those in power to maintain social order as fairly as possible, and without violating rights of citizens. The question, then, is:
When you hold political power, and you know a man is guilty of some misdemeanour, why not subject him to due-process through checks-and-balances established precisely to assist you?
These are the two things that continue to puzzle some of us.
Motlatsi Thabane