Will he jump? Or will he be pushed?
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday March 3, 2017 15:26
Mosisili is nothing if not a battle-hardened survivor and military strategist. The University of Botswana-trained veteran politician has cheated physical and political death time and again, in the process earning himself the second longest tenure of a Lesotho Prime Minister, no mean feat given the mountain kingdom’s propensity for bloody regime change.
With his history, the question of whether he will jump or be pushed after Thursday’s vote may not even arise. In all likelihood, analysts believe Mosisili may push back.
The Prime Minister is no stranger to ambushes and in fact, has a record of surviving them. In 1994, he was kidnapped along with three other ministers, by soldiers who would then kill the country’s deputy prime minister, Selometsi Baholo in the same incident.
Fifteen years later, during his first term as Prime Minister, Mosisili escaped unhurt when armed men stormed his residence, with three attackers being killed by police. Lesotho called the attack a coup attempt by South African and Mozambican mercenaries.
In the intervening years and beyond, Mosisili has survived countless challenges for his power, beginning at the start of his first term in 1998 when opposition parties occupied the royal palace accusing him of vote rigging.
When he eventually lost power in 2012, his critics say Mosisili immediately began manoeuvring his way back to the top, using a variety of skills gained from previous skirmishes. “Indeed, he was in a trance for two and half years when he was outmanoeuvred out of power in 2012,” says National University of Lesotho political science professor and analyst, Mafa Sejanamane.
“Mosisili did not accept that situation and colluded with the military to destabilise that regime until it collapsed and he was able to cobble a coalition of seven political parties in 2015 to get back to power.”
The well-chronicled sequence of events towards Mosisili’s return to power can be traced back to August 29, 2014 when power struggles within the military led to the then prime minister, Tom Thabane firing then army chief, Tlali Kamoli and replacing him with Maaparankoe Mahao.
On August 30, 2014, military unrest broke out from a section of the Lesotho army, forcing first Thabane and later Mahao, to flee the country to South Africa.
SADC intervened, sending Mahao, Kamoli and police chief, Khothatso Tsooana out of the country on a ‘leave of absence’ while bringing elections forward to February 2015.
Mosisili, with the tacit backing of military figures, won the snap election, quickly reappointing Kamoli and terminating Mahao. Using the guise of suppressing a mutiny, a crackdown began against soldiers seen as loyal to Mahao, resulting in the former chief’s assassination and the arrest of at least 50 soldiers and their imprisonment in maximum-security conditions.
Opposition leaders fled the country and reports of extra-judicial torture, political oppression and general insecurity, drew SADC’s attention once more to the troubled kingdom.
But even here, Mosisili’s strategic adroitness set him head and shoulders above the regional leaders. Rather than waiting for condemnation, he took the surprise step of inviting a SADC Commission of Enquiry into the unrest in Lesotho, taking the initiative away from his rivals.
When the inevitably scathing report came out implicitly accusing him of conniving with Kamoli to set about events towards regaining power, Mosisili again skilfully kept a snarling SADC at bay, with a series of measures aimed at delaying implementation of the report’s recommendations.
He argued semantics, redacted parts of the report, then argued constitutional process in Lesotho, then argued the superiority of Lesotho’s sovereignty over the report. He then flatly refused to accept the report, saying it was riddled with shortcomings.
When he was finally cornered in January 2016 at an extraordinary Heads of State summit in Gaborone, it appeared Mosisili had overplayed his hand. The Heads of State had laid an ambush and planned to boot Lesotho out of SADC, should Mosisili continue dithering with acceptance of the report and implementing its recommendations.
They, however, had not bargained on his experience with ambushes. Mosisili stood his ground, called their bluff but before lunch, all leaders agreed to suspend Lesotho and began leaving for their home countries. Khama, at the time SADC chair, saved Mosisili brokering a deal over lunch in which the prime minister accepted the report and was even flown halfway to Maseru by the Botswana Defence Force.
Mosisili would spend the next months parrying away SADC’s often half-hearted attempts at enforcing the report’s recommendations, but at home in Maseru, the tide was turning and fissions were widening in his ruling coalition.
The PM’s coalition was soon broken, opposition leaders, including Thabane, returned home galvanised by the changing politics and assurances from SADC special envoy to Lesotho, Cyril Ramaphosa. Well-attended rallies and behind the scenes horse-trading among the opposition soon produced a plan for a motion of no confidence, but unlike previous ambushes, Mosisili had advance knowledge of the plan.
According to clerk of the National Assembly in Maseru, Fine Maema, Mosisili has only three options.
“According to the Constitution, the Prime Minister within three days has to either offer his resignation or dissolve Parliament. Those are the two options. Should he dissolve Parliament that would result in the calling of a snap election,” Maema says.
Sejanamane, says ever the tactician, Mosisili likely has other plans. “Mosisili lives in an impunity bubble, which makes him ignore the law when it does not suit his desires to continue in office even when circumstances no longer permit,” the professor says.
“These are early signs of a plan to resist lawful authority by relying on both the military and the political storm troopers at Mosisili’s disposal.
“Staying in power outside the law can only succeed if he uses state institutions to hold on to power by force. Thus the suggestion of a coup under planning is not farfetched.” By Sunday, it will become clear what the University of Botswana graduate has chosen for himself, his country and its future.