Lesotho’s opposition leader has fled the country for the second time in a year, claiming that he was at risk of assassination after being voted out of power.
Thomas Thabane, the former prime minister, travelled to Botswana on Tuesday night in the latest twist to a year of political turmoil for the mountainous country that is entirely surrounded by South Africa.
“I ordered an investigation which confirmed that there were indeed plans to kill me,” he told AFP by telephone.
“Soon after I was given this report, I fled the country fearing for my life. I am still in Botswana.”
The Lesotho police said they could not confirm the threat against Thabane, but that they would investigate.
Thabane suspended parliament in June last year to avoid a motion that would have seen him ousted from power after the previous fragile coalition government fell apart.
In August, soldiers attacked police headquarters, looting weapons and killing one officer.
Thabane described the violence as an opposition-backed coup attempt and fled to South Africa, though both his political opponents and the military denied any bid to seize power.
A regionally-brokered snap election in February brought a new coalition government to power, headed by Thabane’s predecessor, Pakalitha Mosisili.
Lesotho is seen as strategically important to South Africa as it provides 90 percent of the water to Johannesburg city.
Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor will be acting president until Tuesday while Jacob Zuma is away on a working trip this week, the presidency said.
Zuma was travelling to Algeria to meet President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for a South Africa-Algeria binational commission meeting, spokesman Mac Maharaj said on Monday.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was in Lesotho in his capacity as Southern African Development Community facilitator, for the closure of the body’s facilitation office in the region following successful elections.
The SADC facilitation mission to Lesotho, led by Ramaphosa, will end on Monday, his office said.
Ramaphosa was in Maseru to close the Southern African Development Community (SADC) offices, where an official ceremony would take place, his spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said in statement.
“The closing ceremony marks the end of the facilitation mission following the successful SADC intervention which culminated in the recently held elections declared credible, free and fair by elections observers,” Mamoepa said.
“The elections arose from provisions of the Maseru Facilitation Accord signed by all Lesotho’s political parties and facilitated by deputy president Ramaphosa as part of efforts to create political stability in the country.”
During this period, law enforcement agencies signed the Maseru Security Accord which resulted in three senior defence and police officers taking a leave of absence. This helped stabilise the security situation in Lesotho.
Ramaphosa hoped Lesotho’s political role-players would continue to focus on constitutional and security sector reforms, Mamoepa said. He was expected back in the country on Tuesday.
Journalists have been having a field day ridiculing the recent “coup” in Lesotho.
For African journalists, it turns out to be a joke on themselves — especially the notion that Lesotho should be SA’s 10th province.
Unlike SA, which was decided by the colonisers — the Boer republics and the areas annexed by the British Empire — the King of Lesotho was significant in the founding of his country. King Moshoeshoe 1 got on a ship to England to negotiate that the Queen of England should refrain from any attempt to annex his land.
The result was an undertaking by the British Empire not to do so and further to protect Lesotho from other colonisers — hence Lesotho was a British protectorate, not a colony.
The tragedy is not whether Lesotho exists on its own, but the fact that there is minimal development of its citizens to be sufficiently creative to buttress poverty and want in their land. Africans seem obsessed only with power. Occupying positions of power is seen as the only means by which they think one can secure income, status and prosperity.
Had Lesotho been in Europe, it would have publicised its history. King Moshoeshoe would be right up there in the consciousness of the world as one of the greatest diplomats of his time. With fewer than 2-million citizens, it would have unleashed the creative potential among themselves through proper education, and poverty would be minimal.
Conflict, if any, would have been about incorporation of the area dubbed the Free State as their ancestral land. Similarly, Botswana would be reclaiming what is called North West. AmaZulu would be fighting the “war” Scotland is engaged in.
The desire for nations to own and control their own land is not for any other reason than to engage in self-development, entrench their language, their culture and their history, which they would “sell” to the world.
The incorporation of Lesotho into the white-created and black “managed” SA will not bring its citizens any improvement in their lives as leadership in SA is still about hogging power and not human development.
If African countries concentrated on their own development and strove for excellence, they would not look so comical.
Lesotho’s prime minister has asked southern African states to send peacekeepers into his mountain kingdom to restore order after an apparent coup over the weekend, his aide said on Monday.
Thomas Thabane fled to South Africa, whose territory surrounds Lesotho, early on Saturday, hours before the army surrounded his residence and overran police stations in the capital, Maseru, in what the prime minister called a coup.
Lesotho’s army said it had not tried to oust Thabane but had moved against police suspected of planning to arm a political faction. One policeman was shot dead and four others wounded.
The unrest stems from a power struggle between Thabane, who is supported by the police, and Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing, who has the loyalty of the army, diplomats said.
Tension has risen since Thabane, who has accused Metsing of orchestrating the coup, suspended parliament in June amid feuding in the two-year-old governing coalition.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) defence and security troika, which includes foreign ministers from South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, met through the night with Thabane and Metsing to try to find a peaceful settlement to the crisis.
Thabane asked the SADC, a co-operative group of 15 southern African states, for military support, said officials.
“On top of the table was a need for intervention based on the situation. We called on the SADC peace force to intervene,” said Thabane’s aide, Samonyane Ntsekele.
On Monday, Thabane and Metsing met South African President Jacob Zuma, who chairs SADC’s defence and security body, with the regional group agreeing to send a facilitator to help resolve the crisis.
“SADC further agreed to deploy an observer team on politics, defence and security as a matter of urgency,” a statement issued after the meeting in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, said.
Thabane was now on his way back to Lesotho, Ntsekele said.
In Maseru, the atmosphere was quiet but tense on Monday. The police commissioner said soldiers had carried out further raids on police installations and even officers’ homes, taking away weapons and uniforms.
Commissioner Khothatso Ts’ooana told Public Choice FM radio station that this meant police would not be able to carry out their normal duties. Police stations were deserted and some officers had fled over the border into South Africa.
In Washington, the US State Department said in a statement it was “deeply concerned by uncertainty over the political process and the state of public security” in Lesotho’s capital. It has ordered non-employed family members of US mission personnel out of the country.
A Lesotho national accused of chopping up two people and boiling the heart of one of them is expected to appear in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.
Lehlohonolo Joseph Scott, 26, is charged with two counts of murder and one of escaping from custody in Lesotho. He faces extradition to Lesotho.
According to an affidavit by Lesotho Director of Public Prosecutions Leaba Thetsane, Scott, and his mother Malehlohono Scott, are charged with the murders of Moholobela Seetsa, 13, and Kamohelo Mohata, 22.
Seetsa was cycling on January 11, 2012. He never returned to his home in Koalabata village. Various body parts were found in a ditch a few days after he was reported missing.
Mohata, a first-year student from the same village, disappeared early in July 2012.
After an SMS was sent to his parents saying that he had gone to South Africa, police were tipped off about the Scotts’ alleged involvement.
When they visited Malehlohono Scott’s house, they found two arms and a leg in the back of a Corsa bakkie and testicles behind the seat.
Lehlohonolo Scott allegedly pointed out a knife that was used to stab Mohata, a wire used to strangle Seetsa, and a pot in which Seetsa’s heart was apparently boiled. – Sapa
A farm owner accused of attempted murder after he allegedly shot and wounded a teenager has appeared in the Ladybrand Magistrate’s Court, Free State police said on Wednesday.
The case against Motlalentoa Alfred Makoae, 53, was postponed on Tuesday to December 9, Sergeant Martin Xuma said.
Makoae, currently out on R1500 bail, owns a farm that borders Lesotho.
He was arrested on November 6. He allegedly saw five youths, aged between 13 and 15 hunting on the farm with sticks and dogs on October 28.
Xuma said the farm owner shouted at the boys to leave his property and they ran away. While chasing the boys away the man allegedly fired three shots in their direction. A 15-year-old was struck in the back.
The teenager and Makoae are both from Lesotho. – Sapa
A Lesotho sangoma who was found cooking the genitals of a farmer he had murdered, has been declared a State President’s patient by the Free State High Court, Beeld reported on Thursday.
Under the Mental Health Act, he could be committed either to a prison or to a mental institution, the newspaper reported.
Beeld reported that, according to a psychiatric report, Hopolong Moeketsi, 34, could not differentiate right from wrong when he murdered Basie Venter, 65, on the evening of March 30, 2009, and Jan van Wyk, 82, the next day.
Witness John Engelbrecht reportedly told the court he saw a man sweeping outside the house when he arrived on the farm on March 31.
The man, whose legs were covered in blood, ran inside and locked the door, but Engelbrecht kicked it down.
The man attacked him with a pair of scissors and an axe, but he overpowered him and tied him up.
He found Van Wyk’s naked, mutilated body under a blanket in the bloodstained lounge, and found his genitals cooking in a pot. – Sapa
An old map from 1922 showing British South Africa and the protectorates
During a debate on the 1913 Land Act today, Dr. Pieter Mulder of the Freedom Front Plus said that the former British protectorates Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland should be included when calculating the percentage of black-owned land in South Africa. All three territories formed part of British South Africa in 1913 and were also administered by South Africa.
Dr. Mulder said: “In the thoughts of many, the surface of these areas was included in the land of 1913. The one gets a 40% – 60% land distribution and even a 50 – 50 depending of how it is calculated. Until after the 1936 Act, there were attempts to incorporate these protectorates into South Africa.”
Here follows the full text of his speech:
“I have two problems with a debate such as this one:
“My first problem is that when we talk about history, all the facts, and not only the facts that suite us, should be placed on the table.
“The core of the objection against the 1913 Act is that it had divided the land between black and white and that only 13% of the land was given to black people. This is a valid criticism about injustices of the past. But it is based upon today’s facts and not based upon the facts of 1913.
“All the maps of 1913 indicate that the Union of South Africa was part of British South Africa. British South Africa in 1913 consisted of South Africa and the three former protectorates, today known as Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. In 1913 there was no question that these protectorates would one day become independent states. Botswana was until 1965 still managed from Mahikeng in South Africa. It was generally accepted that the protectorates would in the long run be incorporated into South Africa. That is why the South Africa Act of 1909, which was approved by the British parliament, provided for the incorporation of these three areas into South Africa at a later stage.
“In the thoughts of many, the surface of these areas was included in the land of 1913. The one gets a 40% – 60% land distribution and even a 50 – 50 depending of how it is calculated. Until after the 1936 Act, there were attempts to incorporate these protectorates into South Africa.
“I do not see it as my responsibility to try and defend 1913. What I do believe, is that it would only be reasonable, if in our criticism, we to try and understand all the arguments and thoughts of 1913.
“Why did this incorporation not succeed?
“Because there also other views. The chiefs of these protectorates seriously objected to the British in London against incorporation. Eventually they succeeded and in 1966 and 68 these areas became independent, which created the current set of facts.
“My second problem: It is not wrong to hold debates on the past. But such a debate is only sensible if something could be learnt from it from the future.
“The past cannot be changed through a lot of talking. That is why the FF Plus does not believe in a better past but in a better future. Little has been said about what we have learnt from the past and how we can succeed with land reform in 2013 without causing famine. Nothing has been said about how food will be provided for 52 million South Africans, of whom 70% will shortly be living in urban areas and this, while we only have 13% of good agricultural land. Little has been said about how we could better utilise the thousands of hectares of communal land.
“It is the future and this debate which we should be having now if we want to make South Africa a better place for all.”
The scene at Marikana, north west of Johannesburg, last week
Over the past few days PRAAG obtained new information about the Marikana massacre that is currently still making frontpage news in South Africa. It appears as if the miners of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) were deliberately murdered by the police as part of a campaign to get rid of the bothersome union.
AMCU was busy replacing the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) as the majority union at the mine. The NUM is affiliated with COSATU, which is a member of the ANC regime’s so-called “tripartite alliance”. Before the shooting started, police ordered the media to leave the area.
Lauren Clifford-Holmes, the multimedia editor for the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian, was prevented last Thursday night from speaking to injured mineworkers. However, she stumbled upon two workers at Lonmin who confirmed that strife between the two trade unions was responsible for the problems, as NUM representatives were not re-elected by dissatisfied miners.
Cyril Ramaphosa
Black businessman and high-ranking ANC politician, Cyril Ramaphosa, apparently owns a contract to supply labour to the Lonmin mine at Marikana via his company Shanduka. “Ramaphosa and the NUM is practising a form of slave labour at the mine,” a source said at Marikana. “He is supplying labour at about R12 000 ($1500) per worker per month, but only pay his workers R4000 ($500) per month, thereby pocketing the difference. As a former NUM chief, he is able to control the union leaders and sees to it that he maintains this grotesque form of exploitation.”
However, NUM’s rival, AMCU, demands that the R12 000 received by Shanduka as labour broker in terms of the contract, should be paid directly to workers. Particularly the rock drillers, who perform the most difficult and dangerous work, felt that they were entitled to this wage, given that this was the tariff already received by Cyril Ramaphosa’s company for work at the mine.
An ex-policeman that PRAAG spoke to, but who prefers to remain anonymous, said that judging from the photographs he had seen, the workers were not attacking the police, but were fleeing from an area where a second police contingent was throwing tear gas at them. “One could see how some of them were trying to protect their eyes and faces. They thought they were fleeing to a safe place, where the heavily armed policemen mowed them down with automatic weapons, however,” said the ex-policeman.
The motive for the mass murder at the Lonmin mine at Marikana was apparently the protection of Shanduka’s lucrative service contract for supplying labour to the mine. Shanduka has already annouced that it will donate R2 million for the funeral of the 34 workers.
The workers are mostly from Lesotho, an independent country, and areas in the Eastern Cape. It would therefore be difficult for them to defend their rights and lives against the ANC-controlled state, cooperating closely with the British-controlled mining company. Until now, the only questions abut the massacre have come from black politicians and activists from outside governing ANC circles.
A group known as the September National Imbizi did a local investitagion and talked to an eyewitness alleging that the mineworkers were “drawn into an ambush” and that they were first bombarded with a “blue substance”, after which they were shot dead during the confusion. Many were executed while trying to hide among rocks and under bushes. On the websit of September National Imbizo, the eyewitness is referred to as “our friend”:
“…our friend shows us how several people were shot while they were hiding between the rocks and under bushes. We see for ourselves splatters of blood that indicate the determination to dig workers out of their hiding holes and shoot them dead. All sorts of items of clothing and shoes, soiled with blood lie all around the scene.”
The website also claims:
“What is clear from what we are told is that this was an ambush. The video material in mainstream media showing workers charging at the police was in fact workers running away from bullets being hurled from behind. Why would workers, armed with knobkierries [African-style clubs – ed.] charge at armed police? The workers were completely surrounded and what we’ve been seeing in the media is only half the story. There was clearly a mission: shoot to kill, thus the deployment of the army.”
Other strange incidents took place.
The media were kept away from the scene for hours so that it would be difficult to reconstruct the exact events. A contact of The Star newspaper was shot dead during the massacre. The police also forced a photographer from the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian to delete his photographs. Why were the police so scared that particular evidence regarding the shooting would leak out?
A video shown in the Netherlands, contained a Vodafone ambulance on the scene. The same vido was later shown in South Africa on News24.com, but without the ambulance, indicating that the video must have been edited.
Beforehand SAPA reported the following statement by the leader of the AMCU:
“We are not safe. Our phones have been tapped,” the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union president Joseph Mathenjwa told a crowd in the Wonderkop informal settlement at Lonmin.
“We have been democratically colonised – workers work under very harsh conditions.”
After the massacre Mathenjwa demanded a really independent investigation, but the ANC simply appointed one of its own ministers, Collins Chabane, to lead the commission of enquiry. Under the previous, so-called “apartheid government” judges were always appointed to commissions of enquiry.
What Mathenjwa is probably referring to when he talks of “democratic colonisation”, is that workers are paid R4000 per month while Cyril Ramphosa is receiving three times as much per worker.
A Johannesburg businessman PRAAG spoke to and who is also in the services sector, confirmed that the ANC’s cadres have virtually instituted a system of “slave labour” in the country. The former officers of their militia, Umkhonto we Sizwe, is currently providing labour to the mines by recruting foreigners. Few, if any, mines still employ workers directly.
“Everything which the ANC described as apartheid, including the system of migrant labour, now applies, except in a far worse degree,” said the businessman. “The ANC’s cadres control everything. They have dug themselves into all sectors of the economy. They do not rule, they are in business. The state is for them just another business, with resources that they may use to enrich themselves. That is what BEE stands for, Black Elite Enrichment.”
Among those state resources controlled by the ANC, is the police force. Was it used to punish the AMCU and “make an example” of the rival union? In the run-up to the 1994 elections the ANC committed necklace murders against so-called “sell-outs”. Where tens of millions of rand are at issue in the provision of labour to a mine, one may therefore expect that an organisation as ruthless as the ANC will use all means at its disposal to eliminate a rival.
During the shooting a journalist from The Star, Poloko Tau, tweeted from the scene: “Auto guns creacking [sic] and cocked like 100 at a time, scary … warzone down here, 1st shot fired … journalist running, diving and hiding amid shots, water canon spewing water at the strikers … my contact has just been shot dead …”
After the Marikana massacre, some people simply “disappeared”. SAPA reported the following:
“Around 100 women arrived at the Ga-Rankuwa Magistrate’s Court outside Pretoria today where more than 250 protesters were expected to appear for public violence.
One woman, Nombulelo Jali, 37, wept hysterically. She said police did not know what happened to her husband Themba Khalo Jali, 40, who she says was arrested on Thursday.
‘I have come all the way from Harding in KwaZulu-Natal but we can’t find him. We have frantically searched everywhere and we can’t locate him. Police took him,’ said Jali.”
Julius Malema alleges that many of the striking workers are currently detained “irregularly in a private prison”. His friend and ex-colleague from the ANC Youth League, Floyd Shivambu, also said that many of the workers were shot in the back, which would indicate that they were running away from the police when they were shot.
This could not be verified, as a security blanket has been pulled over the area and journalists are not allowed at the mine hospital.
The narrow links between the British-controlled mining houses and the ANC may be traced back many decades. The first contact between the Afrikaner establishment and the exiled ANC was arranged by the mining company Consolidated Goldfields in England during the eighties. On that occasion Thabo Mbeki and Willie Esterhuyse met each other. Their relationship later played a crucial role in the capitulation of the Afrikaner government as Esterhuyse had persuaded several cabinet ministers that the ANC could be “trusted”.
The mining houses also played a leading role in portraying the ANC as the new government for South Africa and probably entered into private agreements with the so-called “liberation movement”.
Yesterday the chairman of Lonmin, Roger Phillimore, blamed “apartheid” for the poor conditions in which his mineworkers have to live, knowing that Shanduka and Lonmin are pocketing the greater share of the mine’s income for themselves.
Riah Phiyega
Julius Malema held Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa responsible for the mass murder: “They presided over the massacre of our people… Not even the apartheid government killed as many.”
It is unclear whether the police’s actions will be investigated internally, as the executive director of South Africa’s Independent Police Investigative Directorate, Mr. Francois Beukman, has recently resigned “to pursue other interests”. He is leaving the service at the end of the month. His contract would only have expired in August 2014. At any rate, the new national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, does not consider the shooting of 34 people “to be a massacre”.
LADYBRAND. – An American farm manager has been attacked with a machete by blacks in South Africa. Allen Rodgers was attacked on the farem Geluk, owned by the American company SBH Farms.
The 61-year old was rushed to the Mediclinic private hospital in Bloemfontein with slashes and cuts after having been attacke by three black men. They waited for him in the farmhouse after they had ambushed his girlfriend, Mandy, and tied her up.
According to a farmer in the area, he was ” attacked with machetes and wounded badly”. However, a spokeswoman for the Mediclinic, Amanda Appelgryn said that he was “stable”.
Mr. Bernard Maree of the Free State Agricultural Union, said that the attackers had stolen about R10 000 and some cellphones.
Police were still looking for the criminals on the farm while soldiers were despatched to the Lesotho border. Lesotho, a landlocked country in the centre of South Africa, was given independence by Britain in the nineteenth century to frustrate Afrikaners during a war with the Basotho and today the country is notorious for its cross-border criminal raids into South Africa.
In the ongoing ethnic conflict in rural South Africa, other whites and Afrikaners have been killed over the last few days. At Hartbeesfontein in the Northwest province Ronél van Eyk (46) was killed after taking her 9-year old son Freddie to school.
She was about to leave when three black men attacked her, Brigadier Thulani Ngubane said.
“She was shot in the cheek, arm, and breast before the men fled with her white Toyota Venture.”
Her neighbour, Jurie Fourie, said that he was eating breakfast when his cellphone rang. “It was Ronél. She could only breathe with difficulty. I phoned back when the cellphone went dead. Ronél again picked up and I could only hear her heavy breathing.”
Shortly before she died, Van Eyk indicated that there were three black robbers.
In other casualties over the last 48 hours, Owen Charles of the farm Armadale near Jansenville was murdered by farm attackers. His wife Janet, whose 7oth birthday had been celebrated on Saturday, was attacked with a knife and was hit over the head with a blunt object. She was in a critical condition and taken to the Life St. George hospital in Port Elizabeth.
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