Tensions flare up in Lesotho

2009-05-13 09:55

Maseru - An assassination attempt on Lesotho's prime minister has exposed long-simmering political tensions that have yet to ease after the tiny country's controversial 2007 elections, analysts say.

Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili was the target of a military-style attack at his residence on April 22, where four of the attackers were killed during an interchange of fire with state soldiers, according to police.

This was the latest in a string of attacks on political leaders in the country since the elections, in which the opposition still dispute the allocation of seats in parliament.

In June 2007 a curfew was imposed in the capital after gunmen targeted senior politicians and their bodyguards, including what opposition leader Tom Thabane described as an assassination attempt at his home.

Lesotho's top police investigator John Selete said Thabane's boydguard, retired army warrant officer Makotoko Lerotholi, was a prime suspect in the latest attacks.

"He was identified by members of the Lesotho Defence Force who were kidnapped," Selete said.

Unreserved condemnation

Lerotholi had been arrested over 2007 attacks on government ministers, but was released by court and fled to neighbouring South Africa.

But opposition parties on Friday angrily denounced the government for blaming them while investigations are still underway.

"We have no other option but to publicly decry and pronounce our unreserved condemnation of such treachery," Thabane said of the allegations.

With nerves still raw two weeks after the shootings, political analyst Khabele Matlosa, a Lesotho expert based at the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa in Johannesburg, said tensions could flare again because the dispute over the last elections remains unresolved.

"The issues that were contested in the previous election have not yet been resolved. There has always been simmering tensions beneath the apparent stability in the country," he said.

Prime Minister Mosisili's Lesotho Congress for Democracy won him a comfortable third term in the elections, fighting off the All Basotho Congress (ABC) formed just months earlier by Thabane, a former foreign minister.

But Mosisili's party is accused of gerrymandering the results to block Thabane from becoming the official opposition leader.

Opposition pressure

Botswana's former president Ketumile Masire has tried to mediate in the dispute on behalf of the region, with few results so far.

Matlosa said attacks could amount to "opposition pressure to drive their point home".

But experts say the attacks could also stem from internal wrangling between the ruling party and members of its disbanded military wing, the Lesotho Liberation Army.

"These people had a full military training during the struggle, but then were left licking their wounds," Lesotho political analyst Nthakeng Selinyane said.

The tiny landlocked kingdom has had four democratic elections since independence, but has also seen periods of military rule and low-level armed conflicts over past elections.

Disputed election results in 1998 triggered major protests that were eventually quashed with a brief but bloody intervention of soldiers from South Africa and Botswana.

However, the subsequent elections in 2002 were regarded as the freest and fairest since the former British protectorate secured independence in 1966.

One of the continent's smallest nations, Lesotho depends largely on subsistence agriculture, and much of the country has been hammered by decades of drought.

Ironically the country's biggest export is water, pumping millions of tonnes to South Africa annually.

Some 30% of the poverty-stricken population of two million is affected by Aids and life expectancy is about 40 years.

- AFP