Moleko’s big dreams

From the dust that had settled on the furniture he could tell that it had probably been lying there for quite some time.

It was not just the furniture that was broken. A stone’s throw away from the complex were roads that were full of giant potholes.

The street lights were no longer functioning. They had been in that state for years. When night fell, some sections of the city were plunged into total darkness.

This was not a pretty sight.

One day, Moleko walked into one of the police stations in Maseru during a storm.

“The rain was pouring through the roof. And no one was fixing this. I simply said this is just ridiculous, something has to be done (to deal with this mess)”, Moleko says.

For Moleko, that broken piece of furniture was a fitting metaphor of the broken dreams and aspirations of Basotho to govern themselves with a sense of dignity.

It was a metaphor of the rot that had slowly crept in after decades of neglect.

“It was clear that this country was collapsing and something had to be done to stop it,” he says. “We were not politicians, but we realised that something had to be done. This is what triggered my entry into politics.”

As a qualified auditor, Moleko says he had never thought he would one day find himself joining politics. It was the broken state of Lesotho – as epitomised by the broken furniture at the Government Complex – that drew him into politics.

At a moment when he felt his country was “broken”, Moleko then joined the newly formed Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) party.

The RFP appeared to provide an answer to what he was looking for.

This was a vehicle he, and many other Basotho, hoped would deliver economic prosperity for Basotho.

“Most of us who joined politics at that point were saying we didn’t want to be in politics but what should we do? We can’t (continue to) live like this,” he says.

The new party leadership promised to run government along corporate lines.

Now, almost two years after that promise Moleko argues things are beginning to shape up.

During the hour-long interview in his office at Christie House in Maseru, Moleko offers a robust defence of his party’s performance in government over the last 18 months they have been in power.

He cites the beautification of Maseru. He speaks of the government’s programme to revamp the agriculture sector.

Moleko says historically Basotho had struggled to match the capacity of farmers across the border in South Africa.

But things are slowly changing, he says.

“You looked at the maize that side (Free State, South Africa) and would come here and you could see that there was something wrong. I didn’t understand what was happening.

“But now if you drive around the country, you will see that people have really taken to agriculture. Something good is happening here,” he says.

“The government has helped people buy tractors and the results are visible. Something is changing.

“Last year we bought 75 cars for the police. That had never been done in this country and we are going to do the same again this year,” he says.

“We have been addressing the issue of criminality and murders. We’ve set out the laws. These are things that you can see. I haven’t even talked about the roads. If you look at the pace and effort that the Minister of Public Works is taking for roads, it is amazing. That is despite the rains.”

These improvements, not surprisingly, have however been met with begrudging acknowledgement by a few as well as cynical dismissal by some sections of Basotho society that remains as sharply divided as ever.

“We have people who are just negative. When we fix the street lights they are not happy with that. They say ‘we don’t (eat) street lights’. And so what are we supposed to do? Just leave this country in the dark? That’s not what we are going to do. We are going to work, whether they like it or not.”

For Moleko, who was prone to throw in a few expletives here and there as if to reinforce his message, it would appear this is a case of the dogs barking at the moon. But even if the dogs bark, the chariot will continue to move on.

He acknowledges though that there is still huge room for improvement.

As Minister of Natural Resources, Moleko’s mandate is clear: get value from Lesotho’s mines and ensure that Basotho have access to clean, potable water.

“In terms of water, my target is simple: provide potable water to 100 percent of the population by 2030,” he says.

Moleko says when he first came into office, he was a “little unhappy because he realised that the focus for the ministry through the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) was to transfer water to South Africa.”

“If it is the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, what is it to develop? In terms of the articles of the treaty setting up the authority, we are supposed to provide hydropower stations, potable water, large-scale irrigation systems, tourism, fisheries and any other project Lesotho would deem appropriate.”

Without prejudicing the agreement, we are now in the process of pushing a new strategic plan aimed at addressing the development challenges of this country outlined above, he says.

“In addition to this we are electrifying some of the villages around the project areas.”

“If the treaty says we must do irrigation systems, that’s what we must do. We should sit with the Minister of Agriculture, pull their irrigation masterplan and see how we can help them.

“We should sit with the Minister of Tourism, look at their tourism masterplan and see how we can align our plans.”

Moleko wants to see ministries “breaking the silos, where people work overlapping and sometimes contradicting one another”.

He wants to see their work in the ministries aligned towards a common developmental agenda “to move Lesotho forward”.

“So in the coming few months, you will see a strategic shift at the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority. You will see the same thing at WASCO (the Water and Sewerage Company) and various other departments such as Rural Water Supply.”

“For instance we have lots of areas where we have water leakages. We want to digitise our system and put in place a water leakage detection system so that we know immediately when there is a leakage,” he says.

Moleko also spoke about an ambitious plan to replace all post-paid meters and replace them with digital pre-paid meters.

“In that way we can take care of all the debt that WASCO is owed because of the post-paid meters.”

Will such a move not hurt the poor?

Moleko says the answer is an emphatic no.

The idea, he argues, is to come up with “cost-reflective tariffs so that these entities such as WASCO and LEC (Lesotho Electricity Company) can survive”.

“It’s not for them to say there are vulnerable people out there, so they start thinking of subsidies. It’s not their business. Their business is to become profitable. If those tariffs are to increase by 100 percent, so be it,” he says.

Only when we have set the tariffs correctly can we then start looking at how we can cushion those who are vulnerable, he says.

“Once we have increased the tariffs it would mean people like you and me, large businesses, the telecoms companies and embassies will be paying appropriate cost-reflective tariffs.

“Once this is done, the issue of subsidizing the poor then comes into play. Government will then provide targeted subsidies to the poor and those in need.”

Moleko says he wants to see Lesotho become a net exporter of clean energy in the region using our hydropower stations, solar and wind farms.

“In this regard I am happy to see that the Ministry of Energy is in full throttle towards this goal.”

In terms of water, he says his target is to ensure that every Mosotho has access to clean water by 2030.

“Thanks to the Lesotho Lowlands Water Development Project and others. This is highly possible as a result of projects such as the Lesotho Lowlands Water Development Project and the Greater Maseru Project,” he says.

Under these projects, water will be provided to the lowlands – Maseru, Butha-Buthe, Leribe, Mohale’s Hoek, Mafeteng and Quthing.

“The estimated budget of these projects is about M4 billion.”

He says under the 1986 water treaty with South Africa, royalties from water sales should be used to drive the development agenda for Lesotho. Fortunately this year the royalties from the Lesotho water project have increased from approximately M1.6 billion to M3.6 billion.

“That agenda wants us to ensure that the dams built are multi-purpose dams to provide proper irrigation systems, fisheries, tourism facilities and hydropower generation amongst other things. We must sit down with our counterparts in agriculture, for instance, and collaborate.”

He says they have not even done half of what they want to do in relation to hydropower stations.

“We are looking at feasibility studies for floating solar farms in Katse, Mohale and Polihali. If we use only six percent of the water coverage from those dams, we could probably generate 790 megawatts of electricity,” he says.

He also plans to drive mining ventures, apart from diamond mining, by looking at shale gas, oil and coal amongst other potential minerals.

But isn’t this all talk and no action?

Moleko says they are already working on some of the projects.

“For instance we are building the Ha-Ramarothole solar farm that will generate 20 megawatts of power once completed. Thirty megawatts of that power is already on grid,” he says.

He says Basotho will in the next few months begin to see the private sector playing an increasingly greater role in setting the development agenda.

“This economy will be a private sector-led economy,” he says. “As such we have to set up institutions such as the bulk water authority that will sell water in bulk to the various users. One of those users could be private entities that will do the water infrastructure using their own capital, put in the prepaid meters and then agree with us through Lesotho Electricity and Water Authority (LEWA) on the tariff they should charge to recoup their capital injection including their return on investment,” he says.

“Business people should be given a chance to build these facilities themselves.”

He also spoke about the government’s plans to revamp Moshoeshoe I International Airport at a cost of M50 million this year.

He says the government intends upgrading the airport and runway in the next five years at an estimated cost of M2 billion based on a proper masterplan for the airport that is currently being prepared.

Moleko is at pains to emphasise that he is not your typical politician. He sees himself as more of a technocrat with a job to do: to steer development programmes in Lesotho.

Even with these great plans, his own RFP party is battling serious infighting at the grassroots level. There were fears that Matekane might not last his five-year term with some of the party’s MPs seeking to cut deals with the opposition to torpedo the coalition government.

Moleko says despite the concerns within the party the leadership remains focused on the task at hand: developing the country.

“My belief is that people must see the results of what you are doing. They must not hear you say things, they must see the results of what you are saying,” he says.

“The only way for us to win an election is through service delivery. People will talk but that is their own opinion. All we have to concentrate on is service delivery,” he says.

“I am not too worried about politics. I’m not here for politics. I am here for service delivery. And I believe if we get the service delivery right, the politics will take care of itself.”

Moleko says he is still to put a finger on the real issues behind the grumblings within the RFP.

He however believes these are “small issues” that could have been be ironed out at party platforms but unfortunately have become more serious issues.

“But maybe we take long to address these and they become big problems.”

When Matekane assumed the reins two years ago, the opposition was quick to paint his government as a “government of the rich for the rich”.

And that the new ministers were in it to create opportunities to loot by winning government tenders.

Moleko says such criticism is patently unfair.

“It (looting) has not happened. The Prime Minister would fire anybody who tries that. He is not here to make money. He has already made his money. So why should people think he is here to line up his pockets?”

Moleko also argues that he too would not have entered politics if the politicians had been doing their work properly.

“I would have been running my own businesses, happy, without a problem. But the situation was just terrible. Just terrible.”

Abel Chapatarongo