A call by Prime Minister Sam Matekane for the army to stamp out famo music gang violence has triggered a fierce response from opposition politicians. Speaking at a ceremony to welcome soldiers who had been deployed in Mozambique, Matekane told army commander Lieutenant General Mojalefa Letsoela that soldiers must now be deployed in the villages to stamp out the violence.
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The soldiers were deployed in Mozambique to fight against Islamist jihadists that were terrorising the northern parts of the country.
“Deploy these men and women in the villages and put an end to this nonsense,” Matekane told the army commander at a parade at the Makoanyane Barracks.
He said the commander should order his soldiers to “do whatever it takes to make sure that crime ends in the communities”.
“This issue of killings should end,” he said.
“We want peace here, do whatever you can.”
He said Lesotho is guided by a constitution and other laws that govern how citizens should behave.
He also said Lesotho has an army, the police, the intelligence services, and the correctional services “tasked with investigating, arresting, and detaining criminals, for us to be a better nation”.
Matekane said the Lesotho Defence Force had successfully brought peace in Mozambique adding they must replicate the same successes here at home.
“That what you did in Mozambique you should also do here,” he said, adding that widespread gun violence is destabilising the country, forcing him to ask the army to intervene.
Matekane’s call came a few days after the army’s deputy commander, Major General Matela Matobakele, told a parade that the army is aware that illegal gold miners were funding the killings in Lesotho.
“We are also aware that such people are being tolerated and allowed to speak on media platforms,” Maj Gen Matobakele said.
He complained that when they arrest the suspects “some people go to court”.
“What kind of people are we? When we arrest someone who kills people’s children you go to court to sue the army,” he said.
“Where do these people who go to courts live?”
Maj Gen Matobakele said they “will not tolerate the issue of boys who call themselves makhomosha and talk about the army in newspapers and radios”.
Makhomosha is the name for illegal miners, referred to as zama-zamas in South Africa where they have terrorised some towns close to the mines they steal gold from.
“We will not appeal to them on the microphones,” he said.
“We cannot fix other countries while ours is left sinking like this in the name of human rights.”
Maj Gen Matobakele said “there is no country that protects murderers like Lesotho”.
“Maybe the murderers have more rights than their victims.”
Matekane and Matobakele’s comments have now triggered a fierce backlash from the opposition.
They said Matekane’s call was “unconstitutional and unlawful (and) a recipe for anarchy in the country”.
Lekhetho Rakuoane, who leads the Popular Front for Democracy (PFD) party, said the two must be hauled before parliament to explain themselves.
“I have since suggested that they should be called before parliament’s Law and Public Safety portfolio committee to explain these statements,” Rakuoane said.
Socialist Revolutionaries (SR) leader Teboho Mojapela said Matekane’s instruction to the army was unlawful.
“The instructions should have been given to the police, and not the army because the police have a clear mandate to deal with crime,” Mojapela said.
“It is not the army’s job to fight crime, unless there is an exceptional situation,” he said.
Machesetsa Mofomobe, who leads the Basotho National Party (BNP) leader, has since weitten to Matekane warning him of the unconstitutionality of his actions.
Mofomobe said Matekane’s speech came soon after Maj Gen Matobakele threatened judges for entertaining cases of alleged human rights violations.
He said Maj Gen Matobakele’s charge at the judges “was a swipe at the habeas corpus issued” by the court recently.
Liteboho Mahloane’s wife had petitioned the High Court to order the army to produce his body dead or alive.
Mahloane was later released from detention with broken arms and shins.
Mahloane was taken by the army from his home in Leribe shortly after a raid that left one Mohaila Mokotjo dead and several others injured as soldiers searched for illegally owned guns.
The army did not find any guns at his house.
Mofomobe also reminded Matekane that he failed to call to order commanders of the army, the police and the National Security Service (NSS) for declaring that they would oppose a motion of no-confidence against the prime minister.
“Against this background, Mr Prime Minister, it might not be remiss to surmise that you take cue, if not instruction, from the security forces over which you should constitutionally be exercising oversight,” he said.
Mofomobe said the LDF Act provides that the army shall maintain law and order and prevent crime “under the direction of the civilian authority”.
“That was consciously inserted as a buffer against the likes of the intermittent flare-ups of lawlessness that we have seen as the army voluntaristically (sic) deployed itself invoking this clause in current times,” he said.
He said Matekane’s statement that the army should do what they did in the battlefield in Mozambique to civilians in the villages “is reckless in the extreme”.
“Mr Prime Minister, we are talking about threat to civil liberties, rights and taking of lives and lifelong impairment, as we have recently seen in such outings of our national army.”
Nkheli Liphoto
