Africa-Press – Lesotho. DISGRUNTLED members of the Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) are courting firebrand veteran politician, Dr Mahali Phamotse, to lead a new breakaway party.
The former RFP members have since registered a new political party called the United African Transformation (UAT) The UAT has been registered in Lesotho as an extension of its South African prototype, founded by the former Action SA secretary in Gauteng, Abel Tau.
Mojela Mafike, a firebrand RFP activist, is currently spearheading the party’s activities in Lesotho. The party says it has written to 32 MPs from different parties calling on them to join it so that it is represented in parliament.
It has also written to Dr Phamotse inviting her to lead the party. Dr Phamotse, the Matlakeng MP who has since been expelled from the RFP and is challenging the decision in the High Court, told thepost on Tuesday that she is still pondering on the proposal.
“Things like this need someone to apply deep thinking,” Dr Phamotse said.
“That decision has to come from my constituency,” she said.
She said she is still a member of the RFP despite that her relationship with the party leadership has soured. “We have different opinions on some issues.
In the letter of proposal to Phamotse, the UAT said it has the “ambition to contest elections in Lesotho and ensure that the voices of the marginalised are heard”.
“Your contribution to the party will also ensure a leadership structure fully equipped to steer the party forward and ensure its functional establishment,” the letter reads in part.
Mafike said he decided to take part in forming the new party because his relationship with the RFP leader, Prime Minister Sam Matekane, has ended. “He promised Basotho a lot of things, but he is not delivering,” Mafike said.
“Until today, his government does not have passports, and there is no answer as to when they will be made available,” he said.
He also talked about the biting lack of jobs which he said the Matekane-led government cannot create. “People are still jobless even now, instead of distributing the few available jobs fairly they engage in nepotism,” he said.
The UAT founders include the former RFP Abia constituency chairman, Cowboy Sethathi, and activist Francis Ramosetle. Ramosetle said he has decided to leave the RFP because he “felt unwelcome in the party for calling a spade a spade”.
He said Matekane has disappointed him. He said the RFP leadership always tell members to form their own parties when they express their grievances about the manner the party is being led.
“Now we have left them, and we are yet to take most of their members of parliament,” Ramosetle said. He said unlike the RFP, the new party will allow a diversity of opinions.
Sethathi told thepost that he left his political home to the new one because he is “tired of the endless fights in the RFP”. “It is now clear, the RFP is a private project that belongs to its owner who does as he pleases,” Sethathi said.
He said they ended up giving up after seeing that “the courts of law are captured by the ruling parties”. “I have left together with five members of the constituency committee here,” he said.
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