Africa-Press – Lesotho. FOR some time now I have been responding to Professor Mafa Sejanamane’s distorted analyses on the politics of Lesotho. It is sad that more often than not, one finds himself compelled to respond to his dangerous assertions.
An Irish politician who was also a political philosopher once said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of Evil is that Good Men do nothing”. Sejanamane appears to have an unhealthy obsession with what he sees as an imminent collapse of the current coalition government.
He has also convinced himself that Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili and former army General Tlali Kamoli triggered the collapse of Thomas Thabane’s coalition government in 2014.
From the onset it is important to point out that Sejanamane is a card-carrying and office-holding member of the All Basotho Convention (ABC). More precisely, he is deputy secretary for publicity.
I mention this so that readers of his articles remember that they are not consuming the words and ideas of a neutral academic. Despite being a political scholar I will not pretend to be impartial, like he does, for I am an employee of this government.
My position as adviser to the Prime Minister allows me to defend him against attacks from the likes of Sejanamane. Sejanamane should come out in the open and clearly state that he is fighting his own political war against the government.
Indeed he is still grieving at the collapse of his government. The challenge he is having is that he failed to advise Thabane to respect Basotho and Lesotho.
Sometime in September /October 2016 he professed that the Mosisili-led government was going to collapse. Yet the government is still here and it will be here until end of February 2020.
Maybe as an apprentice prophet he should go back to his Sangoma to claim back his school fees. As if his off the mark prediction is not enough the professor now claims that Mosisili is ruling from the grave, an outrageous proposition unbefitting on his status.
In another fallacious statement he claims that Monyane Moleleki (MP) has formed his new party with 50 percent of Members of Parliament (MPs). The ABC and other parties in parliament should be appalled by this false statement which insinuates that their MPs have formed Moleleki’s party.
By the time of his writing Moleleki’s party had not even gone past the registration test at the Independent Electoral Commission. How Sejanamane came to this conclusion is beyond my comprehension.
He comes up with another even bigger claim, to the effect that the Prime Minister has failed to appoint Cabinet Ministers. What gives that impression, I don’t know.
There are 120 members of the National Assembly readily available for appointment. This is nothing but sheer ignorance and an insult to our parliamentarians.
Since when does the PM have a time-frame to make Cabinet appointments? Had Sejanamane understood his “Introduction to Politics” he would have discovered that the PM can appoint any member of the National Assembly as and when he feels like it.
The PM does that and he does it at his own time and is under no obligation to consult Sejanamane. This is the man who dismally failed to become a Vice Chancellor twice but has the audacity to claim that the prime minister is unable to appoint Cabinet members.
He is so local in his thinking and his conceptualisation of issues, especially on politics which he claims to have mastered at the highest academic level.
It might have been this little knowledge that caused him to be kicked out of Zimbabwe a few years ago. He is yet to tell us why he left Zimbabwe under doggy circumstances.
The phantom connivance
Sejanamane’s claim that the Prime Minister connived with the Speaker to close Parliament is not only mischievous but misleading.
Parliament was adjourned for the Christmas break and nothing more. In any case, the Prime Minister, as head of government, cannot dictate to the Speaker of Parliament.
It is shocking to note a whole professor is not even aware of the concept of separation of powers under the Westminster system which we follow. The Executive, Legislature and Judiciary do not order each other around.
Even a first year law student fully understands this concept. One expects Sejanamane to know better. Unfortunately he sounds very ignorant when it comes to these crucial things.
Furthermore, there is still a High Court challenge pending regarding this matter, but Sejanamane has the nerve to accuse the Prime Minister and Honourable Madam Speaker of connivance.
Why is he jumping the gun then?
It would have been advisable to wait for the outcome of the case rather than smear the Prime Minister and the Speaker with lies.
These are naked lies because in his article he failed to adduce evidence in this regard. It is wrong to prejudge the case before the court makes determination.
He also accuses the Speaker of ignoring interruption from MPs. On this I think the Professor is suffering from a serious deficit of the English language.
Interruptions are meant to be ignored, that’s why they are interruptions. I wonder what he expected the Speaker to have done. In fact, interruptions are a norm in any parliament.
Sejanamane has never been a Speaker of Parliament and he cannot lecture the Speaker about how to manage interruptions. Sejanamane makes a treasonous claim that the Prime Minister is making all efforts to prevent an effective successor government.
The question is which government is he talking about? You cannot even discuss another government while there is government in power. If this is not treasonous then I don’t know what is.
Mad about promotions
His allegation that the Prime Minister is promoting people to strategic positions is also mischievous. The Prime Minister is being accused for performing his mandate.
When you are the Prime Minister, this is exactly your role. He has the power to promote people to strategic positions just like former Prime Minister Thabane did when he was in power when he unilaterally promoted Dr.
Kananelo Mosito to the Appeal Court ahead of other senior Judges. It is the Prime Minister’s prerogative to do just that. He sobs that the Prime Minister promoted the Army Commander and Government Secretary before he left office in 2012.
Was he not supposed to do that? He accuses the PM of prolonging his influence since 1998. So what? In fact, Sejanamane as a politician should be aware that this is exactly what politics is all about, influence.
In fact, for any government to have its policies executed effectively it must appoint its people to key positions. The problem is that Sejanamane writes without reading.
The Kamoli -Mosisili’s axis
I now turn to his allegation that Mosisili appointed General Tlali Kamoli in order to destabilise Thabane’s government. This accusation is so serious that Sejanamane should consider himself lucky he is not facing charges.
What evidence can he proffer to justify this accusation?
He has so much negative obsession against the PM and General Kamoli to the extent that he finds it convenient to smear their names in all manner of forms.
I am however not surprised because this accusation shows that Sejanamane is staying true to the ABC habit of smearing people with lies. In fact this is a solid tradition of his party (ABC).
The appointment of General Kamoli has nothing to do, whatsoever, with the collapse of Thabane’s government. For Sejanamane to state that the collapse of the 2012 coalition was due to General Kamoli is absurd and unfortunate.
He appears to place all the ills of the Thabane-led coalition on Kamoli. His obsession with General Kamoli runs deep. He calls the Legal notice that retires General Kamoli “inelegant and based on an obscure law”.
One wonders what he expected. He further claims that General Kamoli left on his own terms yet he cites the Legal notice without disclosing those terms.
He questions the appointment of General Mots’omots’o and accuses him for always obeying Kamolis orders even during his absence. Sejanamane has a serious challenge here because in military culture there is what is called discipline.
Did he want Mots’omots’o to disobey his boss then? I hope he did not want Mots’omots’o to mutineer against his authority. Maybe this is what the professor is propagating and he wants to see a state of anarchy in the Lesotho Defense Force (LDF).
It has become a common cause recently that when politicians like Sejanamane have run out of their political ammunition, they have a propensity to demonise the army.
Basotho know this pattern now. At times Sejanamane resorts to trivial details to justify his ridiculous points. He claims that members of LDF attended the funeral of General Kamoli’s sister at Bobete.
Blinded by hatred, the professor fails to realise that these people are his former colleagues just like members of the National University of Lesotho who attended Sejanamane’s son’s funeral.
People do not need permission from anybody, Sejanamane and or his ABC colleagues to attend funerals. They follow their own conscience. In another twist, Sejanamane questions the promotion of members of the Army and the Police.
He even claims that the Prime Minister promoted officers yet he did nothing of that sort. He is a Prime Minister not a member of any of those institutions.
He is far away from these institutions. The view that these promotions signify the PM’s strategy to control the armed forces is mischievous. Sejanamane’s obsessions have taken him so far to the extent that he is now slaps individuals with charges of murder and high treason.
Yet he is the one to be charged with high treason for saying the Prime Minister is blocking a successor government while there is government in place.
Sejanamane’s ignorance
Sejanamane also attacks the appointment of the Director of National Security Service (NSS) Mr. Lekhooa. With a blind ignorance he claims that the NSS is a civilian institution that must be led by a civilian.
Sejanamane’s illiteracy when it comes to security issues is overwhelming. The NSS is a Security establishment and not a civilian one. Their training is unique and not civilian. Their recruitment is also different from that of a civilian institution.
Since Sejanamane is blinded by extreme negativity and ignorance, he is not even aware that in 2011, General David Petraeus was appointed to head the United States of America CIA.
For that matter, the head of that institution in the USA must have had prior and commendable Military experience. In Israel, the National Intelligence “Mossad” is led by a military man also a General in rank.
Finally in Pakistan the head of a National Intelligence is a Lieutenant General. It is incomprehensible where Sejanamane got this idea that NSS is a civilian institution, therefore, it must be led by a civilian like him.
They say ignorance is like a disease. Sejanamane claims further that the appointment of Director Lekhooa is meant to frustrate justice. The question is what does he know about justice? During the reign of his party ABC, 2012-2015, there was no justice at all even at the National University of Lesotho where Sejanamane was Acting Vice Chancellor.
People were threatened with letters contrived to prevent them from claiming their terminal benefits. Sejanamane is the last person in Lesotho, if not the whole world, to lecture others about Justice.
I would like to conclude that Sejanamane’s insults will not move the Prime Minister and this government. Like they say, “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”.
