Pretoria News.jpg Lesotho: A military coup by stealth? Peter Fabricius, Pretoria News, 29 June 2015 While no one's been looking, Lesotho appears to have had a coup by stealth. Lesotho held elections in February and a coalition led by Pakalitha Mosisili replaced Tom Thabane's government. So, superficially, all is well. One properly elected government replaced another, not common in Africa. In reality, though, the country is being run by the army commander General Tlali Kamoli. On Thursday his soldiers murdered his predecessor and rival Maaparankoe Mahao, gunning him down near his home outside the capital Maseru in front of his children. The ostensible reason for this was that Mahao was plotting to overthrow Mosisili's government by force and was shot while resisting arrest. Few are buying that argument. His 13-year-old son who was with him in his vehicle when three army trucks forced him to stop reported to relatives that Mahao threw up his arms in surrender immediately. It didn't help. This was clearly a premeditated assassination. Thabane, all the other main opposition party leaders and many others critical of the Mosisili/Kamoli regime, have now fled the country. Mahao was Thabane's man. On August 30 last year, when Thabane, then still prime minister, fired him and replaced him with Mahao, Kamoli ordered his troops to attack both of their homes. Both narrowly escaped to South Africa. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) intervened and Thabane was restored to his country and to his office under heavy South African guard. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa then brokered a peace accord which brought forward the next elections from 2017 to February this year. Under a security accord which Ramaphosa also brokered, Kamoli, Mahao and the police chief Khothatso Tsooana - who was loyal to Thabane - were all removed from their posts to depoliticise the security forces and defuse the crisis. The accord did not say what should happen to the three after they returned. But local journalists say there was a secret pact among the political leaders that the clearly dangerous, reckless and destabilising Kamoli would not be reinstated as army chief. But Mosisili did just that immediately after the elections. And not long after that a reign of terror began. Dozens of soldiers were arrested and tortured for allegedly conniving with Mahao and Tsooana to mount a coup. When a judge ordered the authorities to produce the detained soldiers, many of them appeared in court limping or still bleeding. A shocked High Court Judge Semapo Peete warned that Lesotho was not a military state. But that is clearly the way it is heading. A few weeks ago prominent businessman Thabiso Tsosane, a friend of Thabane and funder of his ABC party, was shot dead shortly after leaving Thabane's home. The Mosisili government - or is it just the high-handed Kamoli taking both the law and politics into his own hands - is clearly targeting Thabane and his supporters. Pretoria News From: <http://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/opinion/lesotho-taken-in-coup-by-stealth -1.1877931#.VZI-Hvmqqko> http://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/opinion/lesotho-taken-in-coup-by-stealth- 1.1877931#.VZI-Hvmqqko See also "Lesotho on brink again", in The Times, at: <http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2015/06/30/Lesotho-on-brink-again> http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2015/06/30/Lesotho-on-brink-again And also "Ramaphosa urgently deployed to Lesotho", in News24, at: <http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Ramaphosa-urgently-deployed-to-Lesot ho-20150630> http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Ramaphosa-urgently-deployed-to-Lesoth o-20150630 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
