Lesotho threatens to unleash military on criminal gangs but opposition say that’s ‘extreme’

Lesotho’s Prime Minister Sam Matekane. (Amanuel Sileshi/AFP)

• Prime Minister Sam Matekane wants military deployments in civilian communities.
• Major General Matela Matobakele warned judges against giving light sentences to gang members.
• Opposition parties and civil society organisations say the deployment of soldiers to conduct policing duties would result in human rights violations.

Opposition parties and civil society organisations in Lesotho are at loggerheads with Prime Minister Sam Matekane and Major General Matela Matobakele of the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) – after the two men threatened to unleash the military to conduct policing duties.

Last week at the Ratjomose Barracks, Matekane and Matobakele addressed an army unit that returned from Mozambique’s oil and gas-rich Cabo Delgado province where they were part of a SADC Standby Force.

In his speech, Matekane urged Matobakele to “dispatch these men and women [soldiers] to comb through the villages” to deal with criminal gangs.

Matekane also said he was giving Matobakele the mandate to “do everything in your power to ensure that peace returns to Lesotho” because he had seen how the army conducted itself in Mozambique, and that it should work the same way it did to fight Islamic extremists in Cabo Delgado.

Matobakele demanded in May this year that the legislature take into consideration declaring a three-month state of emergency, which would enable the army to put an end to the widespread killings that were roiling through the country.

According to the World Population Review, Lesotho is in the top six of the world’s most homicidal countries. 

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The cold-blooded killing of a mother and her two children in Mahloenyeng on the outskirts of Maseru in May gripped the nation. Three people are currently in custody.

Speaking on the same occasion, Matobakele said judges who were lenient on criminals should “be visited and made to feel with their skin, the pain of the victims of these criminals”.

He also called them “intrusive judges”.

Threat to human rights

But Machesetsa Mofomobe, the leader of the Basotho National Party (BNP), said Matekane was being “reckless and extreme” in calling on the army to deal with civilians the way they fought Islamic extremists in Mozambique.

He said:

“We are talking about the threat to civil liberties, rights and taking of lives and lifelong impairment, as we have recently seen in such outings of our national army,” he said in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister.

Mofomobe suggested that instead of unleashing the army, the government should equip the Lesotho Mounted Police.

“While there is nothing improper in bringing the armed forces into the remit of shepherding internal stability and maintenance of law and order per the established frameworks, there is an urgent need to reinforce and strengthen the police in all manners including manpower, resources and intelligence and foster the collaboration among the security agencies without fanning mutual contempt among them, and steeling their oversight including institutional legislated bodies and civil society,” he said.

Advocates for the Supremacy of the Constitution, also known as Section 2, said the Prime Minister and Army Commander “not only undermine the rule of law but also threaten the very foundations of our democracy and the fundamental human rights of all people”.

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They argued that the government must not employ wartime tactics on civilians.

“Lesotho is not embroiled in a war, nor is it facing extremism akin to that which plagues Cabo Delgado province in Mozambique.

“Such inflammatory rhetoric is both baseless and dangerous, as it fosters an environment of fear and instability. The Prime Minister must uphold peace through lawful and democratic means, not through militaristic and authoritarian threats,” reads their statement.

In 2018, at a seminar organised by SADC military experts held in Lesotho, Matobakele concluded that in the past four years, the military had terrorised Basotho.

Civil society pleaded that he should not take the country back to that violent past.

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