Cape Town - South African President Jacob Zuma will chair a summit of the SADC in Pretoria on Monday to address the political and security crisis in Lesotho.
The regional leaders will also discuss progress in their efforts to defeat rebel armed groups terrorising the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Tension remains high in Lesotho, where Prime Minister Thomas Thabane is still refusing to recall parliament - as he had agreed to do last week - until the security situation had been resolved.
Zuma was in Lesotho on Tuesday to try to persuade Thabane and his chief political rival and coalition partner, Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing, to resolve their power struggle.
He gave Thabane, Metsing and the third coalition leader Thesele Maseribane two days to agree on when they would reopen parliament after Thabane reneged on an agreement to open it on September 19.
But that did not happen. Instead, Thabane wrote to Zuma on Thursday explaining it was not feasible to reopen parliament because of the security threat presented by Lesotho Defence Force commander Tladi Kennedy Kamoli, who led a coup which briefly toppled Thabane last month and forced him to flee to South Africa.
Thabane was returned to Lesotho under heavy South African police guard a few days later but he has still been unable to gain control and remains under protection of the special task force which escorted him home.
Thabane’s proposal to dismiss Kamoli on August 30 is believed to have precipitated the coup. Kamoli has still not accepted his dismissal despite Thabane’s return.
Instead, he has emptied Lesotho’s armoury and deployed soldiers loyal to him to the mountains, ready for military action.
Thabane had agreed at a previous SADC summit on September 1 he would reopen parliament on September 19. But he backed off that agreement, prompting Zuma, chairman of SADC’s security troika - to visit Lesotho on Tuesday to meet the three coalition leaders who then agreed to meet by Friday to set a new date to open parliament.
But Maseribane said on Sunday he and Thabane had written to Zuma on Thursday to say they could not “set a sure date for the opening of parliament… until certain conditions regarding security are met”.
“Issues concerning security are not negotiable at all. We need to thrash them out thoroughly before we can even consider opening parliament,” Maseribane said. - Independent Foreign Service
Cape Argus