Maseru - Lesotho’s crisis seems set to grow after Prime Minister Thomas Thabane wrote to President Jacob Zuma to inform him that he would not open parliament until the security situation in the kingdom had been resolved.
Zuma has called an emergency summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Pretoria on Monday to deal with the crisis.
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 re-open parliament.
But that did not happen. Instead Thabane wrote to Zuma on Thursday explaining that it was not feasible to re-open parliament because of the dangerous security situation.
Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) commander Tladi Kennedy Kamoli, who led a coup which briefly toppled Thabane last month, has refused to accept his dismissal.
Instead he has emptied Lesotho’s armoury and deployed soldiers loyal to him to the mountains ready for possible military action.
Meanwhile Thabane continues to be protected by a special task force of the South African police which escorted him back to Lesotho 11 days ago, after he had fled to South Africa.
Thabane had agreed at a previous SADC summit on September 1 that he would re-open parliament on September 19. But he backed off, prompting Zuma – who is chair 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 Saturday 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.
He added that the coup had badly shaken Lesotho.
“We want to know, should we open parliament with security from the SAPS and not from our own security resources?” Maseribane asked.
“SADC should understand that we don’t know where weapons seized from the police are, or the number of weapons in the state armoury (that was emptied by Kamoli)?”
Kamoli has refused to vacate his office and is believed to be moving between the capital Maseru and the mountain base of his loyalist troops.
“SADC should understand that we need Kamoli to hand over the reins of LDF command to the new commander appointed by the PM, give us reports on military equipment, take his package and go home,” Maseribane said.
However Metsing’s Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) dismissed these concerns.
Its secretary general, Tseliso Mokhosi, said parliament should be re-opened on September 19.
Mokhosi said the only reason Thabane was not opening parliament was that he would face a vote of no confidence if he did, which would topple his government.
He said the LCD stood by LDF commander Kamoli and would not recognise Thabane’s dismissal of him.
Weekend Argus