Basotho, welcome to the New Year of our Lord, 2026.
I hope the new 2026 calendars are proudly hanging on your walls, the festive hangovers have (mostly) worn off, and hope—ever abused in this country—has once again clocked in for duty.
As custom demands, Scrutator wishes you prosperity, good health, and the courage to spend this year doing things that actually build Lesotho.
Please, build farms. Build factories. Build businesses. Build ideas that create jobs.
And please, for the love of Moshoeshoe I, stop building political parties. We have enough of those to supply a whole large continent. If political parties were jobs, Lesotho would be Singapore or Kuwait by now. Unfortunately, they are not. They are just logos, press conferences, and recycled incompetence. So, let’s thank God - no new political parties have been formed in the last three weeks since 1 January. That’s a record for Basotho. Let’s keep it that way please.
Still, now that the pleasantries are out of the way, it’s hugely regrettable that we are now attending to what Lesotho does best: ensuring that the world never forgets us—not for excellence, not for innovation, but for spectacular, self-inflicted absurdity.
The year has barely begun, yet already it has opened on a sour note. And once again, our courts have kindly done the honours.
High Court Judge ’Mafelile Ralebese has seen fit to grant bail to the wretched and crooked former Police Commissioner Molahlehi Letsoepa—a man charged with the murder of Police Constable Mokalekale Khetheng.
A man who fled this country in 2017 while the heat was on.
A man who stayed away for eight long years.
A man who returned only when it suited him.
And yet, in the magical legal universe known as Lesotho, this same man is now considered a model candidate for bail.
Meanwhile, his co-accused—men who did not flee, who stayed put, who trusted the justice system enough to face it head-on—continue to rot behind bars.
One is forced to ask: what exactly is being rewarded here?
Is abscondment now an exceptional circumstance?
Is running away from justice the new evidence of good character?
Should future accused persons be advised by Counsel to first disappear for a decade so that, upon return, they may qualify for judicial sympathy?
If so, Scrutator humbly suggests this be written plainly into the law, so that everyone understands the rules of this very strange game.
The “learned” Justice Ralebese apparently believes the hogwash and claptrap by Letsoepa’s lawyer Zwelakhe Mda, that Letsoepa has an “unassailable defence”. Fascinating indeed.
It seems to never have occurred to the “learned” judge to ask the simple basic common sense question: If Letsoepa had such an “unassailable defence”, why did he decide to flee for nearly a decade?
We are also told by Mda- with Mme Ralebese’s concurrence – that diabetes and hypertension now constitute exceptional circumstances warranting the granting of bail. Scrutator is stunned. Absolutely stunned by this type of legal reasoning.
Even more astonishing is the finding that because the Crown did not outline its evidence at bail stage, the “foregone conclusion” is that it has no strong case.
This is not legal reasoning.
This is fortune-telling. Scrutator has a suggestion for Mme Ralebese. Instead of plaguing our bench – which Ntate Sakoane Sakoane is trying hard to reform – with your flawed reasoning, why not just remove those red and black robes and you become an official sangoma. I can guarantee you your sangoma practice will never run short of clients if the way in which you have conducted yourself in this case is anything to go by?
Since when does a bail hearing become a full-trial? Since when must the prosecution reveal its full hand in a bail hearing simply so an accused person can stroll out comfortably? And since when does a proven flight risk cease to be one because Letsoepa – a known wretched criminall – has returned voluntarily—after eight years on the run?
But perhaps the most offensive part of your judgment Mme Ralebese is not its logic—Lesotho has long made peace with illogical outcomes—but its message.
The message is simple: power protects.
If you were once a Police Commissioner, if you understand the system, if you can afford a Mda like bizarre lawyer with impressive initials after his name, then the law will stretch, bend, and tie itself into knots for your comfort.
If you are an ordinary officer—like the late Police Constable Khetheng—justice will take its time. If it comes at all.
And just in case anyone thought this was an isolated lapse, the courts quickly disabused us of that illusion.
Enter Tumo Lekhooa, former National Security Service boss—another wretched man who fled the country in 2017, another criminal who stayed away while his co-accused stood trial, another criminal now granted bail upon his dramatic return.
Here, too, abscondment is not treated as proof of risk but as evidence of victimhood. We are told he fled not to evade justice, but to save his life. One marvels at how conveniently fear ends the moment bail is granted.
Thus emerges a dangerous new doctrine in Lesotho jurisprudence: the longer you flee, the stronger your case for bail.
–Stay. Submit. Trust the system? Jail.
–Run. Hide. Return years later? Bail.
Just like Judge Ralebese, Scrutator also asks Ntate Molefi Makara to consider a sangoma practice for granting Lekhooa bail.
Is it any wonder public confidence in the justice system is in free fall? Is it any wonder Lesotho remains an international case study—not in reform, but in dysfunction?
Scrutator urges the Acting Director of Public Prosecutions – Mme Mofilikoane to appeal—vigorously, relentlessly, unapologetically. Not for pride. Not for ego. But for the sake of justice itself. For consistency. For the memory of a murdered police officer whose life now appears to weigh less than a medical report and a well-polished affidavit.
After all, the Court of Appeal had correctly nullified Letsoepa’s original bail and got him returned to prison, where he belongs.
If these decisions are allowed to stand, then let us stop pretending. Let us admit openly that in Lesotho, justice is not blind. She peeks. She recognises faces. And occasionally, she waves them through.
Letsoepa and Lekhooa are wretched criminals. They only belong in LCS facilities. Don’t these judges know that these two – even though they are facing different charges- remain partners in crime.
During their long abscondments, they spent time in shebeens, enjoying themselves and running an online “news agency” which they used to spew hatred and bile. In any case, how did a criminal dunderhead like Lekhooa even rise to lead the country’s national intelligence service in the first place. How can such a defective character be even considered a candidate for bail? What right does he have to spend even a day out of jail (his rightful home).
With decisions like these, is it any wonder that Lesotho remains an international laughing stock?
Welcome to 2026.
The year is new.
The nonsense, tragically, is not.
Ache!!!
