Dear Ntate Lebona,
I once again feel compelled to address you over your single consuming obsession: dethroning ‘M’e Nthomeng Majara as both deputy leader of the RFP and DPM of the Kingdom to position yourself to eventually oust Ntate Sam Matekane so that you can finally start measuring the curtains at State House.
I am compelled to do so particularly in light of Ntate Sam’s decisive action to curtail your so-called “Chillas”, which have become your disguised political campaign rallies in pursuit of your ambitions.
I like the fact that Ntate Sam has finally become a real leader and man of action. If it required your delinquency, Ntate Lebona, to awaken this decisiveness in him, then we can only thank God. You are truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Ntate Sam was right in stopping you in your tracks. You cannot swear allegiance to him, as you did after he booted you out of government , yet continue undermining him by convening your Chillas to plot his ouster.
Granted, there is absolutely nothing wrong with any citizen aspiring to the highest office in the land. There is therefore nothing wrong with you imagining yourself occupying that very expansive office at State House. There is nothing wrong with you closing your eyes at night and seeing yourself gliding through Maseru in a cavalcade of half a dozen black Lexuses, blue lights flashing, sirens screaming and lesser mortals scattering from Kingsway like frightened chickens.
Dreams, after all, remain tax-free.
What is wrong is the apparent assumption that because you are a rich, stocky, rotund man who helped bankroll the RFP, you are somehow automatically entitled to become Deputy Prime Minister then Prime Minister.
Leadership must be earned. It must be anchored in ideas, competence, vision and coherent policies capable of improving people’s lives. It cannot simply be purchased like another truck for Executive Transport.
At a personal level, I have absolutely nothing against you, Ntate Lebona.
As a woman, I can state without equivocation that you are such an admirable and adorable man. Again, you are rivalled only by Thabo Thakalekoala and former Prime Minister Ntate Motsoahae as one of Lesotho’s most devastatingly handsome men. May Thabo’s good soul forever rest in peace.
You are a successful businessman in your own right. No doubt about that.
You own a company that churns out tonnes of cement. I don’t know how far things have progressed with your plans to take over Loti Brick. If they are going well, you will soon be churning out tonnes of bricks in addition to the business that first made you prominent — Executive Transport.
You are also busy digging diamonds at Mothae.
No doubt your pockets are forever bulging with perfectly clean maloti banknotes.
And yes, you are entitled to remind anyone prepared to listen that you assisted Ntate Sam in bankrolling the RFP when the fledgling party needed resources.
All admirable feats.
But none of them entitles you to the deputy leadership of the RFP and eventually the leadership of that party.
Government by invoice
And certainly none amounts to a compelling argument for why Lesotho should entrust you with the premiership.
A political party is not a private company in which the largest shareholder automatically becomes managing director. If every person who financed a political party were entitled to inherit it, democracy would cease being government by the people and become government by invoice (Bring your receipt, collect your deputy leadership).
Surely Lesotho cannot sink to that.
Your politics of entitlement Ntate Lebona is therefore not merely wrong. It is nauseating. I attended your Chilla in TY. Needless to say, I left disappointed.
So far, Ntate Lebona, you have not articulated any serious policy progra’M’e explaining why you believe you should replace ‘M’e Nthomeng and eventually lead this country.
What exactly is the Lephema Doctrine?
What would President — pardon me, Prime Minister — Lephema do about unemployment? How would you revive agriculture?
What would you do about Lesotho’s collapsing health system?
What is your plan for industrialisation? How would you attract investment? How would you tackle corruption?
What would you do about the thousands of young Basotho whose principal economic ambition has become obtaining a passport and escaping to South Africa?
Silence. You haven’t articulated anything about these real life issues.
Instead, we get Chillas. And your helicopter hovering over us.
Ntate Lebona, a helicopter is a means of transportation. It is not a policy document.
Landing dramatically among poor villagers in a helicopter may produce spectacular clouds of dust. It may excite children. It may cause old men to temporarily abandon their joala. It may even persuade a few villagers that somebody extremely important has descended from the heavens.
But once the rotor blades stop turning and the dust settles, the unemployed young man standing there is still unemployed.
The woman who cannot obtain medicine at her clinic is still sick.
The farmer without inputs is still staring at an empty field.
And the mother wondering where tomorrow’s meal will come from cannot boil your helicopter and feed it to her children.
That, Ntate Lebona, is the difference between spectacle and leadership.
Stay in business
If I had to be brutally candid with you, I would advise you to remain in business and continue churning out those tonnes of cement and, perhaps soon, bricks.
Because your record in government hardly makes the nation scream:
“Give this man more responsibility!”
Quite the opposite. Your reign at Local Government, Chieftainship, Home Affairs and Police did not exactly leave behind a Singapore in the Maloti Mountains.
And that is where your argument for promotion becomes truly fascinating.
Ordinarily, when somebody applies for a promotion, we inspect his performance in his existing job.
We don’t ask how much money he contributed towards building the company’s headquarters.
We ask:
What did he achieve?
That same test must apply to you.
Before Basotho are asked to contemplate Prime Minister Lebona Lephema, surely they are entitled to examine Minister Lebona Lephema.
What transformational progra’M’e bears your fingerprints?
Which great reform should we associate with your tenure?
Which dysfunctional institution did you inherit and leave functioning like a Swiss watch?
Which national problem did you confront so successfully that Basotho should now collectively rise and declare:
“Yes! This is precisely the gentleman we need at State House!”
I am searching, Ntate Lebona. Scrutator has searched under the table. She has searched behind the sofa. She has even checked inside the helicopter. The evidence of this spectacular administrative genius remains stubbornly elusive.
And yet you want a promotion.
Not an ordinary promotion either.
You apparently want to leap from an unimpressive ministerial record straight into the Prime Minister’s chair.
Only in politics can such ambition flourish without embarrassment.
Imagine a pilot crashing the aircraft at Moshoeshoe I International Airport, emerging from the wreckage, dusting himself off and announcing:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am now ready to fly the Airbus A380.”
Even the goats often seen grazing beside the Moshoeshoe 1 “International” Airport would object.
As far as Scrutator knows, your only achievement at local government and home affairs was to change Principal Secretaries like your undergarments. That is hardly an inspiring platform on which to launch a campaign to become Deputy Prime Minister.
’M’e Nthomeng
Then there is ‘M’e Nthomeng Majara.
Now here is where the contrast becomes uncomfortable for you.
‘M’e Nthomeng did not arrive in public life carrying bags of cement.
She arrived carrying a résumé.
She rose through one of the most demanding professions in the country and ultimately served as Chief Justice of the Kingdom of Lesotho.
Whatever criticism anyone may legitimately level against her — and Scrutator reserves her constitutional right to criticise everybody — nobody can credibly argue that ‘M’e Nthomeng simply bought her way into national prominence like you Ntate Lebona. ‘M’e Nthomeng has earned her keep. She is DPM because she deserves the office. Yes, she does not produce tonnes of cement or bricks. Yes, she does not own a helicopter.
But she has credentials. She has experience.
She has occupied positions requiring judgement, discipline and intellectual rigour.
And she currently occupies the position you so desperately covet.
So if you want her job, Ntate Lebona, don’t show us your bank balance or your helicopter.
Show us your superior ideas.
Don’t tell us what you contributed to the RFP.
Tell us what you intend to contribute to Lesotho.
Don’t tell us how many Chillas you can organise.
Tell us how many jobs you can create.
Don’t descend from the heavens in a helicopter.
Descend from the clouds and give us a policy progra’M’e.
Then perhaps we can have a serious conversation.
Until then, ‘M’e Nthomeng remains, in Scrutator’s view, the far more credible proposition to succeed Ntate Sam when the appropriate time comes.
And yes, there is another matter that should no longer frighten anybody in this supposedly modern Kingdom.
Lesotho is overdue for a woman Prime Minister.
Not because ‘M’e Nthomeng should receive the job merely for being a woman. That would be precisely the entitlement politics I am criticising. She should earn it. And yes she has earned it.
Where a woman possesses the credentials, experience and temperament to compete for the country’s highest office, Lesotho should not manufacture excuses to push her aside so that yet another wealthy gentleman can have his turn.
We have had men. Plenty of men.
Tall men. Short men. Thin men. Rotund men. Men with degrees. Men without particularly memorable degrees. Men with magnificent promises. Men with even more magnificent failures. Men with good but destructive concubines (ala Motsoahae). Even Leabua, Machesetsa’s predecessor, was a man.
And true to character, he simply refused to concede after losing an election. Now, we learn his successor is a drug peddler? What’s wrong with all these men?
Keys for ‘M’e
Perhaps the heavens will not collapse if, for once, ‘M’e takes the keys.
And this is ultimately my problem with you, Ntate Lebona.
Ambition is healthy. Entitlement is not.
If you genuinely believe you are the better candidate, then stop behaving as though the RFP owes you political dividends on your original investment.
Give Basotho ideas. Give us policies. Give us a vision.
Tell us why a poor woman in Thaba-Tseka, an unemployed graduate in Leribe, a factory worker in Maputsoe or a farmer in Mohale’s Hoek should care whether Lebona Lephema becomes Prime Minister.
And please don’t answer: “Because I helped finance the RFP.”
The woman in Thaba-Tseka doesn’t own shares in the RFP. She wants a functioning clinic. The graduate wants a job. The factory worker wants a decent wage. The farmer wants markets.
Those are the constituencies a would-be Prime Minister must address.
Until you do that, your Chillas will remain what they currently resemble: meaningless political braais with rotor blades where broke people assemble to get drunk.
So by all means dream, Ntate Lebona.
Dream about State House.
Dream about the cavalcade.
Dream about those flashing blue lights.
Dream about hearing Right Honourable Lebona Lephema announced before you enter a room. Dreams cost nothing.
But the premiership of Lesotho belongs neither to the richest bidder nor to the man with the most impressive helicopter.
It must belong to whoever can persuade Basotho that he — or, heaven forbid, she — possesses the ideas, competence and character required to improve their lives.
For now, Ntate Lebona, park the helicopter.Bring the policies.
Then we shall talk.
Ache!!!
P/S to be continued next week……
