HI mama Masefaro
As a woman, there is no doubt you are well endowed in terms of physical attributes. You may not be extraordinarily beautiful. But you are certainly averagely pretty. You are not bad at all.
I just don’t know why you prefer the hard-red lipstick. Maybe you want a shade resplendent with a judge’s red gown. But I would recommend a lighter shade of pink for you. It would make you look immaculate.
It’s hugely regrettable that age has caught up with you. If you were younger, I would have recommended you seriously consider enrolling for a flight attendant programme. Air Ethiopia and even the Emirates airline would be happy to have you. Just imagine yourself wafting up and down the aisle in business class, clad in your favourite black and goldish hair piece. Passengers would not need any inflight entertainment. They would be happy to just look at you.
An even better option for you would have been a career as a waitress at one of those upmarket restaurants at Mandela Square (Sandton). The Butcher Shop in particular. It’s already a haven for wealthy men mesmerised by pretty women. You would have been a perfect fit there.
It’s deeply unfortunate that these career options are no longer open for you; thanks to your advance age and the dentist who left you with a tooth gap. However, the fact that these options are now totally closed for you does not justify you continuing to masquerade as a judge of our highly esteemed High Court bench.
You have done enough damage to our judiciary. You alone have single-handedly destroyed the reputation of our judiciary. The public has lost trust in this venerable institution. To that end, and in light of your latest shellacking by the Court of Appeal over how you fraudulently and corruptly granted one Liabiloe (aka ‘Maesaiah, aka Lady Dee) bail, I have one word of advice for you; RESIGN. Please resign. Judges are supposed to be revered. Their profession is sacrosanct. They are supposed to earn respect through their deeds. Yet you Mama Masefaro have become a tragic joke.
Basotho have frankly had enough of you. Out of that bench of venerable men and women, you now stand as the odd one out. You have no business being anywhere near our statute books. You have embarrassed the judiciary. You are not fit to wear that wig. You are not fit to be anywhere near those voluminous law journals. If I were you, I would be ashamed of myself.
Granted, any Mosotho appearing before you can take solace from the fact that all your fatuous judgments are overturned by the Court of Appeal as a matter of routine. But that is certainly not the way it ought to be. Not all litigants have the deep pockets to end up in the Court of Appeal. Why should those many who cannot afford expensive appeals languish in jails or simply forfeit their rights as a result of your misjudgements? That is grossly unfair.
Unless someone can establish a fund to help the poor, against whom you judge, take their appeals to the Court of Appeal? Mark Shuttleworth did it for South Africans. I am not sure there is a Mosotho with deep enough pockets to emulate him. The cheapest and best way for you is to do the honourable thing? PLEASE RESIGN.
We have our great King Letsie III to thank for not acting on one Motsoahae Thomas Thabane’s grossly irresponsible and ill thought out decision to recommend you for appointment as substantive chief justice. Now, you can say goodbye to that ambition. If ever you were to become chief justice, then Scrutator should either become the Pope or the President of the United States.
If I may ask you, how does it feel to have Nqosa Mahao as your new boss? Do you remember him at all? If you don’t, I will remind you briefly. Nqosa Mahao is that highly educated, eloquent, sagacious, and very erudite lawyer who has not only transcended academic heights by leading the law faculty of one of the most venerable institutions of learning; Wits.
He is also the man who was elected to deputise Ntate Motsoahae at the ABC conference in February 2019. But above all, he is the man you ruled against in many of your fatuous and childish judgments. You failed inexorably to torpedo his democratic election.
But as poetic justice would have it, he is the man who is now your new boss as Minister of Justice and Law. He is the man you must now answer to. He is the man who will now facilitate your impeachment from the bench if you opt to continue masquerading as a judge. How nice my sister? How things change? How times change.
You did not have to be in this situation though. You have created it for yourself. You have no one else to blame. You are being hoist by your own petard. You brought this upon yourself. The best way to become a chief justice is not through ass leaking. It’s through demonstrating competence and integrity like bra Sox, who sits somewhere near your chambers, or Bra Peete have done, just to mention a few. Seek elevation through hard work than through the backdoor.
Not everything is lost though. Your judgments will have one good use. They will serve as an eloquent example to law students or to cadet lawyers about how not to conduct the business of law.
Sometimes, I wander. How do you sleep at night after you have raped justice? After you have authored your judgments, knowing that in a matter of time, they will be overturned by the Court of Appeal? If I were you, I would not sleep. My conscience would savage my inner being. But that’s perhaps because I have a conscience.
After the demise of Ntate Motsoahae, we can now only salivate that you are not going to be chief justice anymore. If Ntate Majoro tries to give you a piece of the cherry, he will face fierce resistance.
There is also the inappropriateness of having a woman with a husband accused of being a modern day Al Capone getting catapulted to head the judiciary. Again, we have our King Letsie III to thank for refusing to appoint you.
Surely, it cannot be that when hubby came into the home with fat wallets and boxes stuffed with all that cash, you did not ask where all the unplanned moolah was coming from? In fact, it should have made you nervous. If you were true to your calling as a judge, you should have been the first to report him to the police. You didn’t. And perhaps, the moolah meant for the impoverished social grants recipients partly ended up subsidizing that red lipstick. I don’t know really.
But the whole thing is disgusting. I have been anxiously waiting to see what happens? Are you going to be the judge in your husband’s case? Will you hijack the case again even if you won’t be the judge on call? Are you going to convict him? What sentence will you give him? It’s interesting to see how you handle this one.
Let’s close the very sad chapter you opened for the judiciary, ‘M’e. Please resign and save yourself the ignominy of impeachment. You will certainly lose that Hlaele case. There is no other way in light of your anthropological incompetence.
The highly respected Kelebone Maope has summarised the issue of who you are very ably. Listen to this carefully.
“I taught her law at the National University of Lesotho (NUL) so I would say I have a good knowledge of her conduct. I have also noted with concern a record of her cases which were overturned by the Court of Appeal.
“I remember way back when she granted bail to a member of one of the security agencies without giving the police a chance to oppose the bail. Soon after the granting of bail, the accused fled the country.
“Granting ‘Maesaiah bail and the manner in which it was done was just a repetition of what she is used to doing. I am not sure whether it is because she does not know what to do or she is simply ignoring the right procedure.
There are a lot of issues about which would take forever to discuss but all in all I would say she is unfit to remain a judge,” declares Adv Maope, as reported elsewhere in this newspaper. Many legal fundis agree with him. But more importantly, Sctutaror agrees with him.
It’s hard to surmise why you behave the way you behave ‘M’e Mahase. It could be straight incompetence. It could be straight ignorance. It could be simple laziness. It could be straight witlessness. It could be a combination of all. Whatever it is, your time is up.
Before you go, I have only one thing to thank you for. You were part of that gallant team of judges who in May 2018 ruled in my favour by outlawing criminal defamation. Remember that column of mine that enraged Kamoli before he went on a killing spree and before he took me to court. You did the right thing by concurring with Judge Moroke Mokhesi and Teboho Moiloa.
You were right to uphold my rights to excoriate, scold and annoy. I am sure you are annoyed by me now. But you did the right thing to concur with Judge Mokhesi. Judging by the ineptiness of the judgments you write on your own, I am not sure whether you concurred with Judge Mokhesi after you actually read his judgment and after you applied your mind to the legal issues raised. Whatever happened, you did the right thing.
What is left is for you to do another right thing; ie resign from the bench. Lesotho cannot afford you anymore? We can do without your judicial stench. It’s either you quit or I mobilise for your sacking. The choice is yours. Since waitressing is no longer an option for you, I reiterate that you go into politics.
Form a party with Lady Dee, with you as president and her as deputy or vice versa. You would make a perfect combination. I suggest you name you party HH.
Hoopla, Hoopla in full. Who knows, with Lesotho’s stroppy electoral system, you can actually end up with one PR seat. Then the fight will begin between the two of you over who takes that seat.
That would be the most interesting story to watch. It will be first degree entertainment. That is assuming of course Lady Dee would be around to fight for the seat. She might be a long-term guest at Maseru Maximum P.
Ache!!!
