WELKOM – About 100 illegal miners, most of them from Lesotho, still trapped in the South African mine where 86 others have been confirmed dead have refused to come out fearing arrest. Hundreds of illegal miners were trapped underground at Harmony Gold’s disused Eland Shaft in Welkom after a fire broke out. Most of the […]
THABA-TSEKA – The people of Ha-Noko village in Thaba-Tseka are grieving. Nine men from the village were among the 86 people who perished in the illegal mining disaster in Welkom, South Africa. It will take a long time for the villagers to come to terms with the loss. When 21-year-old Motebang Khopholi left Ha-Noko to […]
WELKOM – The smell of death wafts through the air around the Welkom Government Mortuary. It is in this morgue where 86 died bodies of the illegal miners who perished in the mining disaster are kept. Eland shaft where the miners died sits to the south-west of the mortuary. It is in this mine were […]
MASERU – Lesotho People’s Congress (LPC) leader, Advocate Kelebone Maope, last Thursday called for the setting up of a judicial inspectorate to monitor the work of judges. Maope, who is also the Member of Parliament for Seqonoka constituency, was testifying to the commission of inquiry set up by the Law Society of Lesotho to probe […]
MASERU — The troubled MKM is making moves to get court proceedings suspended pending finalisation of depositors’ payout deal negotiations between the firm and the government. The auditors firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which investigated the MKM’s affairs, has already submitted the final report in the High Court recommending liquidation. The central bank of Lesotho had engaged PWC […]
AS I SEE IT THERE is a Sesotho proverb that says: Thupa e otlolloa esale metsi. Loosely translated this means a branch of a tree must be straightened up while growing before it gets dry as it would break when straightened when it is old. I am told that children of yester-year were good mannered […]
MASERU — The youth league of the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) party on Saturday petitioned Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili to reshuffle his cabinet and fire incompetent ministers. The petition urged Mosisili to restructure his cabinet, appoint new assistant ministers and dismiss some government ministers for alleged incompetence. The petition was drawn up following […]
MASERU — Blue Financial Services, one of Lesotho’s biggest money lenders, is facing serious cash flow problems that have forced it to delay disbursing loans to clients, the Lesotho Times can reveal. The South African-owned financial institution has been struggling to get enough money to give out loans for the past two weeks because the […]
Scrutator IN the media there are very few things that are as dangerous as a radio station in the hands of an excitable and riskily misguided boy. Scrutator is now very reluctant — read very afraid — to tune to 95.6 because the scatological stuff that sporadically oozes from the supposedly people’s radio pongs to […]
Bottoms Up with Bacchus JUST what is this IFMIS animal that has caused so much pandemonium in our drinking halls? Of late Bacchus has been hearing this acronym a lot even from people who have never seen a blackboard in their lives. It’s now the common alibi that some of my boozing mates use to […]
Steaming It Off THE ratio of men to women is somewhere in the region of one to five here in our little village. However, this does not give the male species the right to become the two-timing rascals they have masterfully become. We all know this is not a new phenomenon and we also know […]
Doctor’s Corner LAST week we looked at “bad breath” and how to control it. Now we turn to another hot topic of dental and social significance — the general aspects of oral health and hygiene. Oral health, by definition, means being free of long-term mouth and facial pain, oral and throat cancer, oral sores, birth […]
MASERU — American pop star Madonna had set her eyes on adopting an orphan from Lesotho if she had lost her battle for a second Malawian child. The singer, 50, however this week won her appeal in Malawi’s Supreme Court of Appeal to adopt four-year-old Mercy James. Her initial bid to give a home to […]
MASERU — When Lesotho’s most popular beauty pageant returns next month it will be under a new brand. Well, not so new. The popular Miss PC FM will from this year be known as Miss Vodacom-PC FM. Vodacom Lesotho has always been one of the major sponsors of Miss PC FM since 2005 but had […]
MASERU — DJ Counterforce has gone off the air after a decade of entertaining People’s Choice FM listeners. The presenter, whose real name is Liteboho Nkuebe, left the popular programmes Let’s Talk and Operation Teme-temeka at the start of this month. DJ Counterforce however remains with the radio station as a technical manager. Over the […]
MASERU — Newly crowned Buddie Premier League champions Lioli are on a collision course with their predecessors, LCS, over the right to represent Lesotho in the African Champions League. The Lesotho Football Association (LEFA) last October decreed that LCS would play in Africa next year after failing to register the prisons side in the Champions […]
MASERU — At last Lesotho have found opponents. Likuena will play Swaziland in a double-header next week. The fixtures come as a godsend for Lesotho whose overtures for friendly matches in the past month had been turned down by the likes of Ghana and Malawi. Likuena had hoped to get a game against Mozambique on […]
MASERU — Edwin Tšiu is forthright, sturdy and fearless. But then those aren’t surprising qualities of a man who terrorised defences throughout a glorious, but sadly forgotten, career that spanned 15 years. A fierce forward — firstly for Qacha’s Liphakoe and then famously for Matlama — Tšiu is a footballing immortal. As part of a […]
MASERU — Buddie Premier League champions Lioli have clinched a partnership deal with telecommunications company Econet-Telecom. “We have signed a strategic business partnership with Econet-Telecom,” Lioli president Lebohang Thotanyana said at a press conference last Friday. “The deal is purely commercial. It is not sponsorship. “But we can reveal that we are in business with […]
MASERU — The Thaba-Tseka District Football Association (DIFA) will hold B Division Top Five finals this weekend in in the district. The winners of the finals will represent Thaba-Tseka at the B Division inter-district competition in Maseru next month. Five teams — LHDA, Rangers, Swallows, Thaba-Tseka United and a yet-to-be-confirmed team — will be in […]
MASERU — A soldier shot and killed his two colleagues and seriously injured another one at Mokhotlong Military Base on Sunday night following what investigators suspect to have been a heated argument. The incident happened on Sunday night around 10pm. One of the soldiers died on the spot while the other was pronounced dead on […]
BUTHA-BUTHE — The All Basotho Convention (ABC) leadership is fuming. They want the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) party to “immediately stop badmouthing Tom Thabane and disrespecting ABC party regalia at its rallies”. And if this does not stop the ABC says it will be forced retaliate to defend Thabane’s reputation and protect the […]
MASERU — A rebel faction of the Basotho National Party (BNP) party says it will hold its own counter celebrations to mark the birthday of the party’s founder Chief Leabua Jonathan in October. Suspended BNP youth league president, Alexis Hanyane, told a press conference last week that the faction will hold its own celebrations at […]
MASERU — The Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Karabo Mokobocho-Mohlakoana fell short of admitting that there are huge problems at Queen Elizabeth II Hospital but remains adamant that the situation has not reached crisis levels. “We do not deny the fact that our ministry is facing challenges with regards to […]
MASERU — A senior legal officer has called for the removal of the Chief Justice Mahapela Lehohla as chairman of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Sakoane Sakoane who is the director general of the Judicial Training Office was testifying to the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Law Society of Lesotho to investigate the […]
MOKHOTLONG — Advocate Molefi Ntlhoki, the former Attorney General of Lesotho, was arrested last week for allegedly assaulting a man he accused of stealing from his mother. Ntlhoki was arrested after assaulting Lebohang Komane whom he accused of stealing his mother’s money. According to the police report Ntlhoki tied Komane with a rope and pulled […]
MASERU – A 28-year-old man, Joel Ntsooa, was dragged to court this week facing charges of raping a 76-year-old woman at Ha-Jemisi in Mazenod. Ntsooa is accused of raping the woman at the complainant’s home in Mazenod on October 16 last year. Testifying before the court, the complainant said she was asleep at around 3am […]
MASERU — The country director of Sentebale, a charity organisation set up by Prince Harry, says the organisation has pulled the plug on a local orphanage because it has failed to account for funds. Harper Brown said Sentebale had stopped funding the Lesotho Child Counselling Unit (LCCU) because the managers were not willing to follow […]
MASERU — The managing director of Lesotho Precious Garments John Leu who was slapped with a 10-year sentence for stealing a company from local shareholder is planning to launch an appeal against the conviction and sentence. High Court judge, ’Maseshophe Hlajoane sentenced Leu, a Taiwanese citizen to a 10-year prison term or a M40 000 fine […]
Crack down on illegal mining activities
AT least 84 illegal gold miners died a fortnight ago at Harmony Gold Mine in the Free State in South Africa. The illegal miners, who included 26 Lesotho nationals, are believed to have died at the mine after inhaling poisonous gases following a suspected underground fire. The disaster is the latest in a string of […]