MASERU — Controversial Limkokwing University student leader Moeketsi Pholo has been banned from speaking to the media for seven months.
The Limkokwing Students’ Representatives Council (SRC) imposed the gag order on their president after he made damning comments against Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili during a phone-in programme on local radio station Mo-Afrika on Tuesday.
Pholo is alleged to have told the programme that Mosisili was incompetent and did not deserve the honorary doctorate in leadership which was awarded to him by Malaysia’s Limkokwing University of Creative Technology earlier this month.
Mosisili was awarded with a transformational leadership award for his outstanding role in improving the lives of Basotho.
But Pholo said he did not understand why Limkokwing University honoured Mosisili because he was “an incompetent leader”.
It is this remark which has landed him into trouble with his SRC colleagues as well as university authorities in Maseru.
“We had a meeting with him this week to tell him that what he had said about the Prime Minister did not reflect the general opinions of the students,” Setubata Phafoli, the SRC vice-president said.
“We reached a decision that he (Pholo) should not speak to the media until the end of this year.”
Phafoli said the SRC wished to distance itself from Pholo’s remarks adding that “what he said was not relevant to the students’ interest”.
“He commented about the Lesotho Congress for Democracy politics in the name of Limkokwing students and we do not want to be linked with what he said,” Phafoli said.
The Lesotho Times understands that Pholo could be asked to explain his comments about the prime minister to the university’s authorities today.
This is not the first time that Pholo is having a brush with the law at the university.
Last year the firebrand student leader was in the news when he was expelled from the university for “disturbing” and “delaying” the sitting of an examination.
His expulsion triggered a wave of violent protests by students which left some buildings damaged and several individuals injured.
Two female security guards and seven students were shot while a police officer sustained injuries during the protest.
In response to the protest authorities at Limkokwing shut down the university for two months.
Pholo was however reinstated at the university after he won an appeal in January.
Efforts to get comment from Pholo and the university authorities yesterday were not successful.
