WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE FROM THE ROOF OF AFRICA
In Lesotho, an ill-prepared Independent Electoral Commission was handed a task many politicians and media commentators predicted would be impossible: stage a free, fair and peaceful election in just eight weeks. This is how it went.
Four weeks before voting day, on an otherwise quiet Sunday, there was a gunfight on the street near the Royal Palace.
It shocked this beautiful geographic oddity of a nation and immediately darkened the prospects for a free, fair and peaceful election.
It was Feb. 1, and members of a disaffected military faction apparently surprised two of Prime Minister Tom Thabane’s guards at a checkpoint and began firing. They killed a bystander — a young father — and badly wounded the two guards.
Why it happened isn’t clear and likely never will be, but it’s a safe bet that power and money — not necessarily in that order — were behind the nastiness.
The previous June, Thabane had dissolved his fragile and fractious coalition following endless bickering and accusations he wasn’t consulting his partners.
He inflamed matters by firing the head of the army, Lt.-Gen. Kennedy Tlali Kamoli, who refused to step down and led his soldiers as they attacked three police stations, disarmed police, silenced national radio and TV and surrounded Thabane’s office complex.
Some say it was a coup, others describe it as an “alleged coup” or an “apparent coup.” Still others say it wasn’t a coup at all, just a bit of a dust up overblown by a news media well practised in the art of over blowing.
Whatever you call it, the military leadership was not happy with either the prime minister or the police commanders loyal to him.
Two members of Thabane’s official bodyguard, also members of the military, helped him escape to South Africa, about a 15-minute drive from the capital. It was those same two soldiers who would be shot in the street six months later — or so wellinformed gossip would have it.
Thabane returned four days after the gunfight with a South African bodyguard that would stay with him until election day.
A subsequent accord brokered by South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and signed by the bickering Lesotho political factions set the stage for the Feb. 28 election and gave an illprepared Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) a task many politicians and media commentators predicted would be impossible: hold the vote in just eight weeks.
Ramaphosa, 62, a smiley-buttough multimillionaire who was Nelson Mandela’s chief negotiator during South Africa’s transition to democracy, defused the security situation by ordering feuding army chief Kamoli and police commissioner Khothatso Tsooana out of Lesotho for the duration of the campaign.
It’s not possible for an outsider to fully understand Lesotho politics, but it helps to know that in this country, known as the Roof of Africa, the community of the powerful is relatively small, almost like an extended family, which is hardly surprising given that the Basotho people have lived in southern Africa since the 15th century.
As the 23 parties geared up for the campaign, the atmosphere was tense and the population in a mood that might best be described as a mix of the cynical, apathetic, nervous and bitterly disappointed that their government, born in such atypical African peace and fairness, collapsed barely two years into its five-year mandate.
It was against this backdrop that the unexpected, unwanted and potentially destructive snap Lesotho National Assembly Election campaign began — and I was going to be a part of it. I was a volunteer election observer during the most recent national elections in Uganda and The Gambia, but working inside the Lesotho IEC under intense media and political scrutiny would stoke many emotions, from hair-tearing frustration to serene feelings of accomplishment.
African election campaigns can be loud and joyful, but they can also have a dark side, poisoned by suspicion and violence and fuelled by conspiracy theories — and actual conspiracies.
‘Resident Presidents’ — leaders who won’t go away and who employ the trappings of power to ensure victory — are a bane of the continent.
One effort to curb that trend is the brainchild of Sudanese telecoms tycoon Mo Ibrahim.
His annual Ibrahim Prize For Achievement in African Leadership offers retiring leaders $5 million, paid over 10 years, plus a subsequent $200,000 a year for life and another $200,000 a year to give to charitable causes.
The award demands a high standard of behaviour and is available to democratically elected African leaders who serve their people well while in office and retire gracefully when their mandate is done.
It’s telling that since the first award in 2007 Ibrahim’s prize committees have found only four worthy candidates.
Lesotho has had its democracybuilding problems, and clearly hasn’t fully come to grips with all of them, but there is a healthy tolerance of opposition, be it political or media, and a creditable pattern of peaceful relinquishing of power.
Lesotho’s former prime minister Pakalitha Mosisili peacefully handed over government to his successor Thabane, leader of the All Basotho Convention, in 2012. He was lauded internationally for bucking the African trend and had he done more for his people while in office, the Ibrahim Prize might have been his.
The smoothness of the transition did not last. Thabane’s coalition relationship with his Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing, leader of the Lesotho Congress for Democracy, was fraught and shortly before its collapse Metsing had threatened to gather parliamentary support to force Thabane out. To pre-empt that possibility, Thabane suspended parliament setting in motion the events that would lead to voting day.
The campaign began gearing up after the New Year celebrations and for the IEC it didn’t start well.
“Lesotho not ready for polls: IEC boss,” screamed a headline on the front page of the Lesotho Times. A photograph of a pensive looking commission chairman Mahapela Lehohla accompanied the story.
Just hours off the plane, it was the first newspaper I saw.
The story was damaging to the commission’s credibility, but the Times omitted a few key facts and had no comment from the commission. (According to the story, which didn’t have a byline, a reporter tried to call all three commissioners but couldn’t find them.)
Lehohla, a former Lesotho chief justice, was fairly new to the job as were his two fellow commissioners, Makase Nyaphisi, a former diplomat, Mamosebi Pholo, a lawyer.
As with many of Lesotho’s politicians, the three are distinct interesting characters of the sort the bland, grey world of Canadian politics no longer tolerates.
A big, gruff-spoken man in his mid-70s, Lehohla seemed out of sorts when we first spoke in his office.
The newspaper had based its story on leaked correspondence between Lehohla, Prime Minister Thabane and Law and Constitutional Affairs Minister Haae Phoofolo, the government minister in charge of election procurement.
The IEC had to stage an election in eight weeks, the chairman told them, and unless they released the appropriate funds the snap election would be “at best highly imperfect or at worst as good as non-existent.”
Infighting in government had apparently delayed the delivery of election cash.
These were “shocking revelations,” said the story, quoting an alarmed “African electoral expert who asked not to be named for professional reasons.”
The fundamental fact missing from the story was that the letters were exchanged several weeks earlier and by the time the story appeared, the funds had been released.
“All that is behind us,” Lehohla told me.
“The press deliberately omitted the dates of the letters. This is a spectacle of speculation. The perception is that the IEC is not up to the task and that the election will be rigged.”
The three commissioners’ only election experience had been a couple of byelections.
“But that was a duck pond compared with this National Assembly election which is the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. (Lehohla has an endless supply of metaphors.)
Another story eating into the IEC’s credibility was the theft some months earlier of 23 computers from the commission’s warehouse.
Numerous politicians pointed to this as evidence that the election would be compromised — the computers, after all, contained highly sensitive information from the 2012 election that could be used to commit fraud in 2015.
Despite repeated denials by the IEC, media stories kept flaring that the computer thefts were politically motivated.
One legitimate concern was the voter register, which hadn’t been updated since 2012. The country’s high mortality rate means that more than half of the 1.2 million registered voters are aged between 18 and 35, and many are voting for the first time.
Skeptics raised the spectre of identity theft and rampant cases of individuals voting early and often.
My task was to create a communications strategy for the IEC and my aim, as I saw it, was to build its credibility to some kind of crescendo to peak on polling day.
The government owns the major radio and TV broadcasters after a history of intolerance, largely respects freedom of expression, and the freedom of independent media houses, to a degree not enjoyed by journalists in many other African countries.
So I spent part of my first week visiting the various media houses to meet editors and reporters — good, dedicated people, but like many journalists in emerging economies, under funded, underpaid, inadequately-trained, overworked and in cutthroat competitive situations.
Their influence — especially the radio stations that regularly feed off newspaper content — is significant. It was by chance I met Mohau ‘Whitehorse’ Thakaso, leader of the Whitehorse Party. This was his second national election and he had petitioned the Constitutional Court to postpone the vote until May so all 23 party leaders could verify the accuracy of the voters’ list. He had also been publicly and repeatedly critical of the IEC.
It was lunch break in a meeting between party representatives and the commission and I took my plate of buffet food and sat at the table of strangers.
Thakaso greeted me warmly and explained his grievance against the commission, which appeared to be rooted in anger that he had written asking for certain reassurances and nobody had bothered replying to him.
I empathized but explained that commission staff was working long hours and encountering numerous frustrations.
His platform was based on doing more for the people than the previous batch of elected officials had done. He confided that he didn’t expect to win a seat this time around but was building for the future.
Most of the parties are marginal and have no chance of winning first-past-the-post seats but are encouraged by the prospect of grabbing one or two seats allocated through proportional representation and then, perhaps, being invited into a coalition.
Thakaso dropped his lawsuit shortly before the election thus removing one, albeit relative minor, irritant from the IEC’s list.
On one of his many shuttles to Maseru, Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African Development Community’s official election “facilitator,” came to visit the IEC to check on progress.
With a huge security detail and personal staff wrapped around him, the South African deputy president’s habit was to move at high speed around the city visiting various government, political and diplomatic players.
Lesotho’s economic wellbeing is tied to South Africa but significant too are close ties and friendships between the countries’ political leaders dating back to the apartheid era when many ANC activists sought refuge in the Mountain Kingdom.
To watch and listen to Ramaphosa in the intimate surroundings of a small, packed room is to understand why Mandela trusted him to negotiate the shape of post-apartheid South Africa with former white rulers.
The IEC commissioners and senior managers stood as he entered the room.
“Glad to see you are all on your feet,” he said with his trademark broad toothy smile. “It’s a good sign.”
“We are very upbeat,” responded chairman Lehohla, with a jocular emphasis on the ‘up.’
“We are all ears,” replied Ramaphosa. “Are you ready for the election?”
As Lehohla itemized the key issues — the cleanliness of the voters’ list, the registration of voters and political parties, plans for military helicopters to deliver voting materials to rural districts etc. — Ramaphosa removed his jacket, asking for permission for his “striptease” while doing so.
Lehohla, master of the deadpan joke, suggested the deputy president might have a future career in a nightclub.
“It wouldn’t be lucrative enough,” chuckled Ramaphosa, whose diverse collection of businesses includes the South African McDonalds and Coca-Cola franchises and a chunk of the region’s diamond industry.
It was important to counter the perception that the voter roll was not clean, said Ramaphosa, turning serious.
“I want to lessen the risk of people crying foul,” he said.
Lehohla, polite but with a tough streak of his own, emphasized the need for logistical help especially to prevent the possibility of election day violence.
Ramaphosa promised it would be forthcoming and asked for another reassurance that the commission was up to the task of delivering the election.
“Yes, we are ready,” responded the chairman. Shortly before the 2012 election, Archbishop Desmond Tutu came to Lesotho to urge all concerned to give the country a transparent and peaceful election. They obliged.
Tutu, whose moral authority is second to none in southern Africa and who was Bishop of Lesotho in the mid-1970s, might have returned for the more potentially dangerous 2015 edition had it not been for the Ramaphosa-brokered agreement — The Maseru Accord — that promised election peace.
Still, the Christian Council of Churches, whose offices occupy part of a modest low-rise building opposite the grand edifice that is the South African High Commission on the outskirts of Maseru, exerts significant influence in a country visited by generations of Catholic and Protestant missionaries.
I met Lesotho’s genial Archbishop Tlali Lerotholi several times in the aftermath of the fatal gunfight outside the prime minister’s offices. The country had become tense and the church leaders worried.
It was clear, as he put it, that “the churches still have a gap to fill” and the council had begun a series of closed-door interventions with the main political leaders, the judiciary, the army and police chiefs — each meeting beginning with prayer and finishing, according to the archbishop, with promises of good behaviour.
But the nervousness wouldn’t abate until a week before Election Day with the sudden influx of police and military personnel from the South African Development Community and rumours that sitting across the border in Ladybrand were two battalions, just for insurance.
Days before the security forces arrived there had been a bomb threat against the IEC offices.
There was no panic or attempt to evacuate but three or four days later a South African police dog handler appeared at my office door with an German shepherd in tow.
I beckoned him inside and continued to work.
“You should leave, sir,” said the officer. “This dog will attack you.”
I retreated to the balcony, shut the door and watched through the window as the officer released the dog, which sniffed enthusiastically around the office. I hadn’t realized he was going to unleash it.
No explosives were found. The IEC, and the election process in general, got financial, human and moral support from the Commonwealth, the South African Development Community, the European Union and the permanent United Nations Development Program mission, which funded all the IEC’s voter education material and several other initiatives in the commission’s name.
In particular, the IEC public relations staff, with its portable backdrop ever available for the TV cameras, became deeply involved in the launch and promotion of a UN initiative. Youth4Peace — aimed at encouraging young people to vote — launched on a brutally hot Valentine’s Day with an outdoor concert featuring a slate of homegrown performers.
Crucially, the UN chartered a cargo plane to ferry the ballot papers from the printer in Cape Town to Maseru. The risk of accident, breakdown or something more nefarious on the 12 to 13 hour trip was a risk to the election itself. Representatives of political parties and IEC managers had spent a week at the printers overseeing the production of the ballot papers — a process and product that had to be above reproach from design to production to delivery.
The arrival of the ballots in a UN-chartered aircraft from Cape Town proved an occasion of huge significance and was covered by hoards numbers of news reporters and photographers, coincided with the last and largest round of weekend party rallies.
Supporters of the four leading parties — All Basotho Convention (ABC), Democratic Congress (DC), Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) and Basotho National Party (BNP) — poured into separate parts of the capital.
Lesotho doesn’t do opinion polling and the only gauge of a party’s popularity is attendance at the rallies. Given that many people are lured with free stuff, including transportation, the measure is hardly scientific, but I went to all four rallies the weekend before voting day and scientific or not, the final result would more or less match the size of the rallies.
On polling day the entire Lesotho army was confined to barracks as a security measure. (The IEC had also solved a tricky last minute problem with the national prison guards union that was on a work-to-rule and refusing to facilitate the prisoners’ legal right to vote).
Party representatives stationed at all polling stations strictly monitor the voting process itself. Ballots are counted twice before being sent to a central district location where they are checked and then faxed to the IEC commissioners at counting central. They check them again, watched by more party monitors.
The two-month campaign had ended in a completely different mood for the IEC than it began.
By the time the campaign hit its final week, the stolen computer story had died — killed at a news conference by three detectives who explained that the machines had been stolen by a group of former IEC warehouse employees who sold them to a computer store owner who either resold them or rented them to customers who brought their computers in for repair.
It was common theft and, said the police, the computer storeowner was co-operating fully with the investigation – doubtless under the threat of a long jail term for treasonous compromise of the national election.
As for the IEC’s readiness, intense push back by the three commissioners in a series of high-profile public appearances and news conferences blunted the attacks, but the final proof was the delivery of a peaceful and efficient election, and the shower of international praise for the IEC led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
Lesotho’s former prime minister Pakalitha Mosisili is prime minister again, leading a fiveparty coalition, and LCD leader Metsing returned as deputy PM.
Mosisili’s Democratic Congress (DC) party, and outgoing prime minister Tom Thabane’s ABC polled almost exactly the same number of votes with DC winning one more seat (47-46).
Thabane bowed out gracefully. The commissioners were happy, rightfully proud, and certainly relieved.
Turnout was a disappointing 46.61 per cent reflective perhaps of many people’s view that this was an unnecessary political game of an election that betrayed the people’s trust.
Whether the coalition will last its mandated five years is debatable and much debated.
Those who know best guess that the rivalry and remaining mystery behind the pre-election Sunday afternoon gunfight could influence that.
Chris Cobb was in Lesotho at the request of the Commonwealth to work with the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in the weeks before and after the country’s National Assembly elections.