Lady Macbeth of Maseru

First there was Macbeth, the 1606 Shakespeare play. It’s a bloody play even by Shakespeare’s demanding standards, with Lady Macbeth as the chief inciter to violence.

Then there’s Lady Macbeth ofmtsensk, an 1865 short novel by Nikolai Leskov later turned into an opera by Shostakovich. This Lady Macbeth is called Katerina and she murders first her father-inlaw, then her husband, then his nephew and heir, and finally her lover’s next mistress. Industrious to a fault, you could say.

And in 2020 we have Lady Macbeth of Maseru, the unpretentious capital of Lesotho. Maesaiah Thabane, wife of Prime Minister Thomas Thabane, and therefore first lady of Lesotho, is chargedwith ordering the murder of his previous wife three years ago, and he’s accused of being her accomplice. She is, of course, half his age. She’s 42. The prime minister is 80.

It’s a puzzling place. There is no white settler minority and it has none of the tribal rivalries that cripple so many other African countries. It should be better than it is.

The killing actually happened in 2017, just before Tom Thabane began his second term as prime minister, but the story goes back to 2012, when he began divorce proceedings against his wife, 58-year-old Lipolelo Thabane. She fought the case, so he just moved his girlfriend, Maesaiah Ramoholi, as she was then known, into the prime ministerial residence.

Now it was Maesaiah who accompanied Thabane on state occasions and received the official financial support a first lady is entitled to – until Lipolelo won a court case in 2015 that acknowledged she was still the first lady and entitled to that money.

This judgment made no practical difference at the time, since it was issued just as Tom Thabane lost the prime ministership in one of the games of musical chairs that pass for politics in Lesotho. But in the next round of the game, in 2017, Thabane emerged as prime minister again and suddenly that court decision mattered a lot.

Lipolelo was going to be first lady again, receiving the honours and the money Maesaiah thought should be hers. Two days before Thabane’s re-inauguration as prime minister, however, Lipolelo was shot to death on the dirt road leading to her house outside Maseru.

Two months after Thabane took office again, Maesaiah became the new Mrs Thabane and Lesotho’s new first lady in awedding in Maseru’s stadium. However, Lesotho’s police quietly continued their investigation.

Eventually they found something interesting. Two months ago police commissioner Holomo Molibeli sent a letter to the prime minister. A key sentence read: ‘‘The investigations reveal that there was a telephonic communication at the scene of the crime in question... with another cell phone. The cell phone number belongs to you.’’

Maesaiah fled to South Africa when an arrest warrantwas issued for her in January, but eventually came back and was officially charged. Tom Thabane appeared in court last Monday and claimed that as prime minister he has legal immunity from any criminal charge.

That’s questionable. The king, Letsie III, certainly has immunity, but Thabane’s claim will have to go to the High Court. Maesaiah’s trial will probably have to wait until that is decided.

Just another heart-warming story of everyday folks in Lesotho politics – but at least the rule of law still prevails.