5.4 Tensions Brought by Democracy
5.4.1 The Abuse of Governance
132 which had not been happening before this latter democratic period. The respondents stated that people were given chances to further their studies and sponsorships were provided upon merit instead of favouring the chosen few who belonged to a ruling government.
Respondents further stated that some even joined the associations of their choice and also participated in civil society groups freely without being intimidated. However, these
perceptions were not universal amongst the respondents. The issues of conflict and oppression during the dictatorship period introduced tension that appears to still linger.
Some observations suggested that the current exercising of freedom by some citizens has been abused.
133 decisions that come from them [members of parliament]. The laws that are passed by the parliamentarians are not addressing the needs and interests of people. They only pass the laws that address their personal needs only. I have never seen MP [member of parliament] in my community coming to us at the community [level]
with the purpose of getting the mandate from us, it has not happened. Even the decisions made are not communicated to us as citizens (Male citizen, Maseru).
There is a sense, therefore, that people understand that even though they elect
representatives to make decisions on their behalf, they are aware that people still have a right to participate in the process of government decision making - not only through the election process, but as an ongoing interaction with politicians.
A DPE educator highlighted that section 20 (1) of the Constitution of Lesotho, which gives every citizen the right to participate in government, is not practiced as it should be. He felt there should be a public participation act. He explained this was necessary because bills are made into laws without giving people a chance to approve or disapprove of these acts.
When referring to the codification of the law that deals with abortion, a controversial matter, he had this to say:
People did not approve the passing of that bill but it was made law without
considering whether people liked it or not. If there was a public participation act in place, people would use it to oppose that law at the judiciary level. Government or the executive branch is now governing as per their own interest and [government]
disregards the people’s interests because there is no room for public opinion (DPE educator, Maseru).
His concerns were echoed by others in Qacha’s Nek, where a male educator compared the current regime unfavourably with the more consultative process of traditional chieftainship:
In the public gatherings the citizens are currently provided with the decisions made, but during chiefdom system, decisions were taken from the citizens (Male educator, IEC focus group, Qacha’s Nek).
And, in Maseru an educator bemoaned the fact that politicians did not even follow their own constitution:
According to the constitution the upper house has to verify the laws that are made by the lower house before they become acts … But practically that does not happen because even the laws that they [upper house] feel unhappy about are still passed as bills and ultimately acts of law (LCN educator, Maseru).
134 Furthermore, there were indications that some laws should be reviewed and reformed so that they speak to the current times. In other words, some laws are outdated such as the Printing and Publication Act, 1967; the Sedition and Proclamation Act, 1967 and
Chieftainship Act, 1968, among others; which do not reflect the modern democratic process:
The present democracy does not unite the nation, but divides people and the present laws are outdated and have loopholes where it is very easy for people to form their own political parties…the laws are too relaxed (Male citizen, Maseru).
A major concern raised was that the current laws are too lenient and flexible in terms of allowing the formation of multiple political parties that break away from others and result in the division of people affiliated to different parties. Another male citizen, still in Maseru, echoed the same concern:
…even the laws that are in place are outdated, and are not reviewed to be acclimatised with the current times.
From these participants’ responses, it can be observed that democratically elected leaders are expected to function within the confines of the law, which is the constitution. However, it is further realised that citizens do not have the power or are not in a position to question the derailments by leaders who are not following the constitution. This indicates that government policies are embarked on with little or no regard for citizens, who resent being ignored, and also that the policies do not address the greatest needs of the people, but favour a few political elites. Although there is an increasing awareness by the citizenry that genuine democracy is embedded in the rule of law, it requires the will and commitment to the moral values of all people, more especially the elected leaders. From the above data it seems as if the Lesotho constitution, a supreme law of the country, is misplaced or is a legacy of colonial rule, which was never aligned to fit the African context because it did not accommodate the traditional practices and its system. These statements about the abuse of governance demonstrate that there are contradictions between theory and practice.
The respondents indicated that there is a contradiction with the theory of democracy as a social process in which people freely elect their members, and the practice of electing committee members/representatives of political parties that reflects undemocratic
135 practices. Most of the answers suggested that lip service is paid by politicians to the election of a government by the people, while in reality a pre-elected list of members, identified as a
‘skeleton list’, is usually compiled by internal members and then people are simply persuaded to elect members according to the list. This came out clearly from one of the politicians who said:
In my observation, most of our people do not understand what democracy is … including some of the political leaders. The common example is when electing the committee members, where people are not freely exercising their freedom to choose the members by themselves but instead abide by a skeleton [list] made for them (Male politician, Qacha’s Nek).
He added that, “it is a common saying that people have a say, while in reality it is the opposite because somebody chooses for them.” This suggests that, even though there is an overt election process for government committees, in reality internal members have already elected the committee and people are simply expected to rubber stamp the process. In other words, they do not get a real choice. This practice, as outlined, contradicts the
theories of liberal and electoral democracy (Blatter, 2008; Lindberg, 2006), because citizens do not freely elect their representatives. It was further stated, that even those elected representatives do not look after the interests of citizens, as revealed in the following quotations below. This has a serious implication for civic education in terms of fostering a more deliberative, republican role by citizens who could challenge these undemocratic practices. On undemocratic practice, a female educator in Qacha’s Nek said:
Those who are ruling, politicians are dominating the citizens/public more than it was done in the past. This government preaches freedom but in practice there is no freedom. They loan themselves large amounts of money, they travel in expensive cars with free fuel, which is payable without interest. They give themselves more privileges (Female, IEC educators’ focus group, Qacha’s Nek).
In other words, freedom is seen as selective. The politicians are free to operate how they please, but the ordinary citizens barely have enough money to travel in the local minibus system of transport. This also points to how resources are used by public servants, as expressed by a male educator in Qacha’s Nek:
Government pushes people to become corrupt because they do not see any importance of saving the resources. This is because development is only seen and
136 visible among the few elected politicians [members of parliament] (Male, IEC
educators’ focus group, Qacha’s Nek).
Another tension revealed was that only people who support the ruling party are seen to receive employment, to the extent that members of the opposition political parties are treated and regarded as ‘enemies’. The responses from individual interviewees are
triangulated from the different interview sources, indicating that these practices are rife and common among politicians throughout Lesotho. These actions impact on citizen freedoms and entitlements:
Government should stop hiring their political party members. They should stop giving employment to the people who are in possession of [a] membership card of their political parties. People with skills and knowledge should be given employment without being discriminated against (Female, elderly citizens’ focus group, Qacha’s Nek).
They do not want to step down from the leadership positions … Again they regard their opponents as their enemies … when there are employment opportunities, the opposition members are not recognized or given any positions because they are treated as enemies (Male politician, Qacha’s Nek).
Elected leaders only focus on their relatives, families and political party members when there are benefits or during employment (Female, IEC educators’ focus group, Maseru).
The respondents, therefore, understand democracy in practice as including undemocratic practices of politicians at the expense of passive citizens. This indicates that the patronage networks are prevailing and corruption is rife, where politicians only consider their relatives and friends when filling positions of employment. Furthermore:
The authorities [those in power] should reduce public spending which benefits them [alone], they should reduce their privileges … Government should review civil
servant salaries (Male, IEC educators’ focus group, Qacha’s Nek).
These quotations reflect a situation where there are no checks and balances on how the government of the day performs and implements policies. The data show a case where a patronage network system is rife and citizens pay political allegiance to politicians. An example is that of unemployment, which continues to grow at an alarming rate amongst the youth (Nwafor, 2012) while government positions are filled on the basis of being a member
137 of the ruling political party; even for those with employment, living wages or workers’
salaries have remained static, while inflation continues to drain the value of the inadequate amounts received. Makoa (2014) illustrated that the practice, by Lesotho’s political elites, of using patronage networks to sustain their rule results in reproducing corruption and
dishonesty.
Additionally, the undemocratic practice extends to official appointments, as articulated below by some respondents. This is where some non-elected members belonging to the ruling political party are appointed to the senate, which is the upper house of parliament, with the intention of being made cabinet ministers of the ruling government. Makoa (2014) refers to them as clients and supporters who extend the patronage politics. A male politician in Maseru revealed that:
All different governments that we have had in place have been selfish in terms of allocating ministerial positions. The tendency of appointing people [non-elected members] from outside [parliament] into the Senate [House] with the intention of putting them in cabinet positions should stop.
Furthermore, the elected leaders are perceived to be pursuing their own goals and forgetting about public interests:
If the ruling officials could avoid looking at themselves, we would develop as a country; they just go there to push their different agendas of building mansion houses or to feed their families and relatives (Female politician, Qacha’s Nek).
Other people [politicians] misuse others as their stepping stones, meaning that is exploitation on the side of those who do not understand, who just know how to vote with little knowledge that democracy does not end there but has to continue until when the next election day is pronounced (Male citizen, Maseru).
Irrespective of the respondents’ understanding of democracy, the citizens had also not learnt how to challenge the situation, with the result that they saw themselves as disconnected passive observers:
We just complain that we need to be informed but there is nothing we can do because they do not inform us. That is the same as the skeleton issue (a compiled pre-elected list of members) where we complain without taking action (Male politician, Maseru).
138 The above quote suggests that most citizens have adopted the culture of silence. This
reflects a traditional, communitarian form of democracy in which citizens have been conditioned to act as good members of the electorate, obeying and being respectful of leaders while also showing limited responsibility and ability to challenge the status quo (Blatter, 2008; Maathai, 2009; Makoa, 2014; Ngozwana, 2014; Waghid, 2014). There are indications that these feelings are stronger than what the more constraining atmosphere of the focus groups could reveal (refer to Chapter 4). For instance, soon after a focus group dispersed one of the female members talked freely, elaborating on the misinformation given by a former political party leader who had lost his status after the recent national assembly elections of 2012. She said:
Mr. M. is continuing to tell his followers that he has been cheated in the last
elections; he keeps on saying that he won more constituencies but then these [other political parties] stole his government. He is busy mentioning that [the] IEC is going to hold fresh elections very soon. Mme, just imagine the rural people who do not understand what is happening, they take him seriously and think that indeed he has been cheated! (Female, IEC educators’ focus group, Qacha’s Nek).
The findings reveal that political leaders are taking advantage of apathetic citizens and governing as they please. This suggests that politicians abuse governance without limits. The findings also reveal the extent to which political parties are weak and produce
undemocratic, poor and ineffective leadership (Makoa, 2014; Matlosa & Sello, 2006;
Ngozwana, 2014). It seems that there has been no clear strategy for teaching democracy when looking at the varied responses (further discussed in Chapter Seven). These findings portray a serious deficiency in democracy in Lesotho that should be addressed through civic education programmes. Without appropriate civic education it is difficult for stakeholders such as civil society organisations to help people influence decisions that affect their lives directly.
There are also tensions between democracy as a political practice as discussed in the themes in 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4.1; and democracy as a value or social process (see sections 5.4.3, 5.4.4, 5.4.5 and 5.4.6 below). These tensions have directly impacted on traditional
communitarian values without any apparent educational interventions to bridge the
transitions and their interaction with international laws on rights. The next section discusses some of the ongoing challenges that have occurred as a result of the modernisation that
139 coincided with democracy where new technology was seen to have caused several more tensions.