5.2 Understandings of Traditional Democracy
5.2.3 Democracy as an Interim Practice
It was revealed in these responses that, unlike in South Africa for instance, the process of democratisation in Lesotho was not a homegrown initiative emerging from popular struggle.
126 The process of democratisation in Lesotho can be attributed to an imposition from the Europeans, or, that it came as a result of negotiations by political elites and the colonialists before Lesotho got her independence. These attitudes were articulated by the respondents in Maseru District, thus showing that they reflect critically in terms of how Lesotho was democratised and obtained independence from the Europeans. Some perceptions from respondents revealed that democracy had been a trade-off for gaining independence from colonial rule orchestrated for international agendas and managed by small numbers of political elites:
The politicians copied that rule from other countries where governance issues were run by the public instead of chiefs. Politicians like Mokhehle and Leabua then came back from Fort Hare [a university in South Africa] to negotiate Lesotho’s
independence with [the] Europeans. ... The main pressure came through western influence like UN, AU, SADC and … political academic elites united at Fort Hare University where most of them attended school, to map out how they can strive for independence within their African countries … They all succeeded and in Lesotho the first political party was BAC [Basotuland African Congress]. They [politicians] were the radicals who wanted to change the regime completely (Male citizen, Maseru).
However, it was evident that the introduction of democracy was poorly understood by the ordinary citizen:
We were given independence in 1966 before we can even understand what that means, what democracy is and how to maintain it. That is why people fought and killed each other [during 1970 by BNP rule] because of lack of understanding. There was no reason for people to be killed because of differing opinions and ideas (Male politician, Maseru).
This comment reflects the Basutoland National Party’s (BNP) refusal to accept defeat after the post-independence elections of 1970, when it ruled by force. Several killings and torture took place and some political party leaders of the then BNP opposition went to into exile (see Chapter One for more details). That reveals that there was political intolerance between the political parties during these early independence years, with potentially long- lasting implications among those that were affected. This politician elaborated that the system that was introduced was not one that had been discussed in order to accommodate existing traditions. This clearly shows that both politicians and citizens did not receive
127 proper education about self-governance and how to phase out the traditional and make the transition to modern political rule.
Moreover, one Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) male educator in Maseru revealed the complexity of transferring from chiefdoms to parliamentary rule because some of the chiefdom practices were also seen as not serving the interests of their communities:
The political parties started because by then people saw chiefs as: firstly people who were misused by the Europeans over other people, and secondly chiefs were
involved in issues of ritual murders. Therefore chiefs were hated by people and then the people joined to fight the chiefs. There were two political parties that were formed by that time: those that were in favour of chiefs, BNP and mostly composed of chiefs; and those that were against chiefs, BCP. Here in Lesotho originally there are two political parties that have divided the people: those that supported chiefs (BNP) and those that did not support chiefs (BCP) … Basotho are separated by the two ideologies mentioned above. When Lesotho strived for independence from the Europeans others were saying that they are not ready while others were saying that they are ready. The BNP were saying that they are ready and wanted to sign for self- governance while the BCP felt that people on the ground have not grasped the issue of self-governance well.
Thus, democracy was formed from ideologies that emerged partly in reaction to colonial abuse and mismanagement of traditional structures and partly as a reaction to concerns about the inadequacies of those same traditional structures. Most BNP political party elites were also chiefs and, therefore, already rulers who had more power than their BCP
opponents, whose members were mostly commoners. Chiefs worked hand in hand with the colonialists before Lesotho got her independence. Therefore, chiefs were not checked in their abuse of power and oppression of peoples’ human rights. The above quote reveals the degree to which they were not favoured by the commoners.
In fact, even today the issue of whether chiefs should remain as part of the existing leadership in the mainstream of governance is still controversial in Lesotho (Kapa, 2013).
This is attributed to factors such as: their inheritance as their birth right, where they are imposed on people because they are not elected; their participation in politics where they are likely to serve members of their affiliating political parties; and their tendency of demanding bribes before they provide services to people as a way of making money because they are poorly remunerated compared to elected leaders (Kapa, 2013). There
128 were speculations that the introduction of the local government system was attributed to the phasing out of traditional chiefs by introducing elected leaders as councillors
countrywide. Most of the duties that were performed by chiefs shifted to local councillors.
This shift caused conflict between the two leaders and among citizens, who saw democracy as eroding the traditional leaders and their powers. However, chiefs were resilient and well entrenched within different communities and regarded as legitimate and permanent leaders without a term of office, unlike the new elected councillors who served for a specific term because they were elected, and, therefore, not permanent.
In terms of how Lesotho was democratized the responses have clearly shown that the transition phase or preparations for self-governance or independence were limited, weak or inadequate, as the first political elites were not well prepared. Therefore, when put in power, they continued the inheritance of an undemocratic colonial system of ruling in a modern democratic society, as can be seen in the next theme of modern democracy.
However, this theme also distinguishes between two phases of democracy – the transition phase until 1993, which included political instability and military coups – and the more benign period since 1998.