The Democratic Congress (DC) surprised all and sundry when it formed a coalition government with its nemesis the All Basotho Convention (ABC) in 2020.
With the 2022 general elections six months away, DC deputy leader Motlalentoa Letsosa draws positives from the party’s two years as junior coalition partner, and talks up its chances of causing an upset in the polls.
The DC has been in a coalition government with the ABC for the past two years. What is the party’s vision for Lesotho and why does it deserve another shot at power?
DC has a vision to have this country Lesotho as a peaceful country. It should be at peace with itself and its neighbours. It should be a country that is prosperous, and prosperity does not fall from the trees. Basotho should have a feel that they should go and produce for themselves, they are free without fear of being attacked to go and produce for this nation. In that way we will have a country which we will want to see, that is the government of the day which is the DC government should make sure that; there is no one who is chasing other people, there is no one who is making other people uncomfortable and all feel at home so that they can engage in production, engage in education engage in whatever activities they want to engage in freely.
The demarcation of constituencies has driven a wedge between political parties. What is the DC’s position on this controversial issue?
Let me start with the demarcation of constituencies: DC’s position is that, we don’t need to go and demarcate constituencies now because according the constitution of Lesotho, IEC has gone beyond the time limits in which it had to demarcate. The constitution gives the parameters to say, you cannot demarcate before this period and you cannot demarcate after this period, so we have gone beyond that upper limit. Now, section 97 (3) if I remember well, so we have gone beyond the parameters provided for by the constitution therefore it will be illegal to demarcate now. The youth with the tied all the time but for sure DC has the most youth in this parties nowadays. Well, that could be attributed to the way we handle things, we are making activities which are oriented towards the desires of the youths: beauty pigeons, you can name them all, so I think they find relevance in DC other that in other parties where they are just among the many but here you know they have the space, a special space for them.
Poverty and unemployment. Youth unemployment to be specific. This is one issue that has perpetually dominated the national discourse. How has the DC fared in this regard as a coalition partner, and does it have new workable solutions?
Fortunately, today we are going to outline our manifesto that is the issue we are addressing. But briefly let me say, we want to engage in finding jobs for our youths in the private sector. Government alone cannot absorb the youth; but we want to playing ground for the private sector to expand and then in the process absorb more youth, that is the first one. The second one, we want to employ a strategy where we forge relationships with other countries so that when they need labour, trained or untrained we have arrangements, special arrangements with them and we export labour. That is one way of fighting unemployment among youth, and you can see most of the youth nowadays graduated from colleges others from universities so they can work anywhere. So that is one of the strategies we think we want to put forth once we become government and surely we will succeed.
During the tenure of the government the DC co-leads, we have seen an escalation of corruption. This has eroded the public’s confidence in government. How do you plan to reclaim this confidence?
Firstly, we want to engage giving more power, more resources both human and financial to DCEO. Once you have that institution with the right autonomy, we believe that it can chance anybody whom they suspect is engaged in corruption. We are talking about corruption now but, but you don’t hear many people being followed by DCEO, why? Our suspicion is that, it is not strong enough, so we want to strengthen DCEO as the first step to make sure that they chase anybody, I mean including even me if I am in government. If they suspect that there is something wrong with me they should not fear to chase me, and the courts of law: we want to put more resources in the courts of Lesotho both financially and human resources. There are so many judges who are loitering out here, they are not judges, they are not yet judges they are lawyers but we are short of stuff in the judiciary.
So we think that if, we have relatively enough justices there: first cases won’t take long before they are decided and if cases don’t take long before they are decided it means we will know quickly, whether somebody is guilty or not unlike now when you have a case today, you are taken to court today you know your case will be decided after 7 years so that is a problem. So, we are going to deal with that resource shortage in the judiciary
What about crime, we have seen an unprecedented rise in murder statistics in Lesotho. Does your party have a practical strategy to address rampant crime in Lesotho?
Our solution is: we need to revitalize LMPS, we need to strengthen LMPS; there are a lot of things which are said related to crimes in Lesotho but you won’t quite see where Lesotho Mounted Police service is, that is why now days you will see LDF doing what you can call the work of the Police. So we want to strengthen the Police, its only when the Police is active that we can fight crime. Give them resources, they will tell you they don’t have vehicles, give them resources and train them properly. If they are trained properly, and they have resources we believe we can fight crime and it is so rampage.
There is a believe that the Lesotho’s education system is has become irrelevant and out of touch with the needs and challenges of today. What is the DC’s position on this matter?
That believe is there, more especially when you see many people who have graduated from colleges and universities loitering without the jobs. DC wants to put more emphasis on TVET education, Technical and Vocational education that is the kind of education which gives learners change to create jobs and employ others, but once you go to university route and this other colleges we have; most of the people who come from such education want to be employed. So, first we want to make sure we focus on TVET education and then we want to make sure that we deal bad lock we have now of unemployment as I said we are going to work outside the country. We are going to do a lot of things, we are also going to indroduce what is called the U-Service so that at least when they go to places of work, they have some experience to join the work force.
There is growing discomfort accompanied by mistrust at the growing influence of the Chinese in the public affairs and economy of Lesotho, do you share these sentiments?
Well, really it depends on which sectors we are going to refer that to; for example: they dominate factory sector, they dominate supermarkets nowadays. So they have a lot of influence there, well I think at some stage Basotho lost control of business that is why, in a shop that needs to been owned by Mosotho they will leave it and give it a Chinese there. The Chinese won’t come and push them out, but they will volunteer to leave the business and give it to Chinese so, I think with enough training and education to our people we can beat the Chinese. Surely, we can beat the them; they have a way of working together if we train our people to work together, alone you may not achieve what you want but if you put the resources together, you pull them together and go to the market and buy in bulk and come back to distribute among your shop, that is a way I think we can beat the Chinese. It’s only that we are not yet there that is why the Chinese will kind of dominate the area.
Finally, another highly polarising issue. Amnesty for perpetrators of politically motivated offenses. How will the DC handle this matter if it finds itself in a position of power after the elections?
When, I think that was last year or when we wanted to have such a bill but people rejected it; then we said ok we surrender let them face the courts and we don’t want to get people out of the court through the back door. That is not the intension, the intension is let us have such things which are so political; some cases are so politics they are not premised on legal issues that is why this people will take you to court but they will not prosecute your case they want that thing to be hanging over your head to say go and answer in court because they know its political; it is not legal. So I think we have to get rid of that.
