Lost nation, new normal sucks

Since the setting up of the first coalition government in Lesotho in 2012, we have been wandering. This nation has been lost and our leadership has been seeking to navigate its way out yet there is no hope. Our nation is lost and our new normal sucks. I wish to start this week’s article with a poem called “A Lost wanderer” by Lily Alyssa. “They say all wanderers are not lost. So I continue on. My feet misguided. My vision veiled. They say all wanderers are not lost So some must have hope I cling to it Though the wind blows away Just another piece of me. The path I left behind Is a faded memory I am on my own They say all wanderers are not lost But I let go of my only hold, of life, of love The thought of returning to the past Spurs on my hurried steps A past so tangled in pain That it set me on this course With still no destination They say all wanderers are not lost But I have abandoned the embrace of the forest This barren valley greets me I stumble on this dead ground Will I know this journey’s end if it ever comes? The wandering has ceased The night is coming The air is cooling I am no wanderer I am lost” As I pen down this article, my heart bleeds. What is happening to our nation? How come we never saw it coming? We are still not showing any signs of recovery after the national nervous breakdown of Thomas Thabane’s administration where M3.747 billion was unaccounted for. Recently, Lesotho narrowly escaped a heart attack when it was announced that 75 guns were stolen at a police station in Mafeteng. Are we experiencing the collapse of a nation? In case you have not noticed, the rule of law, the democratic system and even the market economy are in doubt. Everything is failing in this country. Today’s failure of our political leadership, after all, derives in large part from the loss of control over money flows. At the most obvious level, money is being transferred out of the national space altogether, into a booming offshore zone by Asians (Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis). These fleeing billions undermine our country in real and symbolic ways. They are a cause of national decay. But they are also a result of a failing state, which is one of the reasons tax evasion has become an accepted fundamental of 21st-century commerce. There was a time when capital could not flow unchecked across borders but the Asians have put an end to that era. More dramatically, great numbers of young people are losing all semblance of a national home, and finding themselves pitched into a particular kind of contemporary hell in South Africa through mass migration. No wonder some Basotho are advocating for Lesotho to be annexed into South Africa. As a country, we have come to a point where there is nothing amiss in M3.747 billion being unaccounted for and for Temeki Tšolo to get away with murder in his Frazer Solar deal. Last week I was in a state of shock as I listened to Tšenolo FM. They talked about my friends in the Majalefa Development Movement, apparently M39 800 which was in the pocket of the jacket owned by the treasurer disappeared. The matter of the missing Majalefa money is an issue that has become trivialized and turned into a joke since hearing the issue being exposed on Tšenolo FM. M39 800 is a far cry from the missing billions. However, it has shown how flawed and compromised our approach to corruption is. The biggest problem of corruption comes when it is done by our close friends, we become conflicted hence claims against our mates quickly die down because we won’t confront them. The sad part is that when it is no longer M39 800 missing but more than M3 billion, we will lack the consistency that is necessary to fight corruption, as we do not know what fighting corruption is. It is unfortunate that my friends from Majalefa can no longer utter a single word against corrupt leaders. I witnessed many negative emotions such as anger, sadness and grief on social media after hearing the Auditor General’s report. However, we will get over it after the third day. How can a nation get over M3.747 billion that is missing from our government purse? This is a puzzling question but its answer is simple; we as a nation are tolerant of corruption. We do not see how these billions would have had a positive impact on our lives. We did not know there was money, we do not know what it was for and probably would not have benefitted us. It would have been stolen one way or another. Amongst other emotions mentioned, this is the underlying attitude I sensed from most of my social media friends. Last week guns disappeared at a police station. It makes me wonder: if thugs have the guts to steal at a police station, am I safe at home? Police stations are supposed to operate 24 hours. Where were the police when these guns were stolen? Is it not an inside job, did the police join missions with outsiders to steal guns? Police Commissioner Holomo Molibeli has a track record of not being accountable. How will he make others account? So what are you going to do about it? Complain on Facebook and move on after three days? I already see this story dismissed and forgotten by the public. To my shock, while I was still reeling after reading the AG’s report, I realised that the issue was swiftly overtaken by the mandatory vaccination announcement made by the acting Prime Minister Mathibeli Mokhothu. We often complain about capital being an obstacle to our development. Youths are unable to start businesses to counter unemployment because of the lack of capital. Doing business with government is no longer lucrative but rather burdensome, because government does not pay. I gave government a catering service in March 2021 and the year is coming to an end but I have not received my payment. This M3.747 billion could have gone a long way in ensuring a vibrant business environment, as well as returning the hope of Basotho that have invested their time and money in doing business with government, only to later be greatly disappointed. I hate our new normal, where nobody will be held accountable, it sucks. When Minister Selibe Mochoboroane was the Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), they discovered so many flaws in the system; missing funds, maladministration but no one has been held accountable to date. We hang out at restaurants and coffee shops with people we saw suffocate on national television, rather than account for our tax monies. An important lesson PAC taught a lot of people is that politicians are part of only a fraction of the corruption that takes place in the country. This is contrary to a popular belief that government corruption is steered by civil servants. Corruption in government is real but far too real to be blamed only on politicians. Public servants are equally to blame, if not more. Seeing that no one was held accountable for the corruption PAC unveiled, not even civil servants without their politician counterparts, I beckon whether justice is possible in this new normal. Even though politicians did not create most of the corrupt patterns for which they are blamed, but they have done far too little to change them and often seem happy simply to live with them. The manner in which politicians seem comfortable about corruption is scary. They are not even bothered to pretend to fight it. Why is so Lesotho difficult to change? Why has Lesotho failed to develop with abundant human and material resources at its disposal? Why has prosperity eluded the nation? Why are many Basotho swimming in the deep ocean of poverty? Put differently, why is there a rising unemployment rate in our society? Why is the government failing to control corruption and theft?