RFP documents ‘vanish’ at court

MASERU – Court documents filed by two Revolution for Prosperity (RFP) activists challenging the legitimacy of the party’s current National Executive Committee have “disappeared” at the High Court.

The applicants in the matter want the entire RFP leadership to stop holding themselves up as the lawful NEC, arguing their terms has expired.

They also want the Sam Matekane-led NEC to urgently call an elective conference to elect a new committee.

The two applicants in the matter, Cowboy Sethati and Moloi Ralentsoe, said they were stunned on Tuesday when they were told that the case could not proceed because the file could not be found.

They were at court to file their replying affidavits and were expecting to hear the new dates for the hearing of the matter.

Sethati and Ralentsoe said they spent hours at the court waiting to hear from their lawyer about the progress of their application when they were told of the disappearance of the file.

Sethati, who is the Abia constituency chairman, expressed his disappointment at the development and immediately pointed a finger at the RFP-led government, a charge the party has dismissed.

He said the disappearance of the file ran counter to a campaign promise made by Deputy Prime Minister Justice Nthomeng Majara that under an RFP government, the courts would not be abused.

Justice Majara, who is also the RFP deputy leader and the Minister of Justice, vowed during last year’s election campaign that her government would not tolerate any corruption in the courts.

“Now the file is missing in their hands,” Sethati said.

“Why is it that it is the only one missing among thousands of files there?” he said.

He said his suspicion was that “the documents might have been taken by someone who was paid to do so”.

“We will not stop, we will soon reapply as we still have duplicate files with us,” he said.

Ralentsoe said their “grievances are taken for granted by the leadership”.

“I went to court yesterday to deliver the last affidavits and that’s when our lawyer was told that the original file was nowhere to be found,” Ralentsoe said.

He said they were expecting to get a date for the hearing of the case next week but they could not after it was discovered that their file had gone missing.

“This is just justice delayed, we will go and reapply,” he said.

“The move to discourage us will only make us more persistent in our goal to elect a new NEC.”

He also said the issue of missing files in courts was the order of the day under previous governments and they had hoped that the one led by the RFP would deal with the problem.

Another RFP member, Francis Ramosetle, said they are expecting the deputy leader Justice Majara to help them find their missing court files.

“Our lawyer took five hours at the court where the file was searched but all was to no avail,” Ramosetle said.

He recalled the deputy leader’s campaign speech at a MISA-Lesotho event where she said any meddling by politicians in the courts would call for her resignation.

Ramosetle strongly believes that the RFP leadership had a hand in the disappearance of the file in the High Court.

“They think they are stopping us, but they are just making us stronger,” he said.

Their lawyer, Advocate Sello Tšabeha, said the files are the responsibility of the court registrar “who looked for the files to no avail”.

He said he was told that the files will have to be replaced as this sometimes happens.

“We will go back and create a dummy file so that the case can continue without any difficulties,” Advocate Tšabeha said.

In their court papers, Sethathi and Ralentsoe had applied for an order interdicting and restraining the leadership from holding themselves out as members of the RFP national executive committee.

“The committee comprising of the first to 11th respondents is an unlawful and unconstitutional structure not regulated anywhere in the RFP constitution,” the application reads.

They also asked for the court to direct the leadership to organise and facilitate the holding of an annual general conference within 20 days of the order.

The RFP’s spokesman, Mokhethi Shelile, said the party is not responsible for the disappearance of the file in the High Court.

“It was not in the hands of the RFP and we do not know anything about its missing,” Shelile said.

“We are not to be blamed,” he said.

Nkheli Liphoto