The end of Moleleki

MASERU – HE packed his bags and left. No goodbyes. No farewell speech. No parting words of wisdom. Just bitterness. A feeling of betrayal.

This was not the dishonourable ending Monyane Moleleki envisaged for his political career of more than three decades. He wanted to leave on his terms.

To take the podium as a leader passing the baton to a successor of either his direct choice or liking. To be the venerated father figure who would remain relevant even after letting go of the levers of power.

Perhaps a repository of political wisdom to whom the new leader returned for advice.

But politics is a brutal game fought with sharp elbows. Moleleki left the Alliance of Democrats (AD), a party he formed, with a black eye delivered by a protégée.

The shrewd political schemer had been beaten clean at his own game. Outmanoeuvred and outsmarted. The verdict of the combustive elective conference last Saturday was as emphatic as it was the finale.

The AD members he had charmed with his irresistible charisma for years had fallen out of love with him.

For them, Moleleki was way past his sell-by date. He represented the past they desperately wanted to leave behind. For them, the future lay with Ntoi Rapapa, the man whose career Moleleki had nurtured and chaperoned.

The student had dramatically outwitted the master. Moleleki might call him a backstabbing political novice who absconded his apprenticeship but Rapapa marches on. There will probably be a time for rapprochement but for now, the wounds are still raw and Moleleki is still licking his.

If the party dies Moleleki might have the last laugh and say “I told you so”.

But if it thrives his words would look like the fear-mongering of a man who wanted to hang on to power against the people’s wishes.

A magnanimous Rapapa preached peace and unity in his victory speech, apologising to anyone he might have wronged during the campaign.

“Elections are not war, it is just a difference of opinions on who should lead for only five years,” Rapapa said.

“We are not enemies, I am a leader to all of the members and not only to those who elected me”.

Only time will tell if that message was heeded.

For now, it appears Moleleki’s political career has reached a dead end and he leaves a deeply fractured party in the hands of an untested but ambitious politician.

Even he might have been surprised by such a dramatic and ignoble ending.

Although the writing had been on the wall for the past three months Moleleki had put on a brave face and fought on. A few days before the conference he hastily called a press conference to refute a rumour that he was about to leave for a diplomatic post in India.

The rumour, he said, was a malicious lie by internal enemies who wanted to confuse his supporters ahead of the conference.

He alleged that people with deep pockets had infiltrated the party to stir problems.

“I see government vehicles going up and down with people telling lies to the members that I am going to India,” Moleleki said, as a small crowd outside the party’s offices waved placards touting Rapapa for leadership.

“These created confusions are planned to confuse our members so that they vote for other people, not me as their leader.”

A few weeks earlier he had failed to persuade the national executive committee to insulate him from Rapapa’s challenge. His warning that the conference would lead to factions in the party also fell on deaf ears.

He was speaking too late because the horse had already bolted.

The factions had been fighting for more than half a year, maybe even longer, and were just waiting for the final battle at the elective conference. His faction was already on the back foot after

Rapapa and his team garnered the majority of nominations from the constituencies.

But even if Moleleki had nursed some hope of performing a Houdini Act, his hostile reception at the conference told a different story. He sat next to Rapapa as he watched the conference almost descend into chaos.

His opening speech was punctuated with jeers. His supporters tried to drown out the aggressive boos but it was obvious that they were outnumbered.

That much would become clear in the results: Moleleki 526, Rapapa 1 191. The other results showed a similar pattern: the contestants from Rapapa’s camp outpolled those in Moleleki’s team two to one.

For the first time in his career Moleleki found himself cornered but with no trump card to bail himself out.

This was rare.

Finding ways out of political problems has never been a problem for Moleleki. He could bounce back or prevail even when it looked like he was down and out. Setbacks didn’t last for long.

His career had been one of always finding new roads to manoeuvre his way to the next destination. Sometimes he would take smooth-sailing highways.

At times he would take dirty and treacherous roads in which he had to cross raging rivers and trudge up steep mountains. He faced jam-packed town roads teeming with mad drivers.

Yet no matter what road Moleleki took, whether by choice or forced by harsh conditions, you could always bet on him finding himself at the top.

If he didn’t get right to the summit he would always seek accommodation among the leading pack. He was there when the Basotholand Congress Party (BCP) romped to victory in the 1993 election that brought Lesotho back to democracy.

He wasn’t the one to wave the victory flag but he was among the victors. He was in the thick of things when the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) rose from the ashes of the BCP in 1998. Moleleki might not have led the way but he was in the team that conquered.

He combined with LCD comrades to fend off a threat from Kelebone Maope’s Lesotho People’s Congress in 2002. And they steered the LCD ship through the storm triggered by Tom Thabane’s All Basotho Convention (ABC) in 2006.

When internal fights started wrecking the LCD Moleleki formed the Democratic Congress (DC) with Pakalitha Mosisili, his political mentor of sorts. Although the DC didn’t make it into the government it appeared that Moleleki had made the correct call once again.

The party was out of power but had more support than the LCD and a better chance of bouncing back. And so it did in 2015 after the collapse of the ABC coalition that the LCD had joined.

Moleleki appeared to be cruising again but another obstacle was just around the corner. His fallout with Mosisili would force him to form the Alliance of Democrats (AD) in 2016. Although it looked like a miscalculation at that time, Moleleki used his party’s few seats to scheme his way into the 2017 coalition.

Suddenly, he was the master of his own political party and a heartbeat away from being prime minister, a position he had long coveted. Moleleki had won again.

Even when it looked like he and his party were down and out after the dismal performance in the 2022 election, Moleleki manoeuvred his party into the new coalition government.

The single ministerial position might have looked like a political crumb but what mattered was that the party was part of those in power.

Once again it appeared Moleleki had used his political dexterity to be part of the winning team or at least share some spoils. He had made something out of even a dismal defeat. Moleleki had found a way, as he always does.

That winning streak ended last Saturday with a defeat from which he is unlikely to recover. Moleleki could now be asking himself some introspective questions.

How did it all come to this? How did Rapapa mop up the majority of the nominations? Did I misread the mood? Did I underestimate Rapapa?

All are critical questions whose answers are unlikely to change his circumstances.

Perhaps some of the answers could be found in his opening speech at the conference. Moleleki blamed the party’s defeat in 2022 and its mismanagement on his executive committee.

“Because of the NEC problems, we came out with five seats and one minister in the previous general elections. We have lost dismally because everyone is fighting for seats and benefits,” he said.

In an apparent break with tradition, he named those he thought had become tired and neglected their duties and stopped attending meetings.

“The first member who got tired is the party coordinator Kotiti Liholo,” he said, adding that the deputy chairman of rallies, Kose Makoa, was more interested in attending the Pan African parliament’s sessions than organising rallies.

“I started suspecting that the per diem made Makoa have more interest in the Pan African parliament than the party’s NEC”.

The deputy party coordinator Tsukutlane Au also bunked meetings, he said.

“I have been in service for more than 30 years and it is my first time to see a committee like this one”.

Moleleki said the NEC was left weak after secretary general Mahali Phamotse, deputy secretary Batlokoa Makong, treasurer Tlohelang Aumane, and other high-ranking members defected to the Revolution for Prosperity (RFP).

The crux of his speech was that he and the party were failed members of the executive committee. If it wasn’t the indolent members it was those who defected to the RFP. Conspicuously missing from his speech was any admission of culpability from Moleleki.

But that did not matter much because the results showed that the people blamed him for the party‘s failure and they had shown it with their votes.

Nkheli Liphoto