Two MPs flee

Staff Reporter

MASERU

TWO ALL Basotho Convention (ABC) MPs have fled the country claiming their lives are in danger.

Maseru Constituency’s Lesego Makgothi and Habofanoe Lehana who represents Khafung Constituency skipped the country on Monday.

This brings the number of opposition MPs who have fled the country to six. The first three to run away are the ABC leader, former Prime Minister Thomas Thabane, the Basotho National Party (BNP) leader Thesele ’Maseribane and the leader of the Reformed Congress of Lesotho (RCL) Keketso Rantšo.

They left the country in May after alleging that their lives were also in danger. In February this year the ABC’s Qoaling MP also fled to South Africa.

Makgothi told thepost last night that he did not regard himself to have enemies that would want to kill him and when he received tip offs on Saturday that he should run away he did not panic.

He said the first indication that there were movements to kill him came from a Facebook wall of a person who uses a pseudonym Makhaola Qamo.

“Facebook being Facebook, I did not take that warning seriously although I know that 90 percent of things said by Makhaola Qalo happen exactly as he has said them,” Makgothi said.

He said from there he received several calls from concerned acquintances who warned him that he was going to be killed but he did not take them seriously too.

“Then I received a call from a famous Mofula oa Poho who usually contributes to several phone-in programmes and he told me that I should run away immediately. I did nothing about that too,” he said.

“About 10 minutes later a journalist whose name I will not mention called me saying I should flee within 15 minutes. This warning too I did not take seriously.”

He said he only started panicking when he received calls from friends who are in the armed forces telling him to leave the country within 10 minutes.

Makgothi said in 10 minutes time a tinted Toyota Tazz arrived at his gate and parked there for about five minutes until his wife went there to investigate.

“At that time my neighbours were arriving with their cars, they were from work. I think these people in the Tazz could have shot my wife there and then but they realised that the passage they had entered had no exit on the other side,” he said.

“Also the arrival of my neighbours, I think, made them to retreat”.

“At the same time, we had called others from the security forces and when they arrived the Tazz sped away.”

Makgothi said he would not reveal whether the security people he had called were soldiers or the police but “they are close to us”.

Makgothi said he did not think anybody wanted him dead.

“I did not think anybody wanted to harm me until I received tip offs that I would be killed if I did not run away.”

He said even the statement he delivered last Thursday at the UN-Lesotho roundtable discussion where he called for the full implementation of SADC recommendations could not be the cause for his killing.

“It is true that there were some who openly criticised me saying the statement was explosive but I still maintain that nobody would want to kill me for that,” he said.

Both the All Basotho Convention leader Thabane and the party’s secretary-general Samonyane Ntsekele said they only heard about the running away of the MPs but could not officially confirm the news.

Lehana was unavailable on phone at the time of going to print.

Also the police spokesman Superintendent Clifford Molefe was not available on the phone.