‘You are dancing in borrowed shoes’

MASERU-DEPUTY Prime Minister Monyane Moleleki says Movement for Economic Change (MEC) leader Selibe Mochoboroane is “dancing with shoes that don’t belong to him”.
Moleleki last weekend accused Mochoboroane of stealing his ideas and presenting those ideas as his.
A livid Moleleki told a rally in Taung constituency in Mohale’s Hoek last weekend that every time the government plans to install electricity in some villages, Mochoboroane rushes there and claims credit for the project.

By the time the government officials arrive in the village, the people would have been convinced that the electricity project would not have been done were it not because of Mochoboroane’s efforts.
“My friend Ntate Mochoboroane must stop wearing big shoes that do not fit him,” Moleleki told his Alliance of Democrats (AD) party supporters.
Mochoboroane is the founder and leader of the MEC.

He is also the chairperson of a powerful parliamentary committee, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
“I am the pioneer of the project that electricity be installed in every house including to the poorest of the poor,” Moleleki said.
He said he even pushed for mud houses to be electrified.

“It was not Ntate Mochoboroane who came up with this initiative, it was me,” Moleleki said.
“People should not dance with the shoes that do not belong to them.”
Moleleki said a sod-turning event at Ha-Mokoroane in Taung means the government will soon electrify the area.
He said their intention is to install electricity in every home.

Mochoboroane is the MP for Thabana-Morena constituency which is close to Taung. He is widely respected in both Taung and Thabana-Morena.
He won the Thabana-Morena constituency with 63.3 percent of the votes in the last election held in 2017, with the second runner up being the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) with just 16 percent.

The AD in the constituency got only 2.1 percent of the votes.
In Taung the MEC got 14.3 percent while the AD only had 6.9 percent, against the All Basotho Convention that scooped 34.4 percent.
Countrywide, the AD got 7.3 percent while the MEC got 5.05 percent.
Both parties were fairly new when they went to the elections in 2017.

Mochoboroane says he is of the feeling that the AD is launching a political fight against him now that the country is again on the brink of another snap election.
Mochoboroane dismissed the allegations levelled against him as untrue.

“I am not sure of my people but as for me, it is not true. Also, it should also be clear which people from me are those,” he said.
Mochoboroane said he does not know what is going on between Moleleki and the new Minister of Education, Mokoto Hloaele, who is a staunch member of the AD.
Hloaele recently accused Mochoboroane of influencing civil servants at the ministry to drag their feet so that they delay paying teachers.
In his statement broadcast on Lesotho Television, Hloaele said Mochoboroane deliberately threw spanners into the payment of teachers for the month of October.
He said Mochoboroane influenced Ministry of Education staff to defy orders from the management to process the payment.

Majara Molupe