Lesotho – Political Participation and Democracy

By: Motlamalle Kapa

Originally posted on OSISA website.

Conditions have existed and spaces have generally been available for political participation in Lesotho ever since the country’s return to multi-party politics in 1993, according to Lesotho: Political Participation and Democracy, a new report from the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP) and OSISA.

Democratic institutions fostering political participation operate reasonably well despite persistent challenges. However, citizens have no input in the development of public policies and national budgets. The government should open up these spaces to enable citizens to participate in public policy-making processes, including the preparation of the national budget, to ensure that these reflect the needs of citizens.

A partly liberalised media environment has led to an increase in the number of media outlets, giving citizens more diversified options for accessing information and expressing their opinions. However, the state-owned media still remains the monopoly and propaganda machinery of those in power. Citizens with views contrary to those of government, individually or as organisations, continue to be subject to various types of censorship. Opposition politicians are generally barred access to the airwaves controlled by the state broadcast media. Voices and parties critical of government only enjoy access to the state media by will of the government.

The government should review all laws related to the media and repeal those that are outdated and inhibit media freedom. It should also transform the state-owned broadcasters into editorially independent public broadcasters to ensure uncensored access by all citizens and their organisations, including opposition political parties, to the national airwaves.

Access to official information remains a big problem for citizens. Such access is not provided for either the media or for citizens directly. There is no law giving citizens or the media the right of access to state-held information. The government should pass into law an updated and improved Access and Receipt of Information Bill, 2000, to provide such access and to effect transparency in government. Given that this bill may now be outdated, Parliament should invite citizens both individually and collectively through their different organisations to comment and provide suggestions on the content of the bill.

Lesotho has made huge advances through constitutional and electoral reforms, which resulted in the introduction of the MMP electoral system, which led to important political outcomes such as an inclusive parliament, political stability and, crucially, alternation of political power to a democratically elected coalition government. The IEC has also become a more transparent institution working much more closely with key stakeholders in all processes relating to elections. These reforms may serve as a useful example to other countries on the African continent.

However, the IEC must clean up the voters’ roll to ensure that future elections are of a higher quality than in the past. Parliament should also amend the electoral law to enable all citizens of Lesotho resident outside the country to vote.

A corrosive culture of persistent fragmentation continues to undermine the role of political parties as institutions facilitating political participation and democracy. Often engaged in unhelpful internal wrangling over power, they frequently split every time the country approaches elections. The legal framework for political parties is far too lax and leads to registration of many weak parties, which ultimately do not add value to democracy and political participation in Lesotho. There is a need for a new law designed exclusively to regulate the registration and operations of political parties.

Public participation in parliamentary processes is still low, partly because parliament itself is still undergoing institutional reforms, including efforts to streamline its newly established portfolio committee system. Parliament should do more to open itself up to effective public participation through its portfolio committees, including the use of public hearings and written submissions on bills under consideration. It should have a regularly updated website on which all pending legislation as well as notices of the dates and deadlines in respect of hearings and submissions should be posted. It should allocate more resources to itself and its portfolio committees to provide sufficient capacity for research. It should establish close links with civil society and continue with the good practice of consultation with communities and interest and expert groups before bills are passed.

Local authorities ought to become more effective channels of political participation, as they were established to function as such. However, they face challenges, including their lack of capacity and lack of autonomy from central government. The laws governing them allow for public participation in the processes of these structures but in practice this does not happen – probably because citizens are unaware that such avenues exist. The government should, in conformity with its decentralisation policy, allocate the requisite resources to councils in order to capacitate them, grant them autonomy to carry out their functions, and help to mobilise public campaigns to inform citizens about their rights of participation in local government affairs.

With their historically deep roots, traditional authorities still form an integral part of Basotho society, despite the introduction of elected structures of government. Their relevance and legitimacy remain largely unquestioned. However, the institutions suffer from government neglect. The government should review the allowances of chiefs both as an incentive and in recognition of the valuable contribution they make to the lives of the Basotho in the villages. It should also include the chiefs in the same training it offers to councillors to improve their legal service delivery and liaison roles.

As is the case in other Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, parliament in Lesotho is weak relative to the power exercised by the executive branch of government. The executive signs important international agreements and treaties without these being debated in parliament. Foreign policy issues and international agreements have profound and long-term consequences for any nation and it is crucial for these to be subjected to democratic debate in parliament. Therefore, the government should consult parliament before it signs international treaties and agreements so that these first obtain the blessing of the representatives of the people, and, in this way, acquire the status of mandated and legitimate policy.

Sesotho: A beautiful art.

By Lineo Segoete

Before I go any further may I just say, I acknowledge the irony of this writing considering the language in which it is crafted; nevertheless I will continue and express my thought. I love Sesotho! This is not breaking news I know but please hear me out. Sesotho is a very potent and poetic language; I think it is pretty easy to speak and connect with its meaning even though many of the words have dual (or more) meanings, for example; Thato means both ’Desire’ and ‘Will’ as well as ‘Favourite’-depending on the context. Khutsa means ‘be tranquil’ or ‘be quiet/silent’, although these contexts are a bit closer to one another, you get the idea.

Every time I have the opportunity to practice my Sesotho I take it. Being Mosotho implies that I ought to be fluent in the language by default yet this is not the case, not just for me but for many of my peers too. We do not know how to speak the language well because many do not recognise the value in preserving this lyrical language. To tell the truth, I am revising this habit of writing my articles in English and shifting my focus to writing more in Sesotho. In the interim I am improvising by speaking and writing both languages together.

If Sesotho means so much to me, why am I writing in English? The truth of the matter is English is also an official language in this country and is no less legitimate than Sesotho as far as means of communication are concerned. Yes there is controversy surrounding how this came to be. However, this is how things stand presently and so we must acknowledge it. I write in English because I believe in eloquence of expression. I absolutely love clarity and confidence, especially in oral communication. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me I managed to master such to some extent through this ‘foreign’ language. To me it is a tool, one that enables me to appreciate, share, compel, reflect and even connect with my environment and those around me. A tool I am acquainted with well enough for it to serve its desired function.

Needless to say my usage of English makes me more prone to English traditions than those of Sesotho; hence I am fully aware how critical it is that I learn Sesotho as best I can.  Our culture, history and customs are a work of art, embedded in Sesotho, one that deserves exploration and love. Sesotho as an indigenous language is an endangered species, meaning all of us owe it to ourselves to play a part in preserving and enlarging it. This said, I recognise now more than ever how imperative it is for me to master Sesotho if I am to contribute to its advancement as a tool and national treasure. Soon rather than later, these words will be translated and you will read them in Sesotho. Likhomo ‘chaba sa Thesele.

Eating As Though the Environment Mattered

By 

Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives, Farm Sanctuary

Originally posted in Huffington Post

Imagine taking 6-20 plates of food and dumping them in the trash, perfectly fresh and edible. Off they go to the landfill. Obviously, none of us would behave so wastefully.

And yet that’s precisely the effect each time any of us consumes meat, since the vast majority of the calories consumed by a chicken, pig, or other animal goes into keeping that animal alive (or into producing bones, blood, and other parts humans don’t consume). Only a small fraction of those calories is turned into flesh.

And that’s just the pure “calories in, calories out” equation. When you factor in all the extra stages of production that are required for meat relative to grains and legumes, the anti-environmental nature of meat consumption becomes even more stark: First, you have to grow many times more corn, grain, and soy (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop dusters, poisons, and so on), than would be required if we ate the plants directly. Then you have to transport all that grain and soy to feed manufacturers, in gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing 18-wheelers. Then you have to operate the feed mill (again, using massive amounts of resources), truck the feed to the factory farms, operate the factory farms, truck the animals many miles to slaughterhouses, operate the slaughterhouses, truck the meat to processing plants, operate the meat processing plants, truck the meat to grocery stores (in refrigerated trucks), and keep the meat in refrigerators or freezers at the stores.

With every stage comes significant additional energy needs, and with that energy use comes air and water pollution, and massive greenhouse gas production. Of course, grains and legumes require some of these stages too, but they cut out the pollution spewing factory farms and slaughterhouses, as well as multiple stages of heavily polluting tractor-trailer trucks. And as was already noted, they also require a fraction of the calories (and tillers, pesticides, herbicides, etc.) from crops, since those crops are turned directly into food rather than funneled through animals first.

The vast inefficiency of funneling crops through animals means that eating meat is —according to the United Nations — “one of the major causes of the world’s most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.”

For space, I’ll look briefly at just two of those issues:

Eating Meat Causes More Global Warming Than Everything Else Combined
When United Nations’ scientists evaluated the vast quantity of resources required for meat production, they came to the conclusion that eating meat causes almost one-fifth of all global warming, which is forty percent more warming than all cars, trucks, planes and other forms of transport — forty percent more than all transport!

World Bank and International Finance Corporation agricultural economists Dr. Robert Goodland and Jeffrey Anhang, however, point out in a study published by the WorldWatch Institute (and cited by Bill Gates), that meat “has been vastly underestimated as a source of greenhouse gases, and in fact accounts for at least half of all human-caused greenhouse gases.” For one thing, the U.N. ignored respiration, which is a huge cause of warming (these are domesticated animals who would not exist if they weren’t being raised for meat). Once you crunch the numbers more scientifically, the proportion of global warming caused by farm animals surpasses fifty percent — that’s right, as much as all other human sources of warming combined. This alone should cause everyone who cares about climate change to cut back (or out) animal product consumption.

The Meat Industry Causes Global Poverty
Because meat is so resource intensive, competition is created for crops “between affluent meat-eaters and the world’s poor” (WorldWatch). As Oxfam’s Ben Grossman-Cohen explains,

It takes massive amounts of land, water, fertilizer, oil and other resources to produce meat, significantly more than it requires to grow other nutritious and delicious kinds of food. . . If we don’t reduce our environmental footprints as we increase production, poor people … will be the first to suffer. Eating less meat is a simple way to reduce the pressure on global resources and help ensure that everyone has enough to eat. To say it simply, eating less meat helps fight hunger.

What About Eating Meat That Isn’t From Factory-Farmed animals?
The U.N. and WorldWatch reports indict the inefficiency and waste that are inherent in meat production. No matter where meat comes from, raising animals for food will require that exponentially more calories be fed to animals than they can produce in their flesh, and it will require all those extra stages of CO2-intensive production as well. Only grass-fed animals eat food from land that could not otherwise be used to grow food for human beings, and even grass-fed animals require much more water and create much more pollution than soy, oats, or wheat (and most are raised in climates where they’re only eating exclusively grass for a fraction of the year).

Conclusion
It’s true, of course, that vegetables are also resource intensive. But the substitute for meat is not broccoli, bananas, or bok choy. Vegetarians needn’t consume any more fruits and vegetables than meat-eaters; we consume more grains and legumes as a substitute for meat. Eating these crops directly, rather than feeding them to animals so that humans can eat meat, requires exponentially fewer resources and causes exponentially less global warming and pollution.

Every time we eat meat, it’s as though we’re throwing away 6-20 calories worth of grains and legumes for every calorie we take in. Plus, we’re contributing to exponentially more water use, desertification, air pollution, global warming, global poverty, and more.

Share the health benefits of vegetarianism with Bill Clinton, Carrie Underwood, Forest Whitaker, Natalie Portman, Steve-O, Ellen DeGeneres, Alec Baldwin, Emily Deschanel,Paul McCartney, Alicia Silverstone, Russell Simmons, Anne Hathaway, James Cromwell, and millions of other Americans by clicking here.

Need some inspiration? Watch this video:

Kick4Life – Speak Out Lesotho!

Originally posted by Kick4Life on December 3, 2012.
Every year, from November 25 to December 10, governments, NGOs and individuals worldwide take part in the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence – an international campaign which aims to raise awareness of the issue of gender-based violence.
In Lesotho, sexual violence against women and girls is a widespread problem. Unequal gender relations and belief in the sexual entitlement of men are entrenched in cultural and social norms, and the country has a very high incidence of rape.
At Kick4Life, we recognise that gender-based violence and the spread of HIV are inextricably linked. This year, as part of the 16 Days, we held a Story Writing Workshop which invited everybody and anybody to come along and share their stories about the issue. Participants could write about anything which they felt comfortable sharing.
The stories collected during the workshop provide a moving reflection on gender-based violence in Lesotho today. A wide range of viewpoints and issues are explored. Two of the writers are rape survivors, and share with us their very personal stories. Several speak of friends or community members who have been affected, and others share their experiences of being witness to gender-based violence in their homes as children.
The stories are not easy to read, and many readers may ask themselves why they have been shared at all. How does sharing upsetting tales of violence help anybody?
The answer is simple: in the majority of cases, victims of sexual violence are silenced. In one of the stories shared on this blog, a girl is raped by her father. The author recalls: “he told me never to say a word to anybody, not even to my Mum, or else he [would] slaughter me like a lamb.” A 2004 report on gender-based violence in Lesotho found that many women who had been raped chose not to report the rape to the police because they feared accusation and questioning from male officers[1]. The report also found that few women who were raped had sought out existing services, that women were less likely to disclose if the perpetrator was someone that they knew, and that community members often placed the blame on rape victims, rather than offering them their understanding and support.
Speaking out about sexual violence is crucial. On an individual basis, for victims of rape, it is a critical first step towards recovery. As one of the writers here shares, after talking with others, she felt that: “my pain was gone because I spoke out. Until now, as I write, I am OK and a survivor.”
On a larger, collective scale, encouraging people to speak out draws attention to the magnitude of the issue, and can be an important starting point in mobilising communities towards positive action.
Stories such as these also help bring to life an issue which is all too often clouded with jargon and seemingly abstract concepts. These stories remind us that the heavy term ‘gender-based violence’ in reality refers to every-day incidences in many people’s lives.
The stories contain strongly worded statements from both women and men which show that many young people in Lesotho are unafraid to speak out against the issue. One young man writes: “Physical abuse to women just shows how weak men are… GBV happens with those men who don’t want to be corrected of their mistakes, who think they are always right even if they are wrong.”
We hope that you find value in these stories, and that they bring the issue of gender-based violence closer to home, wherever in the world you are. Please feel free to post your comments on this blog. If you live in Lesotho and would like to contribute a story, please email [email protected]. This blog will stay up and will be available for all to read throughout the year – http://kick4lifespeakout.blogspot.com/

kick4life

The Forgotten Kingdom trailer

The trailer for the film The Forgotten Kingdom, which was filmed in Lesotho and South Africa in 2011 has been released! The film has already played at a few U.S. based film festivals this year is gaining praise and awards. Here is a review from Orlando Weekly:

THE FORGOTTEN KINGDOM
★★★★★

There’s an authenticity growling beneath the picturesque surface and deceptively simple storytelling of this South African-based coming-of-age (and coping-with-mortality) story. The blank stares of protagonist Atang Mokoenya (Zenzo Ngqobe) often grow as meditatively wide as the vistas and canyons the character travels to find some sort of resolution. Emotions blend with the natural elements, words with rhythmic indigenous chants.

This world premiere of U.S.-based director Andrew Mudge’s debut feature – presented, with subtitles, in the African dialect of Sesotho – follows Mokoenya from the crime-riddled streets of Johannesburg, South Africa, to the homeland, Lesotho, from which he was plucked by his father as a young boy. Mokoenya’s father passes away in a manufacturing village, leaving his son with prepaid funeral instructions that require Mokoenya to travel back to his tribal birthplace with his body. The slow unraveling of Mokoenya’s urbanized conceits upon his arrival in Lesotho – especially upon reconnecting with a female childhood acquaintance, Dineo – creates a compelling and subtle thread of self-discovery amid displaced cultural identity.

But the deliberate lingering pauses and panoramic sweeps of the director can’t disguise the turmoil of two Africas. Mysticism clouds science (Dineo’s sister is stricken with AIDS, a fact her father chooses to literally lock away in a room), but ancient traditions concurrently weave optimism
and purpose into otherwise random occurrences. Throughout a large part of his journey (much of it on horseback), Mokoenya is guided by an orphaned boy who swears he is the “eyes of the dark clouds” that follow Mokoenya everywhere. It’s an ambitious narrative device, but Mudge balances the disbelief suspension with pervasive charm. What might have been an exercise in exploitative cultural tourism in the vein of Paul Simon’s Graceland is instead a modern parable universal in its message, but unique to its location. – Billy Manes

The Forgotten Kingdom (Trailer) from Black Kettle Films on Vimeo.