What Lesotho can teach Eswatini and SA about key political reforms

HOOLO NYANE

TWO southern African countries, South Africa and Eswatini, are undergoing important reforms. South Africa is reviewing its electoral system while Eswatini is revisiting the powers of the monarch through a national dialogue.

South Africa and Eswatini can look to Lesotho for lessons. It’s a fellow member of the Southern African Development Community and has grappled with these issues for decades. The three countries share geographic, historical and economic ties.

The kingdom of Lesotho returned to electoral politics in 1993, after a long haul of dictatorship capped by a military junta. Since then, it has experienced mutinies, coups and electoral violence.

The advent of tumultuous coalition politics in 2012 laid bare the longstanding problems associated with the prime minister’s excessive powers.

He compromised the security forces, the judiciary, civil service and even parliament, thereby fuelling instability.

The Southern African Development Community has intervened in Lesotho in almost every electoral cycle. Its interventions