African Activist Archive

The report says: in June and July of 1989, the head of Lesotho's military government faced the worst political crisis since he came to power almost four years earlier; Major-General Justin Metsing Lekhanya was accused of having shot and killed a student and then instigating a cover-up, in a confused incident that took place six months earlier; an October verdict of justifiable homicide absolved Lekhanya of legal blame in the student's death, but many feel this incident will likely hasten his eventual removal from power. The report discusses Moshoeshoe II, Ntsu Mokhehle, the Basotho Congress Party (BCP), the Basotho National Party (BNP), the Southern Africa Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC), the South African Defense Forces (SADF), UNITA, Chief Leabua Jonathan, the Catholic Church, the Lesotho Evangelical Church (LEC), Mosgoeshoe I, the National Party, the Pan-African Congress (PAC), the African National Congress (ANC), the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA), BNP Youth League, the Highlands Water Project, Pik Botha, apartheid, UNHCR, Ben Phofali, Young Christian Students, Mazizi Magekeza, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), US AID, African-American Labor Center, AFL-CIO, the Lesotho National Development Corporation, and the Lome Convention Agreement. • Introduction • "We can choose friends: we cannot choose neighbors" • Arriving in Lesotho: First Impressions • Signs of South Africa's Presence • Basotho Dynamics • Party Politics and Apartheid • Post-coup Directions • The Papal Visit and the Hijacking Episode • Human Rights and Refugees • Lesotho's Royal Family • Tough Economic Realities • Land • Exporting Labor - Lesotho's Migrant Workers • Selling Water • Adjusting to the IMF • Basotho Women • Seeking Solutions to Unemployment - The Growing Informal Sector • Foreign Aid's Double-Edged Sword • Lesotho as a Sanctions-Busting Haven? • What Future for Lesotho

African Activist Archive

Lesotho: Living in the Lion's Mouth

[Based on visits in Dec. 88 and May 89]

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