Activities
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Unpalatable relations between NGOs particularly TRC and the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD)-led government remains a challenge to both parties and therefore efforts must be considered in order to redress this situation. Therefore, the Good Governance Officer (GGO) had frequented the LCD office in order to organise a meeting with the LCD Secretary General with the aim of introducing the LDP activities, forging relationships and building rapport with the LCD. The LCD Secretary for Publicity, Mr Sekoere was instrumental in arranging our meeting with the LCD Secretary General which was held on the 4 th August.

Two LDP officers elaborated lengthy about the activities of the LDP, its objectives, the envisaged relationships with democracy stakeholders in Lesotho and the expected outcomes of the LDP interventions. The response of the Secretary General (SG) was both positive and negative. From the positive point of view, the SG acknowledged the work of NGOs such as TRC more especially on development related issues including the HIV and AIDS. However, the SG further pointed out that much as NGOs do good work there are elements within the civil society organisations (CSOs) which work as opposition to government. Therefore, this kind of a situation makes the government to be sceptical about the NGOs more especially when the NGOs such as TRC want to work with the political party structures through programmes like the LDP.

Notwithstanding, the Secretary General advised the LDP officers to present a formal document about the LDP especially its aims, objectives and activities. However, the SG promised that he would further introduce the matter before the internal LCD party structures, party caucus in Parliament and other relevant and strategic figures within the party. The briefing gave background to the LDP and highlighted some important aspects of the Lesotho Democracy Programme (LDP). The briefing further pointed out that on 15 th November 2004, the Right Honourable Prime Minister officially declared government’s intention to democratize parliament by having in place Parliamentary Reforms Committee (PRC) and Parliamentary Portfolio Committees (PPCs) and other parliamentary reform related processes. The reforming of the Lesotho parliament was therefore considered by many as a major milestone in our political history and it required well thought ideas, constructive interventions and clear programmatic contributions from a host of stakeholders and interested groups in connection with how best could Lesotho achieve this important national political project. In the briefing we told the SG that the birth of LDP was therefore a direct result of this reforming processes and TRC hopes that the whole process was essential in terms of inculcating the principles of democracy and in deepening of our young democracy within the Basotho society.

 LDP highlighted that Southern African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) had undertaken a research study focussed on Lesotho parliamentary democracy and the findings noted that there was “very little public engagement with, knowledge of or interaction with, parliament and civil society …” TRC through the LDP is therefore effectively engaging with all relevant key democracy stakeholders (including political parties such as LCD) together to promote, strengthen and deepen democratic principles within the Basotho communities.

Retreat for the Chairs of Portfolio Committees (18-20/08/08)

LDP together with IDASA organised and facilitated a Retreat for the Chairs of Portfolio Committees to discuss issues and challenges pertaining to the reform process of Lesotho parliament. Three resource persons were invited to address some of the challenges faced by our parliamentary reform process:

• Challenges of operationalising Parliamentary committees
• The importance of understanding and monitoring strategic plans and budget of the Parliamentary committees
• Comparative study of oversight and accountability, models used in other countries: Case study of National Assembly of South Africa
• Mechanisms and functional methods of public participation

Invited guests included Hon. Setona, the Chair of Ad hoc Committee on Accountability and Oversight of the National Council of Provinces in South Africa; Mr. Juan Bester of Afrec presented on budgetary matters; while Hon. Sam Mazosiwe, a Chair of Chairs and Acting Deputy Clerk of the Eastern Cape Legislature elaborated more on functions and mandate of Parliamentary committees. Details of this Retreat have been reported by my colleague, Mrs Mofubelu.

Workshop for Political Parties (26-27/08/09:

 The workshop for the political parties was held against the backdrop that that parties fail to uphold the pillars of good governance and poor performance/practise of inter and intra democracy within parties. As a result parties are experiencing a lot of party splits, factionalism and protracted internal party conflicts.

The main purpose of this workshop was to assist political parties to democratise their political structures by upholding the democracy pillars (regular elections, participation, dialogue, consensus and so on) and furthermore to assist them to manage conflicts effectively without necessarily resorting to the courts of law, party splits and factionalism.

In attempting to address some of the challenges associated with inter and intra political parties’ democracy, the LDP had invited three experts to share some invaluable experiences with the party delegates at the workshop. Mr. Tim Hughes from SAIIA presented a paper on Intra- and Inter- party democracy. Tim shared with the participants the broader issues pertaining to some of the following:

• the role played by political parties in democracy;
• the principles of multi-party democracy;
• the environment of political parties;
• the challenges of political parties;
• the challenge of recruiting members to parties;
• the challenge of party funding;
• the challenge of internal democracy;
• the challenge of gender;
• the challenge of internal conflicts and rivalry;
• the challenge of leadership;
• the challenges of greed, corruption, power and contenting values of visions;
• Political parties’ relevance in a globalizing world.

Mr. Caleb Sello made a presentation on Intra-and Inter-political parties’ democracy making specific reference to political parties in Lesotho. His presentation was based on EISA Research Report No. 23 “Political Parties and Democratization in Lesotho” by Khabele Matlosa and Caleb Sello, published in 2005. www.eisa.org.ls . Mr. Sello’s presentation complimented subject matters already alluded by Mr. Hughes in his presentation and he managed to contextualize it in Lesotho political party context.

Mr. Sello further pointed out that the following aspects in as far as party leaderships, policy development, information gathering and dissemination, gender membership and recruitment and party funding are concerned, intra-and inter-party democracy will always remain a challenge in Lesotho:

• Parties in Lesotho in general have no international affiliation
• Part of the lack of internal stability within parties has had to do with leadership squabbles and lack of intra-party democracy
• Parties also do not have policy documents beyond the constitution which provides policy guidelines
• Parties in Lesotho have virtually no access to good quality political surveys since no professional polling is done in the country
• Parties arte found to be weak on gender balance in their NECs, which are predominantly male dominated. Parties were also found to be weak in ensuring gender quality in the process of nomination of candidates for the purposes o contenting general elections
• Although all the parties report that they maintain a membership register of one form or another, the quality of the register and the reliability of membership figures differ from party to party.
• Without resources, political parties cannot play their expected role in building democracy

There was a good correlation between what was presented by Mr. Hughes and Mr.Sello and as a result participants were able to relate democracy frameworks within which political parties across the globe are expected to be working and what was happening within their own political party structures.

Mr. Sam Mazosiwe from the Eastern Cape Legislature brought with him live experiences of the ANC internal democratization processes. He mentioned that ANC like any other political party elsewhere in the world has internal political conflicts. However, what was important was how those conflicts were effectively handled internally. The ANC has internal mechanism of openly and objectively debating issues sober mindedly. For instance, Mr. Mazosiwe made reference to the recent Polokwane congress where the masses have spoken in terms of who should lead the ANC. He further emphasized that the Polokwane road map was going to be followed by the ANC members.

The party delegates shared common understanding that political parties in Lesotho lacked intra-and -inter democracy and as a result their political parties get weakened. Again, they said intra-party conflicts were caused by political intolerance and the absence of clear internal conflict management mechanisms. According to the delegates, power struggles within political parties are a direct result of leaders who do not want to step down when their terms are due and the lack of party policies regulating terms of leaders was yet another factor causing party splits, factionalism and protracted conflicts within parties. The majority of delegates were in agreement that political parties need more clearly defined governance structures, with clear horizontal and vertical linkages. In general these party delegates agreed that it is a lack of inter-party democracy that creates a lack of party democracy.

In conclusion, they said that party members need to develop technical skills such as the understanding of formats used during the counting of election results. Furthermore capacity building of parties was needed in the areas of leadership, fundraising, conflict management, membership and recruitment techniques and negotiation skills particularly on how to form alliances.

And they made emphasis on the need to develop conflict resolutions techniques which not only weaken parties but the country at large.

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