Bethuel Pakalitha Mosisili (born 14 March 1945) is a former
Mosotho
The Sotho () people, also known as the Basuto or Basotho (), are a Bantu nation native to southern Africa. They split into different ethnic groups over time, due to regional conflicts and colonialism, which resulted in the modern Basotho, who ...
Lesotho Congress for Democracy
The Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) is a political party in Lesotho.
In 1997, Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle left the Basutoland Congress Party to form with his faction the new Lesotho Congress for Democracy. The new party won the 1998 ele ...
(LCD) to a near-total victory in the 1998 election, and under his leadership the party also won majorities in the
2002
File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...
and
2007
File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...
elections. While serving as Prime Minister, Mosisili was also Minister of Defence.
Following the snap election held on 28 February 2015, he formed and led a
coalition government
A coalition government is a form of government in which political parties cooperate to form a government. The usual reason for such an arrangement is that no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an election, an atypical outcome in ...
. He was sworn in on 17 March 2015.
Early life and career
Mosisili was born at Waterfall in Qacha's Nek on March 14, 1945. He was educated at the Eagle's Peak High School, where he attained his Cambridge Overseas School Certificate in 1965. He did his primary schooling at Tebellong, Souru and Tsoelike and then pursued his higher education at the
University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland The University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) was a predecessor to the universities of the respective countries, presently National University of Lesotho, University of Botswana and University of Eswatini. The University was formerly know ...
and graduated with a BA in Education.
Upon graduation in July 1970, he was imprisoned because of his political activism and was released the next year in November. He was a member of the
Basotho Congress Party
The Basutoland Congress Party is a pan-Africanist and left-wing political party in Lesotho.
The Basutoland African Congress (BAC) was founded in 1952 by Ntsu Mokhehle and Potlako Leballo. The party was renamed the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP ...
.
In 1976, he attained his MA from the
University of Wisconsin
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
in the United States and then completed a BA honours program via
distance education
Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at a school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance. Traditionally, this usually in ...
from the
University of South Africa
The University of South Africa (UNISA), known colloquially as Unisa, is the largest university system in South Africa by enrollment. It attracts a third of all higher education students in South Africa. Through various colleges and affiliates, U ...
In 1993, Mosisili was elected to parliament from the Qacha's Nek Constituency and became Minister of Education. On April 14, 1994, he was briefly kidnapped along with three other ministers by soldiers; a fifth minister, Deputy Prime Minister
Selometsi Baholo
Selometsi Baholo was the deputy prime minister of Lesotho between 1968 and 1970. He was killed by dissident soldiers on 14 April 1994 in Maseru
Maseru is the capital and largest city of Lesotho. It is also the capital of the Maseru District. Loc ...
, was killed in this incident. Mosisili was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in late January 1995, while remaining Minister of Education; on July 20, 1995, he was named Minister of Home Affairs and Local Government instead, while remaining Deputy Prime Minister. A new ruling party, the LCD, was formed in 1997 under the leadership of Prime Minister
Ntsu Mokhehle
Ntsu Mokhehle (26 December 1918 – 6 January 1999) was a Lesotho politician. He founded Basutoland African Congress (BAC) in 1952. He founded Basutoland Congress Party in 1957 then later in 1997 founded Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). He ...
as a split from the Basutoland Congress Party. On February 21, 1998, Mosisili was elected leader of the LCD after Mokhehle chose to step down due to poor health.
After his party's victory in 1998 there were accusations of vote rigging and mass protests from the opposition parties, which culminated with their occupation of the grounds to the palace. In the ensuing debacle which saw the army, police and king complicit in an attempt to unseat his government, Mosisili had to resort to asking the regional grouping, Southern African Development Community (SADC), for an intervention to stem the imminent coup. New elections were eventually held in May 2002, which his party won, this after a major split led by his former deputy,
Kelebone Maope
Kelebone Albert Maope (born 1945) is a politician from Lesotho. He served in the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) and Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) governments during the 1990s before splitting from the LCD in 2001 to form his own party, the ...
, and Shakhane Mokhehle, the brother of the late founder of his party. On this occasion, Mosisili himself was elected to a seat from the Tsoelike constituency, receiving 79.2% of the vote; in his previous constituency, Qacha's Nek, Pontso Sekatle was the LCD candidate.
In October 2006, Tom Thabane left the LCD and formed a new party, the
All Basotho Convention
The All Basotho Convention (ABC; ) is a political party in Lesotho. The party was formed in October 2006 and founded by Tom Thabane, a former minister in the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) led by the government of Prime Minister Pakalitha ...
(ABC), and 17 other members of parliament joined him; this left the LCD with a narrow majority of 61 out of 120 seats. On Mosisili's advice, King
Letsie III
Letsie III (born Seeiso Bereng; 17 July 1963) is King of Lesotho. He succeeded his father, Moshoeshoe II, who was forced into exile in 1990. His father was briefly restored in 1995 but died in a car crash in early 1996, and Letsie became king ag ...
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
(
Independent Online
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format in 2003. The last p ...
), December 1, 2006. Retrieved December 1, 2006. The LCD won this election, taking 61 seats; the
National Independent Party
The National Independent Party is a political party in Lesotho.
The NIP was founded by Anthony Manyeli as a split from the Basotho National Party."Win was not fair - opposition" AFP (Independent Online), February 21, 2007. Retrieved February 23, 2007. Archived copy at WebCite (February 1, 2010).
Whilst attending a funeral in his home district of Qacha's Nek in late 2006, Mosisili gave a speech which quoted a Basotho idiom, "Se sa feleng sea hlola", meaning "anything that does not finish/end is not good". Some believed that he was referring to his term in office and his embattled political party.
Armed men attacked Mosisili's residence on April 22, 2009, apparently intending to kill him; three of the attackers, one of whom was reportedly a soldier, were killed by police, and Mosisili was unharmed. Six people appeared before a South African court in July 2009 on charges of helping in the attempt. The Lesotho Communications Minister described the attack as a plot by South African and Mozambican mercenaries to stage a coup in Lesotho.
Following the snap election held on 28 February 2015, he managed to form and lead a coalition government. Two years later, on 1 March 2017, he was defeated in a parliamentary vote of confidence, and an early election was expected to be held, although the opposition wanted Mosisili to step aside and allow Monyane Moleleki, Mosisili's former deputy turned rival, to take over. Mosisili then advised King
Letsie III
Letsie III (born Seeiso Bereng; 17 July 1963) is King of Lesotho. He succeeded his father, Moshoeshoe II, who was forced into exile in 1990. His father was briefly restored in 1995 but died in a car crash in early 1996, and Letsie became king ag ...
to dissolve Parliament, and the King did so on 7 March, despite an opposition effort to obstruct the move.
The
election
An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...
was held on 3 June 2017 and resulted in a victory for Tom Thabane and his party, the ABC, which won 48 seats against 30 for Mosisili's Democratic Congress. A government statement on 8 June said that Mosisili had submitted his resignation to King Letsie but would continue in a caretaker capacity. Thabane succeeded Mosisili as Prime Minister on 16 June.
In November 2018, Mosisili announced his retirement from politics. The Democratic Congress held its elective conference in January 2019 and Mathibeli Mokhothu was elected as his successor. Mokhothu had served as a government minister in Mosisili's last cabinet.
Politics of Lesotho
Politics of Lesotho takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy, whereby the Prime Minister of Lesotho is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the ...