Lesotho’s premier returns home

Lesotho’s Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has returned home after fleeing to neighboring South Africa.

Samonyane Ntsekele, one of Thabane’s aides, said on Wednesday that the premier had crossed into the country safely.

Thabane was accompanied by South African police on his journey back home. His return came after regional mediators brokered a deal to end the country’s political crisis.

The premier’s departure from South Africa was earlier delayed over security reasons.

“All police officers are ordered to report for duty immediately. The situation in the country has gone back to normal and my being in the country shows that,” Lesotho’s police commissioner Khothatso Tsooana said.

According to reports, Thabane fled to South Africa on Saturday in fear for his safety after the army surrounded his residence and police stations in the capital, Maseru, and gunshots rang out.

Thabane said he suspected his deputy Mothet Joa Metsing was involved.

The army denied trying to drive Thabane out of power, saying it had moved against police officers suspected of planning to arm a political faction in the small Southern African country.

Metsing also dismissed allegations of a coup. “I would not still be a deputy prime minister; the prime minister would not still be the prime minister if a coup [had] taken place.”

Thabane’s All Basotho Convention party and Metsing’s Lesotho Congress for Democracy formed a coalition with a third party, the Basotho National Party, after elections in May 2012.

Political tensions simmered high since then between Thabane and Metsing and within the coalition government. Thabane suspended parliament sessions in June amid feuding in his administration.

The mountainous kingdom, which is surrounded by South Africa, has witnessed several coups since gaining independence from Britain in 1966.
 
MSM/MAM/MHB