Politics of Lesotho

The Lesotho Government is a parliamentary or constitutional monarchy. The Prime Minister, Pakalitha Bethuel Mosisili, is head of government and has executive authority. The king serves a largely ceremonial function; he no longer possesses any executive authority and is prohibited from actively participating in political initiatives.

The Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) controls a majority in the National Assembly (the lower house of parliament) with 62 seats. The All Basotho Convention (ABC), a party formed shortly before the poll under the leadership of former foreign minister Tom Thabane, is the main opposition. The Basotho National Party (BNP), the Alliance of Congress Parties (ACP) and the newly formed Basotho Batho Democratic Party (BBDP) and the Basotho Democratic National Party (BDNP) Lesotho are among the other five opposition parties represented.

The ABC has brought a dramatic change in the Lesotho's politics, because of its having won 17, mainly urban, seats out of 80 Constituency seats, only a few months after it was formed in September 2006. Of the 40 Proportional Representation (PR) seats, the National Independent Party (NIP), a parliamentary ally of the ruling party, has the highest number of seats at 21. The Lesotho Workers Party has the next highest number of proportional seats with 10. The BNP is the opposition party with the biggest loss in the February 2007 election with its representation reduced from 21 to 3 seats. A total of 12 political parties are represented in the 120-member parliament.

The upper house of parliament, called the Senate, is composed of twenty-two principal chiefs whose membership is hereditary, and eleven appointees of the king, acting on the advice of the prime minister.

The constitution provides for an independent judicial system, made up of the High Court, the Court of Appeal, Magistrate's Courts, and traditional courts that exist predominantly in rural areas. All but one of the Justices on the Court of Appeal are South African jurists. There is no trial by jury; rather, judges make rulings alone, or, in the case of criminal trials, with two other judges as observers.

The constitution also protects basic civil liberties, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of religion. Lesotho was ranked 12th out of 48 sub-Saharan African countries in the 2008 Ibrahim Index of African Governance.[10]

However there is a growing movement, the People's Charter Movement, calling for the practical annexation of the country by South Africa due to the AIDS epidemic which infects a third of the population. The country faces high unemployment, economic collapse, a weak currency and poor travel documents restricting their movement. An African Union report called for economic integration of Lesotho with South Africa but stopped short of suggesting annexation. In May 2010 the Charter Movement delivered a petition to the South African High Commission requesting integration. South Africa's home affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa rejected the idea that Lesotho should be treated as a special case. Quoting, "It is a sovereign country like South Africa. We sent envoys to our neighbours – Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho – before we enforced the passport rule. When you travel from Britain to South Africa, don't you expect to use a passport?"[11]

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