1986 Lesotho Coup D’état: An Analysis

1986 Lesotho Coup D’état: An Analysis

Forty years ago, on 20 January 1986, apartheid South Africa’s pressure, which was applied since the beginning of the year, helped to engineer a coup d’état in Lesotho. The media reported that Lesotho’s armed forces had ousted Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan and installed their commander, Major General Justin Metsing Lekhanya, as head of a military council, in a putsch that sparked wild rejoicing as thousands poured into Kingsway, Maseru’s main street, chanting and waving bamboo fronds.

In 1965, General Lekhanya became the only Mosotho officer heading a paramilitary Police Mobile Unit (PMU) platoon soon after its formation. During the early 1970s, he received various training courses at police academies in South Africa and Rhodesia and later assumed command of the PMU as a Major General in 1975. Lekhanya also oversaw its transformation into the Lesotho Paramilitary Force, later known as the Lesotho Defence Force.

The coup was initiated following apartheid South Africa imposing a near-total blockade on shipments across the border at the start of January 1986, as a way of punishing the Lesotho government for its insistence on harbouring African National Congress (ANC) refugees and refusing to sign a security accord, a non-aggression pact similar to the Nkomati Accord that was concluded with the Mozambican government. Since Lesotho was completely surrounded by South Africa, which also controlled its economy, Lesotho was reported to be down to a few days’ gasoline supply, food rationing, while stocks of food and medicines were cut.

As apartheid South Africa tightened its stranglehold on the landlocked country, which was economically dependent on its large neighbour, the military reportedly has pressed Jonathan to take a much more conciliatory approach toward the white-minority regime in Pretoria and perhaps accede to its demand to oust all members of the African National Congress (ANC). Consequently, on 15 January 1986, the Lesotho Defence Force Units surrounded the Prime Minister’s offices and the Basotho National Party’s (BNP) Headquarters.

They cleared the civil servants out of the Prime Minister’s offices, and apparently talked to Leabua Jonathan about their concerns, which among others included the disarming of the Basotho National Party (BNP) Youth League which they argued that it posed as a threat to the Lesotho Defence Force and also about the border blockade by apartheid South Africa. On 17 January General Justin Metsing Lekhanya and a six-person delegation set off to Pretoria for discussions on the border crisis.

Following the visit to Pretoria, on Saturday, 18 January 1986, a military mutiny was crushed in the small mountain kingdom of Lesotho after two days of clashes that had left at least four soldiers (two being rebels) dead. 35 soldiers from the 3,000-member paramilitary force that served as the country’s defence force, had rebelled and fought back when other troops sought to disarm them. On that day some members of the Lesotho Defence Force attacked the homes of the leading Basotho National Party’s Youth League’s sympathisers. After these incidences, the Lesotho Defence Force was in firm control of the situation.

Foreign residents in Maseru said the troubles were largely sparked by the virtual blockade of the country by apartheid South Africa, which had halted shipments of food, fuel, medicine and other goods since the beginning of January. The fighting began on the afternoon of 17 January 1986 at an army barracks south of Maseru and later spread to other areas around the capital, which became the epitome of a week of political turmoil in Lesotho. The mutiny stemmed largely from differences over military policy between Major General Justin Lekhanya, commander of the paramilitary unit, and the two officers who led the rebel forces.

The fighting on 17 to 18 January was confined to factions of the Lesotho paramilitary force, and most of the rebels belonged to a BNP Youth League branch within the paramilitary unit. The reports at the time estimated that at least eight people were killed and that the capital remained tense. South African news media put the number of deaths as high as 17. Of the 17 dead reported by the South African news media, about half were described as BNP Youth League members.

However, well-informed political sources in Maseru said the underlying issue was the continued leadership of the country by Chief Leabua Jonathan, the prime minister for over 20 years. Maseru politicians maintained that strong feelings had developed in the paramilitary force that Jonathan, whose power was once unchallengeable, has grown old, frail and politically weak, was too dependent on the ruling Basotho National Party’s leftist Youth League and unwilling to stand up to it. And what may have prompted the military to act on 20 January 1986, these political sources argued, were declarations made to reporters by Prime Minister Jonathan, the day before, that seemed to renege on earlier promises to take an easier line with apartheid South Africa.

According to these political sources, the growing rivalry was between the politically conservative paramilitary force, which had been doubled in size, and the BNP Youth League, which had been trained by North Korean advisers, was well armed and was allegedly used to bully Jonathan’s opponents. These events apparently intensified the power struggle over Jonathan’s autocratic leadership and set the stage for a showdown between the paramilitary force and the Youth League. North Korea and Libya were accused of having had a role in additional deliveries of arms for the Youth League and the British-trained paramilitary defence force audibly griped at the arming of the Youth League.

According to reports, the BNP Youth League demanded Jonathan to take an even tougher stance on apartheid and give more support to the ANC, the main guerrilla movement fighting the Pretoria regime. On 15 January 1986, Youth League members stormed into Jonathan’s office with a petition calling for the firing of several Cabinet members, as well as an adoption of tougher line toward apartheid South Africa and increased support for the ANC. This brought about 150 soldiers to the central government offices, and the youths were chased away. The government explained these events as a routine precaution after a bomb threat as rumours circulated that there had been a coup attempt.

Subsequently, the final preparations for the coup attempt were made following a press conference in Pretoria on 17 January 1986, in which Neil van Heerden, the head of the Africa desk of apartheid South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs, mentioning that it was made “very clear” at a morning meeting with the Lesotho Delegation at the Union Buildings that the “pervasive” presence of the African National Congress (ANC) in their country and the consequent violence in South Africa was the “root cause” of the border crisis.

Mr van Heerden further added that it was also clearly communicated to the Lesotho delegation that the country needed to address apartheid South Africa’s security concerns before the situation could return to normal. The “bottom line”, according to van Heerden, was that the apartheid government was seeking a commitment from the Lesotho government to “eliminate” the ANC. Pretoria’s basic condition for lifting its blockade was the ouster of all ANC members from Lesotho.

South Africa accused ousted Prime Minister Jonathan, who has ruled Lesotho since independence from Britain in 1966, of abetting cross-border “terrorism” by the outlawed ANC, which was led mostly by exiles, and was South Africa’s most powerful black anti-apartheid movement. Foreign diplomats viewed the South African border pressure as one catalyst for 20 January 1986 coup; they mentioned that Jonathan had stirred growing domestic dissatisfaction for some time. In 1970, these diplomats argued that he short-circuited an election he seemed in the process of losing and in effect declared himself prime minister for life.

The 1985 plans to hold another election, the first in 15 years, were scuppered when opposition politicians charged the operation was rigged, which was then cancelled. The Youth League became particularly controversial in August and September that year, when its attacks on opposition politicians led them withdrawing totally from the planned elections.

Around 13 to 14 January 1986, the Jonathan government detained five opposition politicians for investigation on suspicion of treason after three of them met with the apartheid South Africa’s foreign minister Roelof “Pik” Botha, to discuss the badly strained relations between the two countries. During that meeting, South Africa contended that the ANC was using Lesotho, despite its denials, as a base from which to recruit and train guerrillas, and then infiltrate them back into South Africa.

On the day of the coup, 20 January 1986, convoys from the 1,500-man Army – or Lesotho paramilitary force – patrolled the streets several times during the day to shouts of support on all sides. Every hour or so a military helicopter wafted overhead. The new military government imposed a 18:00 – 06:00 curfew, closed the country’s airfields and reportedly placed Jonathan and his ministers under house arrest. Although the coup was bloodless, it was preceded in the previous week by at least one barracks skirmish, in which five (the South African media estimating that 17) people died.

Although South Africa denied playing any part in the coup, it became obvious, following the coup, that the apartheid government had received its quid pro quo, as it had lifted the border blockade that had been imposed against Lesotho in early January 1986. On 25 January 1986, the media announced that South Africa had lifted its twenty-five-day blockade of Lesotho after the landlocked country’s freshly installed junta had expelled the first 60 of an envisaged number of 140 ANC members from its territory.

Faced with a mass expulsion of cadres, the ANC opted, as it had done at the time of the Nkomati Accord in Swaziland and Mozambique, to forward some combatants into South Africa. One of these combatants was Tony Yengeni, who was collected by a car in Lesotho into South Africa. Another person who had to leave Lesotho, was Lizo Bright Ngqungwana, Umkhonto we Sizwe’s (MK) Western Cape Commander, who also arrived in Cape Town from Lesotho during the same period.

Nevertheless, despite the mass expulsion of ANC cadres from Lesotho, what was certain was that popular sympathy for the liberation movement’s resistance against apartheid did not disappear with the overthrow of Chief Jonathan’s government in Lesotho. The liberation movement continued to be able to count on material and other support of individuals and organisations where necessary in Lesotho in its resistance against apartheid.

Diplomatic sources argued the paramilitary force generally saw Jonathan’s eastward tilt as a needless taunt at South Africa – a neighbour they didn’t like much, but whose friendship they needed. For instance, in 1983, Jonathan invited the Soviet Union to open an Embassy in Maseru, and at the time of the coup, Cuba’s foreign minister was visiting Lesotho. An array of Soviet-manufactured weapons was reputedly transferred to the Lesotho military forces since 1984, and these were ferried in by cargo planes. Part of these arms were said to have been allocated to the BNP Youth League members within the paramilitary force.

Following the coup, General Lekhanya immediately sought to improve relations with South Africa, which were strained due to Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan’s support of the ANC. Lekhanya, who headed the military government, was essentially a career policeman named to head the paramilitary force when it was formed in the 1970s. The sequence of events – coup, expulsion and lifting of the blockade – triggered speculation that South Africa had engineered the coup, the more so as General Lekhanya was in Pretoria for talks with apartheid South African officials only three days before Jonathan was toppled.

Although there is no evidence of direct South African involvement in the coup, what is certain, however, is that by depriving Lesotho of vital supplies and disrupting the lives of ordinary Basotho through the blockade, brought underlying tensions within Lesotho to the surface and set the scene for the coup. Following the success of the coup, Lekhanya led a delegation of Lesotho officials who visited South Africa in search of a compromise on the border crisis. Lekhanya also gave more power to the Lesotho King, Moshoeshoe II, at first, but later came into dispute with him, and ultimately deposed the king in another military coup in November 1990, forcing him into exile and installing his son as King Letsie III.

During an event in 1987, to mark the first anniversary of the coup, General Lekhanya boasted that instead of stoking tensions between South Africa and Lesotho, by hurling abuses over Radio Lesotho, his government had moved to establish good neighbourly relations with the Pretoria regime. In that way, he said, within a matter of months, his government had managed to break a thirty-year-old deadlock in negotiations on Lesotho’s highlands water. However, despite the military junta enjoying the support of royalists and traditional leaders as well as conservatives in Lesotho, the relationship between the praetorian government and apartheid South Africa, after a few years, alienated the population at large.

The apparent nature of the “Bantustan” relationship was vividly illustrated by the expulsion of the ANC just five days after the coup and the subsequent lifting of the blockade. South Africa did not benefit only from the fact that the military government moved quickly to reach an agreement on Lesotho’s highlands water and to sign the treaty in October 1986, but the military government also moved to meet other demands that the apartheid government had made on Leabua Jonathan’s government. For example, the embassies of North Korea and the Soviet Union were the first to go, followed immediately by closure of the embassies of China and Cuba, with the Chinese embassy being replaced by the Taiwanese embassy.

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Castro Khwela
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