How the Country Moves: Reclaiming vision in policy and budgeting

Dr Tšeliso Moroke

We have never truly committed ourselves to a national course.

As a nation, we drift. We adjust principles depending on who is in charge, and in doing so, we weaken the very foundation meant to guide us. A constitution is not supposed to be a flexible tool of convenience, bent and reshaped to accommodate those in power. It is meant to be the supreme expression of our collective will, firm, respected, and above individual ambition. Yet in our case, it often appears negotiable.

This raises a difficult but necessary question: do we govern by principle, or by personality?

We lack a coherent and visionary outlook for the country. Our politics is not anchored in long-term national interest but in short-term political survival. Petty interests dominate serious discourse. Decisions that should shape generations are reduced to calculations of who benefits today, who gains power tomorrow, and who must be appeased in the moment.

In such an environment, leadership becomes transactional rather than transformational.

We have cultivated a political culture in which personal interests often take precedence over national duty. Public office is treated less as a responsibility and more as an opportunity, an opportunity to secure influence, reward loyalty, and, in some instances, accumulate wealth. The result is a state that appears active on paper yet fails to deliver meaningful, sustained change in the lives of ordinary Basotho.

And then comes the budget.

A national budget is more than a financial statement. It is a moral document. It reveals priorities. It tells us who matters and who does not. It should be the clearest reflection of a government’s commitment to its people.

But whose interests does Lesotho’s budget serve?

This question is even more pressing when one considers our structural economic realities. We are heavily dependent on Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenues. External receipts that we neither fully control nor can reliably predict. When SACU revenues fluctuate, our entire fiscal framework trembles. Yet, year after year, our budgets are crafted with a level of optimism that borders on denial.

Instead of using SACU windfalls to build a resilient and diversified economy, we have used them to sustain government consumption.

Our wage bill continues to consume a disproportionate share of national resources. A significant portion of the budget goes toward salaries, allowances, and administrative costs, leaving limited fiscal space for capital investment and economic transformation. We are essentially running a government that is expensive to maintain but limited in its developmental impact.

At the same time, we outsource critical state functions, technical know-how, construction, and project management, often at great cost. This creates a paradox: a government that is both oversized and incapable of delivering.  We pay heavily for expertise that should, over time, be developed internally. Instead of building institutional strength, we perpetuate dependency.

What does this mean for the ordinary Mosotho?

It means unemployment remains stubbornly high, particularly among the youth. It means rural economies remain underdeveloped despite their agricultural and agro-processing potential. It means small businesses struggle to access markets, finance, and meaningful state support. It means inequality deepens, even as we speak the language of inclusivity.

Even in sectors where Lesotho has a comparative advantage, such as textiles under AGOA or water exports through the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), the linkages to the broader domestic economy remain weak. These sectors operate almost in isolation, with limited spillover into local enterprise development or job creation at scale.

So again, whose budget is this?

It does not convincingly speak to the urgent need for economic diversification. It does not decisively confront the structural barriers to private sector growth. It does not reflect a bold strategy to transition from a consumption-driven public sector to a production-driven economy.

Instead, it appears structured to sustain the machinery of government itself, administration over transformation, maintenance over innovation.

Government, in this instance, seems to be budgeting for its own comfort rather than the country’s progress.

We must be honest about this: a budget that prioritizes the state over the citizen delays development. It maintains the status quo while presenting the illusion of movement.

If we are to change how the country moves, we must first confront how we think.

We need to return to principle-based governance, where the constitution is respected rather than manipulated. Stability and policy certainty are not luxuries, but are prerequisites for investment, growth, and national confidence. Without them, even the best economic plans will fail to materialise.

We need leadership that is anchored in a clear, long-term vision. One that transcends political cycles and personal ambitions. A vision that recognizes Lesotho’s unique position within the regional economy, particularly its deep integration with South Africa, and uses that reality strategically rather than pretending it does not exist.

We need to invest deliberately in key sectors, including water, agriculture, manufacturing, renewable energy, and tourism. Not through rhetoric, but through targeted policy, infrastructure development, technical know-how, and institutional reform.

And above all, we need a budget that speaks directly to the lived realities of Basotho: jobs, dignity, opportunity, and equitable growth.

Until then, we will continue to move, but without direction.

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