Continued from last week
BOOK EXTRACT
Lefu Lechesa
In actual fact, Matekane is a mo***n, as will be explained later, who knows not and knows not that he knows not, to employ a Chinese proverb.
I am deliberately ignoring Moeketsi Majoro for now from this trio because he presented himself as no more than just a puppet, a lapdog, or a toady boy fawning over a shady character like Thabane of all people; an academically gifted young man falling for someone with such a coloured reputation as Thabane just for 30 pieces of silver! Shame on you, Majoro; better you gave someone else those brains, or did not go to school at all; you are a disgrace to your alma maters and their faculties; you have no character!
Nor are the private media agencies, the LNBS’s counterparts, any better performers; they are all the same. As an example, MoAfrika FM, a very popular station that I admire for its role in some of its community service programmes such as Mokhosi – so far its indispensable crime-fighting programme – reported a news item on December 15, 2023, thus, “Monna o ile a utsoa linomoro tsa chelete e neng e romeletsoe nyatsi ea hae.” So?
If you find this statement sensible, I am speechless to describe you; I can only say, you are a typical client of the LNBS because what was stolen was the money, not the serial numbers of that stolen money, or any other numbers.
As with the earlier LNBS examples, this news item is an indication of a writer, and not less the reader, who dispenses with accuracy; he writes for himself or herself, and not for an audience or readers, then does not care to edit what he or she may have written.
I have used the LNBS here only as a case for demonstration of the poverty of Lesotho media in general. Preposterous pieces such as this can be found everywhere.
The so-called The Kingdom in the Sky seldom attracts the attention of the news agencies beyond its borders, yet the time it does, it is so fortunate as to grab the headlines for all the wrong reasons. With such crucial national institutions as the LNBS performing so dismally as it does, one would be crazy to hope and expect poor Lesotho to be any better and able to come out of its politico-socio-economic morass in which it has been mired for so long even in the long distant future.
To reiterate, examples will be provided to substantiate this condemnation, most of which are verbatim statements from the news bulletins that I have over the years – actually ninety-eight to 2024 – been collecting and recording verbatim in my diaries and, later with tech advances, in WhatsApp messaging system.
Not only recording, but also bringing, in vain, unfortunately, to the attention of the relevant political heads of the LNBS, and later respective administrative heads, such as Messrs Lira Moeti and Dyke Sehloho for LNBS, as well as Nazim Goolam and Maama Maama for the Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA) – an organisation that serves no purpose than to just dish out super-scale salaries for its youthful, well-connected pals for them to lead a comfortable life of luxury amid the abject poverty and starvation this country is going through, yet in return for nothing.
The LCA is supposed to play the role of the overall overseer of the behaviour and performance of all the media houses and journalists operating within the boundaries of Lesotho.
You do not have to look further than these four executives to come to the conclusion that these two media organisations are not ably managed or led. Merits such as academic qualifications, competence and work experience were not the criteria for their selections, appointments and promotions. They were employed not to serve and satisfy the public needs and wants, but for their own sake and for the sake of those in political power who put them in those positions. So, you will be fooling yourself to expect anything better from them because they honestly cannot offer anything better than they have been offering to date.
I further took the trouble to show some of this garbage to one Mr Lejakane, a neighbour of mine, who, before his exit, was one of the LCA’s top executives. His only response was shock “Jo!”
It has further to be noted that I have been doing this in my capacity as an occasional consumer of just one of the LNBS’s products, the so-called news broadcast on television, for that matter only in the evenings when I have the time to waste time, and no more than four times average per week.
My point in stating this last fact is, that I wonder what I would have discovered had I been a regular, not occasional, viewer of not only the news but also of every other programme on the LTV. After all, have I not stated in the title that this is just a bird’s eye view of the institution and its political elite?
Nevertheless, I am going to write a line or two about those other programmes I might have stumbled upon in passing from time to time. Here too the LNBS fail miserably what they profess to be and do.
To conclude this introduction, all the examples so far cited buttress the fact that not only its news bulletins but the LNBS itself is not a credible news agency.
This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, Lesotho at the Best of Times: A Cauldron of Shame and Disgrace—A Bird’s-Eye View of the Period 1998 to Date, authored by Lefu Lechesa.

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