Mohloai Mpesi
The Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro has blamed the surging murder cases in the country to Famo music gangsters.
Majoro said this in response to questions by members of the Upper House of Parliament on Wednesday to which he was summoned to shed light on the escalating mysterious murders in Lesotho.
Asked to shed light on the catalysts of murder in the country, Majoro fingered the notorious Famo music gangs as the driving force to the swelling numbers of murder that has placed Lesotho atop world charts.
“According to our police investigations, we realised that the main reasons for these killings are made by the Famo music gangsters. The killings at Mokhotlong have spread to other districts. Some of these killings come from toxic marriage relationships,†he said.
He continued that the infamous bunch of criminals that skips the country to ply their trade in the South African illegal mines, famously known as litotomeng also aggravates the already surging murder numbers as well as mob justice.
“The surging murders also come from litotomeng in South Africa where they start their beef and take it back home where it contaminates those who stay at home, they prolong it back to their workstation in South Africa accumulating more killings. They even kill the relatives of their enemies in order to target their foes at funerals.
“Some of these brutal killings are made by the mob justice when the public is tired of much intolerable crimes made by perpetrators. The problem is that the mob justice does not end,†he said.
Lesotho ranks number six in the world in records of the most murderous countries as per the Population Review Report. Lesotho is reportedly six times higher at 41. 2 ranking Lesotho as safer than El Salvador with 82.84 per 100, 000 people, Honduras (56.52), Virgin Island (49.26) and Jamaica with 47.01.
“Lesotho has more homicides than countries in conflict such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. DRC has a homicide score of 13.55, and Mozambique 3.4. Lesotho’s much more populous neighbor, South Africa has 33. 97 murders per 100, 000 people and is the only other Southern African Development Community country in the top 10 for highest rates of murder,†the report read.
“In the past three months, six police officers have been killed in Lesotho,†the report continues.
Grilled about the measures and realistic plans he intends to undertake in order to arrest the atrocious situation, Majoro stated that the government has completed the negotiations with the South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa to implement the operation that would put end to the killings.
“We have a JBCC treaty with the government of South Africa and we agreed to take improve the pact to a VNC level which allows the Head of States of both governments to marshal and monitor the pact, right now it is only supervised by the Ministers.
“We have agreed with Ramaphosa that the two countries must join forces in the fight against these killings which are done in both countries by Basotho. We are on the route to overcome this problem,†he said.
He said the police institution do not have enough vehicles to simplify their work when chasing after criminals. He further stated that the matter of death penalty is at the discretion of the judges as they uphold the law according to how the law dictates.
“There is a supplement of 69 vehicles which will start operating soon, this is a top up to the 54 vehicles that we bought previously which we gave to our Operation Restore Hope campaign and promised them choppers if they will need it. Our government is all out to furnish the police with resources to fight criminals.
“The death penalty sentence is not hanged but still available but we currently don’t see verdicts that require that sentence to be used. In Lesotho we have separation of powers and we have let the judges the authority to make decisions on the judgments without interference.
“If it was in our discretion we could have killed a lot of people because our mandate is to respond to the nation’s deliberations, but the judges are an independent autonomy and they judge according to how the law dictates,†he said.