Faculty of Social Sciences

Permanent URI for this community

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14155/173

Browse

Browsing Faculty of Social Sciences by Author "Kapa, Motlamelle Anthony"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Alliances, coalitions and the political system in Lesotho 2007-2012
    (Journal of African Elections, 2014) Kapa, Motlamelle Anthony; Shale, V.
    This paper assesses political party alliances and coalitions in Lesotho, focusing on their causes and their consequences for party systems, democratic consolidation, national cohesion and state governability. We agree with Kapa (2008) that formation of the pre-2007 alliances can be explained in terms of office-seeking theory in that the political elite used alliances to access and retain power. These alliances altered the country�s party system, leading to conflict between parties inside and outside Parliament, as well as effectively changing the mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system into a parallel one, thereby violating the spirit of the system. However, the phenomenon did not change state governability; it effectively perpetuated the one-party dominance of the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) and threatened national cohesion. The post-2012 coalition, on the other hand,was a product of a hung parliament produced by the elections. The impact of the coalition on the party system, state governability and democratic consolidation is yet to be determined as the coalition phenomenon is still new. However, state governability has been marked by a generally very slow pace of policy implementation and the party system has been both polarised and reconfigured while national cohesion has been strengthened. The major challenge for political leaders is to manage the coalition arrangement for the good of the country, which we strongly feel they must, since it seems that coalition governments are very likely to be a permanent feature of Lesotho politics.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Chiefs, Democracy and Popular Participation
    (African Studies, 2013) Kapa, Motlamelle Anthony
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The Chieftainship in Lesotho: To retain or to abolish?
    (South African Journal for Political Science and Public Administration, 2014) Kapa, Motlamelle Anthony
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    �The Chieftainship-local councils� relationship and service delivery in Lesotho: A case study of four community councils
    (African Journal of Public Administration, 2014) Kapa, Motlamelle Anthony
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Consolidating Democracy through integrating the Chieftainship Institution with elected Councils in Lesotho: A case study of four community councils in Maseru
    (Rhodes University, 2010-12) Kapa, Motlamelle Anthony; Dr. Hoeane, Thabisi
    This study analyses the relationship between the chieftainship institution and the elected councils in Lesotho. Based on a qualitative case study method the study seeks to understand this relationship in four selected councils in the Maseru district and how this can be nurtured to achieve a consolidated democracy. Contrary to modernists‟ arguments (that indigenous African political institutions, of which the chieftainship is part, are incompatible with liberal democracy since they are, inter alia, hereditary, they compete with their elective counterparts for political power, they threaten the democratic consolidation process, and they are irrelevant to democratising African systems), this study finds that these arguments are misplaced. Instead, chieftainship is not incompatible with liberal democracy per se. It supports the democratisation process (if the governing parties pursue friendly and accommodative policies to it) but uses its political agency in reaction to the policies of ruling parties to protect its survival interests, whether or not this undermines democratic consolidation process. The chieftainship has also acted to defend democracy when the governing party abuses its political power to undermine democratic rule. It performs important functions in the country. Thus, it is still viewed by the country‟s political leadership, academics, civil society, and councillors as legitimate and highly relevant to the Lesotho‟s contemporary political system. Because of the inadequacies of the government policies and the ambiguous chieftainship-councils integration model, which tend to marginalise the chieftainship and threaten its survival, its relationship with the councils was initially characterised by conflict. However, this relationship has improved, due to the innovative actions taken not by the central government, but by the individual Councils and chiefs themselves, thus increasing the prospects for democratic consolidation. I argue for and recommend the adoption in Lesotho of appropriate variants of the mixed government model to integrate the chieftainship with the elected councils, based on the re-contextualised and re-territorialised conception and practice of democracy, which eschews its universalistic EuroAmerican version adopted by the LCD government, but recognises and preserves the chieftainship as an integral part of the Basotho society, the embodiment of its culture, history, national identity and nationhood.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item