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Public Eye

Friday June 1, 2018

News

LCS, Ombudsman on collision course MATHATISI SEBUSI

M

ASERU – The Lesotho Correctional Services (LCS) has set itself on a collision course with the office of the Ombudsman following the suspension of an LCS officer for testifying before a commission established by the rights defender to probe alleged favouritism and bias during promotions in the organisation.

This, human rights lawyers say, could lead to a constitutional crisis as the office of the Ombudsman is a creature of the Constitution and can thus summon anyone to testify before its privileged commissions.

The Constitution in section 135 empowers the Ombudsman to “investigate action taken by any officer or authority… in the exercise of the administrative functions of that off icer or authority in cases where it is alleged that a person has suffered injustice in consequence of that action.”

The section further states the Obudsman may probe “any department of government or any member of such a department; any local government authority and the members and officers of a local government authority . . . any statutory corporation and the members and persons in the service of a statutory corporation”.

This means witnesses who appear before the Ombudsman are shielded from reprisals although the institution’s potency is blunted by its lack of enforcement powers, a preserve of the same executive over which it plays the oversight role.

Human rights lawyer Advocate Lepeli Moeketsi has attributed the stand-off within the justice ministry to lack of clarity on the separation of powers between government departments and constitutional offices such as that of the Ombudsman.

Transformation Resource Centre (TRC)’s Moeketsi said: “The constitution establishes the Ombudsman and the very law gives the executive executional powers which they feel are exclusive.’’

He added there was need to clearly separate these powers and

. . . as officers’ promotions saga rages

Ombudsman Advocate Leshoele Thoahlane, far right clear the administrative confusion with constitutional functionality.

According to constitutional lawyer, Advocate Hoolo ’Nyane, t h e O m b u d s m a n a f te r h i s investigations, sends his decision to Administration Authorities to enforce it.

Failing this, ’Nyane said, they should give him reasons why they could not enforce his decision, bearing in mind that the Ombudsman cannot be an administrative justice statute structure in the constitution while institutions on the other hand are not obliging with it.

“It is also important for institutions to remember that there is a constitutional duty on public authorities and structures, not ignoring the directives of the Ombudsman.

“Lesotho’s O mbudsman, compared to other countries is legally very weak because it does not let the Ombudsman enforce his findings like other countries and is one of the institutions that need to be strengthened,” he also said.

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HELP US GET IT RIGHT Public Eye is committed to reporting news that is accurate, free from bias, and truthful at all times. We do our best to research and cross-check our stories. But mistakes do happen. If, as the reader, you spot any mistakes, please point them out to us so that we can correct them.

The storm surrounding last year’s promotion of 60 Lesotho Correctional Services (LCS) officers took a startling twist this week when a witness in ongoing investigations, Sergeant Bokang Ramotena was suspended for speaking to media.

According to a suspension letter signed by her supervisor, Senior Superintendent Francis Khama, Ramotena has been sent on indefinite leave for speaking to the media about matters pertaining to the LCS without her superior officer’s permission.

R a m o te n a c o n s e q u e n t ly presented the letter dated May 28, 2018 to the Ombudsman, Advocate Leshoele Thoahlane who contacted Khama and instructed him to revoke the suspension as it interferes with ongoing investigations.

“Kindly be advised that S e rge a n t R a m o te n a wa s authorised by the Ombudsman to give a brief summary of correctional officers’ complainant before the Ombudsman as media houses wanted to hear all sides of

the complaint.

“Your letter of interdiction amounts to frustration of the Omudsman’s investigations as it threatens correctional officers into refraining from freely giving evidence and that act of yours amounts to an offence as per Section 20 (e) of the Ombudsman Act 9 of 1996.

“The Ombudsman is at liberty to conduct as per the law, his investigations the way he sees fit.

The Ombudsman has seen it fit to invite different media houses in Lesotho to attend the inquiry and as such has allowed interviews by such media houses personnel.

Your office is therefore advised to withdraw the said letter with immediate effect,” the letter reads.

In his brief response to Thoahlane’s letter, Khama said he acted on the orders of the acting commissioner Thabang Mothepu to interdict Ramotena from official LCS duties.

“I wish to state with humility and respect sir that I have no powers to reserve what the

commissioner has directed to be done as my superior vested with the general command and superintendence of LCS. “For that reason, I humbly request your good office to direct this matter to the commissioner of LCS,” Khama further showed.

In a telephonic interview Ramotena told Public Eye on Wednesday that she ignored her interdiction and was cuurently back on active duty.

“When I reported for duty hoping I would be expelled, I was instead given a charge sheet which to my surprise was neither signed nor did it state who authorised it.

“The charge sheet accused me of talking to the media without authorisation of the LCS. I returned it and demanded that it be duly signed by whoever issued it,” she said.

Apart from that, she said she has since been terrorised on social media by a group calling itself Alliance of Democrats supporters who accuse her of insulting their leader on media platforms.

Continues on page 4

Public Eye

Friday May 25, 2018 3

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Public Eye

Friday May 25, 2018 5

News

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Public Eye

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Public Eye

Friday June 1, 2018

Africa News Affairs

I

n a country grappling with so many different challenges, land reform in South Africa has recently emerged as a dominant and potentially explosive issue - the focus of furious political contestation and increasingly inflammatory rhetoric.

“Africa is for black people.

Period. We need our land back and we’re going to take it by force,” said a woman amongst an angry crowd trying to occupy a field on the north-eastern edge of Johannesburg.

She is wearing a red beret indicating her support for the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a small, radical party which advocates the nationalisation of all land in South Africa.

T h e f i e l d w a s e m p t y, overgrown, unused, and far too much of a temptation.

“This is my boundary,” said 50-year-old Christina Mashaba, striding through the long grass and pointing to a stick she had pushed into the ground, some 15 yards (13m) away.

“It’s going to be my home… if the government will let me have the ground,” she said, looking up, across the sunlit valley.

A little further down the gentle slope, an electrician called Ishmael Motswali was examining an area already littered with homemade flags and markers.

“I came to check if I can get a piece of land, and to see if it is legal,” he said.

“I’m renting a place at the moment. In my beautiful country, after 20 years of democracy, you can understand the frustration. I just want a piece of land where I can put my family.”

A few hundred metres further up the hill, at the entrance to the field, beside a brand-new housing estate, a large and increasingly angry crowd from the nearby township of Alexandra was confronted by a group of South African policemen, who were trying to seal the area, insisting that the land is private, and that “land-grabbers” would be dealt with harshly.

“Democracy?” scoffed a community leader called Mafasi Kubai, after listening to the pleas of a police captain.

“How can we participate when some are super rich and others are poor. Whites should be empathetic… but they are exploiting us.”

‘No longer about willing buyer, willing seller’ Across South Africa, such scenes and confrontations are becoming more common, as frustration with the slow pace of land reform grows.

And with it, frequently, is a growing bitterness about the enduring economic power of the country’s white minority.

Vast amounts of time and money have already been spent trying to address the issue of the land dispossession that occurred under racial apartheid, but the governing African National Congress (ANC) has little to

South Africans’ anger over land set to explode show for it.

A generation after the advent of democracy, black people still own a small fraction of farmland nationwide. The exact statistics are often contested, but its estimated that just 10% of commercial farmland has been redistributed through land reform programmes.

The country’s new President Cyril Ramaphosa - who describes the land dispossession of the b l a c k m a j o r i ty d u r i n g t h e apartheid era as South Africa’s “original sin” - has promised to accelerate land reform, with an early focus on unused urban land.

But his party, the ANC responding to pressure from groups like the EFF - is also actively considering the introduction of legislation to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation, a measure assumed by some to be targeting white-owned farm land.

South Africa’s land problem The Natives Land Act of 1913 restricted black people from buying or renting land in “white South Africa”, leading to the forced removals of black people After the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC government said it wanted to return 30% of this land to its previous owners by 2014 It is estimated that 10% of commercial farmland has been redistributed Many of the land-reform farms fail because of a lack of

skill transference and capital to sustain them “Legally expropriating, not land-grabbing,” stressed the Land Reform Minister Maite N koa n a - M a s h a ba n e , i n a n interview.

“We should take the land… using legal processes. But quick, and not being told, ‘Go there, don’t go there.’

“It should no longer be about willing buyer, willing seller only.

It should be about the willingness to share the land. And it should happen now.”

Such statements, and the continuing policy uncertainty around the issue, have prompted some white farmers and pressure groups to make comparisons with Zimbabwe’s chaotic, and economically disastrous land reform process.

“We saw exactly the same comments in Zimbabwe. Nowhere in the world has it ever worked,” said Ian Cameron, of Afriforum, an Afrikaans rights lobby group.

But the government has firmly rejected such comparisons, and many farmers, and experts, are also inclined to be optimistic.

“This could be a turning point for South Africa. I think politically this is a moment of enormous opportunity,” said Prof Ruth Hall, a leading expert on land reform, and prominent critic of the government’s recent handling of the issue.

“For 20 years the state had a mandate for land reform and

failed to do so. [President Jacob] Zuma rolled back the land reform programme. Almost no land was transferred in recent years. Now business and government are coming together. There’s actually quite a lot of goodwill.”

P r o f H a l l a rg u e s t h a t land expropriation - with or without compensation - is already an option under the existing constitution, and that those pushing a constitutional amendment are doing so for political reasons.

A simpler solution, and a more likely path for South Africa, she argues, is for test cases to come before the courts.

Meanwhile, on her family’s thriving cattle farm south of Jo h a n n e s b u rg, 2 6 -yea r- o l d Lerato Senakhomo is betting on a positive outcome.

She has already received government support, and the loan of 515 hectares (1,273 acres).

“We are getting there. I don’t see us having another Zimbabwe.

As a people we just need a little bit of a push, some finance… I don’t think we’ll fail. We must just take it slow,” she said.

But therein lies the challenge for South Africa.

‘We are humans’ “Taking it slow” is no longer an appealing thought for many poor communities, frustrated by the lack of progress, and increasingly spurred to direct action by firebrand politicians.

On a recent afternoon, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Pretoria, hundreds of residents of an informal settlement, built a year earlier on governmentow n e d l a n d , s u rve ye d t h e wreckage of their homes.

Two women sat, tearful and exhausted, beside a pile of salvaged belongings, while a group of men began loading tin sheets - formerly walls and roofs - on to a battered pickup truck.

The informal settlement, near Mamelodi township, had been destroyed by bulldozers sent in by the local council.

No provisions had been made for those rendered homeless.

A group of uniformed children, returning from school, stood, bewildered, beside their former homes.

“It’s our bloody land,” roared Bongani Motswale, hoarse with screaming, as he paced up and down the dirt track in front of his plot.

He was incandescent with rage, having rushed home from work to discover that his home and possessions had been destroyed.

“We have stayed here more than one year. You can’t just come and break everything without telling anyone, without notice, just break our houses and things and say, ‘We must move.’

“We are humans. We are humans. This is our country. This is our land. We are staying here.

Let them come and kill us.” -bbc

Public Eye

Friday May 25, 2018 19

News

20

Public Eye

Friday June 1, 2018

World News Affairs

Balcony rescue highlights French immigration row If you come to France without the right papers and you want to get French citizenship, then it’s really quite simple.

As the case of Mamoudou Gassama goes to show, all you have to do is pull off something “exceptional”.

Actually that is not being flippant. It is in the civil code.

Article 21-19 says that a fasttrack naturalisation procedure is possible for a foreign national who has “performed exceptional services for France, or whose naturalisation would be of exceptional interest for France”.

This is what President Emmanuel Macron was invoking when he congratulated the young Malian at the Elysée palace and told him his papers would be in the post.

Being a nation founded on a set of self-declared values, France has

always been open to the idea of an “honorary” French citizenship - a way of elevating worthy foreigners whose actions have defended or propagated those values.

Back in the early days of the Revolution, there was a law that gave citizenship to those “who by their writings and their courage have served the cause of freedom”.

Beneficiaries included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Much later, in 1870, a decree offered citizenship to people who had fought alongside France in the war against Germany. Most of those who benefited at the time were actually Germans.

And of course there is also the special case of the Foreign Legion, which since the 1830s has offered a chance to fight for France to soldiers of other nations.

Contrary to popular belief,

Foreign Legion soldiers do not get automatic French citizenship, except if they are wounded in action. Today - with the legion employing 8,600 soldiers from 150 countries - there are about 200 naturalisations a year.

But all these precedents were set in the days before mass immigration.

Today it is different.

Today there are hundreds of thousands of young men in France who - like Mr Gassama - arrived after a long and dangerous journey, have no proper papers and survive (just about) by working in the black economy.

And all of them would dearly love to follow his example.

In such circumstances there was bound to be heavy scrutiny of the president’s decision. In fact, just about everyone agrees that what Mr Gassama did in saving the boy was

sufficiently extraordinary to merit fast-track citizenship.

But what some people hold against the president is inconsistency.

W h y, h i s d e t ra c t o rs a re asking, do you not apply the same generosity to the rest of the sanspapiers (paperless ones) - all those other Mamoudou Gassamas whose daily misery goes unreported? Why single out one lucky individual?

Their indignation is all the sharper because right now an immigration bill is passing through parliament which - in the eyes of the left - puts President Macron clearly in breach of France’s historic mission to humanity.

Whether his proposed law is nearly as tough or inhumane as his enemies say it is is another matter.

What is not in doubt is the goal: it is to make matters as clear

as possible, as early as possible, to would-be immigrants. If they can stay, they stay. If they have to leave, they leave. They are deported.

In his conversation with Mr Gassama, President Macron made clear that had it not been for his chance encounter with a badly supervised child on a hot day, Mr Gassama himself would have been on that list for deportation.

But things turned out differently.

Mr Gassama reacted with an instinctive generosity of spirit, he performed an act of supreme courage and agility and it was all caught on camera.

For President Macron, eager to promote his vision of France as a nation of heroes, this was enough.

The act was indeed exceptional and the beneficiary was not just the boy, it was La France. Mr Gassama had qualified. -bbc

just in Africa) classified as least developed.

Many others benef it from Economic Partnership Agreements or other arrangements that give extensive tariff-free access to the EU market.

The EU also has free trade agreements which allow many other countries duty free access (though not necessarily for all goods). Among others that covers Canada, Chile and South Korea.

Japan has such an agreement with the EU though it has not yet come into force. The big gap on that list is the US. Negotiations were launched in 2013 though they have stalled.

Nor does the EU have free trade agreements with the two largest developing economies, China or India. In the case of India talks have made slow progress, partly due to British reluctance to agree the more liberal visa regime sought

by New Delhi.

With China the EU is negotiating an investment agreement, but not a trade deal.

health and safety regulations, and labelling requirements. In many service industries there are licensing requirements and restrictions on who is eligible for authorisation.

Although suppliers may have to comply with such rules in their home market, if they want to sell into a country where the rules are different there is likely to be additional cost.

quantify and compare, though some economists have tried.

One analysis looked at measures to restrict trade that countries are required to report to the World Trade Organization. The EU came third behind the US and China for the number of measures notified.

Looking at service industries, all barriers to trade are NTBs. There are no tariffs on services. In this sector the EU’s single market is less complete than it is for goods, so research by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) looked at individual EU countries.

The report covered 22 service industries in 44 nations (rich countries and some of the more advanced emerging economies) 23 of them EU members. Eight of the 10 least restrictive were EU members.

The EU also supports its farmers with subsidies. The system clearly helps them survive in the face of international competition. The OECD’s estimate of total subsidies to farmers was close to $100bn in 2016.

But the EU is a very large economy and if you look at how much of farmers’ incomes come from subsidies the EU doesn’t stand out so much. It’s more generous to farmers than the US but less than Japan, South Korea, Norway, Iceland or Switzerland. -bbc

Is the EU a ‘protectionist racket’?

W

hen it comes to trade with the rest of the world, the European Union is sometimes accused of having high barriers and protecting its own producers.

It’s an allegation that some supporters of Brexit have been making for some time.

The charge has had something of resurgence in the light of the renewed debate about exactly what sort of customs arrangement Britain should have with the European Union in the future.

But does it stand up?

The EU does certainly have barriers to trade, and they do, one way or another, raise the cost of imported goods.

But every country on the planet has some sort of barriers. So how does the EU compare?

Relatively low Tariffs - taxes that are levied only on imported goods - are the most readily quantified and compared.

For the most part, the EU’s tariffs are relatively low.

There are a number of ways of calculating an average. You can take a “simple” average, or you can weight the tariffs in line with the amount of trade that’s affected. Both have drawbacks and advantages.

Then you can look at “bound” tariffs, the amount that countries have pledged in the World Trade Organization that they won’t exceed. Or you can look at applied tariffs, the amount they actually

i m p os e wh i c h ca n b e lower, sometimes by a large margin.

On any basis, the EU’s average tariffs are fairly moderate but certainly not the lowest. The lowest figure for the EU is the trade-weighted figure for applied tariffs (the most recent in the WTO database is 2015). It was 3%.

That’s higher than the US (2.3%) and Japan (2.1%), but lower than Australia (4%) or Canada (but only just at 3.1%). Some developing countries have higher levels, such as 10.4% for Brazil.

Bu t t h e ma j o r d evelo ped economies can’t match Hong Kong, which has no tariffs.

Sector by sector If you drill down into particular sectors, then you get a more varied picture. Tariffs on farm produce tend to be higher, including in the EU. The trade-weighted average is 7.8%, and that is a good deal higher than the US figure of 3.8%.

B u t i f yo u wa n t t o s e l l agricultural goods into Switzerland there’s an average tariff of nearly 30%.

O ne complaint sometimes made against the EU by its British opponents is about tariffs on goods from developing countries, notably from Africa.

Although there are some tariffs, most African nations benefit from an EU arrangement that allows almost completely tariff and quota free access for their goods. It’s known as Everything but Arms.

It applies to those nations (not

Disguised protection There’s more to trade barriers than tariffs, however. The other things that exporters have to contend with are known collectively as surprisingly enough - non-tariff barriers (NTBs).

They include product standards,

Global trade More from the BBC’s series taking an international perspective on trade: • New Zealand happy to forget the UK’s ‘betrayal’ • ‘It would be a disaster for Texas’ • Where does Trump’s ‘America First’ leave Canada?

• Which country dominates the global arms trade?

• Carmakers fear rising trade barriers after Brexit • Can tariffs really save an industry There are often good reasons for such barriers - such as protecting consumers - but they do have an impact on trade and they can be a form of disguised protection for national suppliers.

One of the few analyses arguing that Brexit would be economically beneficial was based on the idea of the UK eliminating tariffs and also NTBs. Is the EU especially guilty in this area? NTBs are hard to