THERE is something almost ritualistic about Lesotho’s accountability process. Every year the Auditor-General uncovers alarming financial irregularities. Every year Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) summons accounting officers, permanent secretaries and heads of state-owned enterprises to explain themselves. Every year officials promise reforms, blame “system errors,” and vow that such mistakes will never happen again. And every year, nothing changes.
The PAC deserves credit for the diligence with which it pursues its investigations. Committee members spend countless hours interrogating witnesses, poring over audit reports and exposing procurement violations, financial mismanagement and suspected corruption. Their hearings have become some of the most transparent demonstrations of parliamentary oversight. Yet transparency without consequences eventually becomes theatre.
The committee can expose wrongdoing, but it cannot prosecute it. It can recommend action, but it cannot compel it. It can embarrass officials before television cameras, but it cannot recover stolen public funds or send anyone to prison. That limitation lies at the heart of Lesotho’s accountability crisis.
The latest findings are merely the latest chapter in an increasingly familiar story. Auditor-General ‘Mathabo Makenete’s reports revealed M3.49 billion in unreconciled balances for the 2022/23 financial year, followed by another M3.09 billion in 2023/24. Together, more than M6 billion remains inadequately explained.
The government explanations range from delayed accounting entries and exchange-rate adjustments to administrative errors and missing records. Fraud is mentioned almost as an afterthought.
Certainly, accounting systems are not perfect. Errors do occur. But when “administrative mistakes” repeatedly involve billions of maloti, the public is entitled to wonder where incompetence ends and criminality begins. More troubling is the apparent absence of follow-through.
Representatives from both the Lesotho Mounted Police Service’s Commercial Crime Unit and the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences routinely attend PAC hearings. They hear the same testimony. They examine the same documents. They witness the same admissions. Yet few, if any, prosecutions emerge directly from these proceedings.
This raises an uncomfortable constitutional question: if Parliament uncovers evidence suggesting criminal conduct, who bears responsibility for acting upon it?
The executive cannot realistically be expected to enthusiastically prosecute itself. Ministers supervise ministries under investigation. Accounting officers report to the same government whose failures are being exposed. Political considerations inevitably complicate decisions that should be based solely on evidence. That institutional conflict creates a dangerous accountability vacuum.
Standing Order 97 empowers the PAC to investigate and report to Parliament, but its authority ends there. It possesses neither prosecutorial powers nor the ability to enforce its recommendations.
Meanwhile, ordinary citizens theoretically have the right to institute private prosecutions under Section 18 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act. But there is a catch: they must finance the entire exercise themselves. Justice, it seems, is available, provided one has sufficiently deep pockets to prosecute the state. That is hardly a realistic safeguard for democratic accountability.
The consequence is a system where every institution appears to perform its assigned role while the overall objective remains spectacularly unfulfilled. The Auditor-General audits. PAC investigates. Police attend hearings. The DCEO observes. Parliament debates. But accountability never arrives.
Public confidence inevitably suffers. Citizens begin to question whether exposing corruption serves any purpose if exposure is never followed by punishment. Honest public servants become demoralised when misconduct appears consequence-free. Corrupt officials, meanwhile, learn that embarrassment is often the harshest penalty they will face.
Oversight mechanisms are only as effective as the enforcement that follows them. If Lesotho is serious about combating corruption, Parliament should consider strengthening the legal framework governing PAC recommendations. There should be statutory timelines requiring investigative agencies to report what action has been taken following adverse audit findings. Decisions not to prosecute should be explained publicly. Institutions responsible for investigating financial crimes must themselves be held accountable for inaction.
The country does not lack audits. It does not lack investigations. It does not lack reports documenting financial abuse. What it lacks is consequences.
Until that changes, each new Auditor-General’s report will simply become another volume in an expanding library of ignored warnings, each PAC hearing another carefully staged performance, and each promise of reform another exercise in managing public frustration.
Perhaps the most important question facing Lesotho today is no longer where the missing billions went. It is who, if anyone, has both the power and the will to ensure that those responsible are finally held to account.