(MENAFN- The Post)
MASERU
THIS was a bloody Christmas holiday like no other that left several people dead.
At the centre of the violence were allegations of infidelity among partners.
Take for instance, an incident that happened in Masianokeng, on the southern outskirts of Maseru, a few weeks ago
A retired
Police office had always suspected that his lover was having an extra-marital affair and so when she went to a bar, he secretly followed her.
The 29-year-old woman and her 43-year-old suspected lover were all police officers deployed at Flight One in Mazenod.
Police spokesman, Senior Supt Mpiti Mopeli, told thepost that the two were in the company of other patrons when the 48-year-old suspect followed them to the bar.
“He was hiding in the dark watching while the (two lovers) were partying and dancing,” S/Supt Mopeli says.
“When the song stopped, he would hide in the dark and when it started again, he looked and saw his wife dancing.”Advertisement
Senior Supt Mopeli says the suspect came out from the dark where he was hiding and opened fire, fatally shooting his wife.
People in the bar ran for their dear lives during the commotion. After killing his wife, the suspect then turned the gun on his wife's lover, killing him in the process.
The suspect later told the police that his wife was not picking his calls and had decided to follow her to the bar where he saw her dancing with her lover.
The police said the suspect had applied for early retirement after he allegedly shot and killed one of his girlfriends who was a correctional services officer in Butha-Buthe in 2022.
“He was still out on bail,” Senior Supt Mopeli says
In two other separate incidents, Maboko Maboko and Ralisebo Letsie were remanded in custody this week for killing their wives.
Maboko, 42, and Letsie, 44, appeared before the Maseru Magistrate's Court on Monday.
The court heard that Maboko confessed that he murdered his wife, 'Mateboho Maboko, after he surrendered to the police.
The charge sheet says Maboko had invited his wife to come to Maseru to celebrate the New Year with him. His wife was coming from Leribe where she stayed.
'Mateboho, the charge sheet says, allegedly started at her lover's place before proceeding to the husband's place, arriving late at night on December 29
The court heard that when Maboko asked her where she had been, she confessed that she had gone to see her lover first before coming to him, which infuriated him.
Maboko allegedly confessed that he went outside the house to break a stick from a tree with which he assaulted the wife to death.
In a separate case, the court heard that Letsie and his wife were at a bar drinking on Christmas Day and when it was getting late, he demanded that they should retire home.
But his wife refused to leave, which triggered a physical fight. Letsie then strangled his wife using her hair until she died.
The latest murders happened a few weeks after Lesotho marked 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, a campaign that seeks to highlight the need to fight gender-based violence
Makhalane Mpota, a Maseru-based professional counsellor, says some people grew up with anger issues from a tender age.
Mpota says those anger issues tend to flare up if they are unresolved later in life. The result is that people end up venting their anger against innocent people.
“The innocent people usually bear the brunt of something they have not been an architect of,” Mpota says.
“This is painful because people are being blamed for what they do not know.”
He says another critical factor that contributes to anger issues is that some people do not want to accept their mistakes
“They shift blame to others after missing some opportunities.”
Faced with such situations, he says, people should accept that they have to do things differently.
Statistically, Mpota says men tend to have more anger issues than women.
The environment, according to Mpota, is yet another factor that contributes significantly to anger amongst people.
He says some people are good-hearted and treat others well with the hope that they will receive the same
Unfortunately, he says, the world does not always work that way.
Mpota says the best way is for people to know how to deal with some situations.
He says some people have been betrayed in life and lost valuable possessions such as cars and buildings.
They end up with anger issues, he says.
“Some people have lost all hope after failing to reach their goals in life.”Advertisement
In a thesis titled Perceptions and experiences of young adult men who have perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence, submitted for the Master of Social Work at the National University of Lesotho in June last year, 'Matheo Ndaule gives a glimpse of factors behind the escalation of these violent acts against spouses.
“Experience is understood to shape perception while perception in turn influences behaviour,” Ndaule writes.
She says intimate partner violence (IPV) is a call for social scientists to consider perceptions and childhood experiences which may promote the practice.
“Noting the high incidence of IPV in the country, it may be reasonable to posit that the pervasiveness of the practice may be creating a misperception of IPV as acceptable,” she says.
She says Basotho boys grow up witnessing and experiencing violence through games, corporal punishment, being bullied, taking part in the abduction of young girls, and witnessing IPV between their parents and other significant adults
Such IPV, she says, is often unreported to authorities by the adults and does not seem to carry any consequence for perpetrators while corporal punishment and bullying experienced by boys is understood to be rife in Lesotho.
“There is a risk that childhood experiences of violence and abuse may develop into misperception that violence is an acceptable communication strategy in all relationships including intimate relationships.”
She blamed stick fighting, a common boys' game among Basotho, as“a prime example of violent boys' games designed to assert one's position in two-person relationships”.
“It may be said that power and authority are still associated with violence by some Basotho men,” she says.
IPV-related incidents continue to plague the country regardless of the frameworks and programmes instituted, she says
She says IPV is prevalent in Lesotho, particularly among the young adults (18–35 years of age) and has been worsened by the current inflation rate (8.12%), unemployment rate (18.29%), and Covid-19 pandemic aftermaths, among others.
The national IPV prevalence ranged between 51 percent and 69 percent, with Mokhotlong among the top four districts with a 63.6 percent prevalence rate, she says.
“Lesotho's lifetime prevalence rate of IPV has remained above 60% for many years.”
For example, she says, it was 69 percent in 2014, 86 percent in 2015, and 62 percent in 2020.
“Psychological IPV was found to be the most prevalent but mostly unreported, affecting men more than women.”Advertisement
She says only six percent of IPV cases with minor injuries got reported to the police, while four percent sought medical help but lied about the causes of their injuries.
Of those reported cases, only 4.8 percent were criminally charged in the courts of law, thus discouraging the survivors to continue reporting the incidents.
“Lack of reporting, therefore, allowed perpetrators to keep up their violent acts and get away with them.”
She says in many IPV episodes witnessed in childhood, alcohol was discovered to have been a major trigger of violent behaviour.
“People under the influence of alcohol lack the ability to exercise self-control and misperceive the behaviour of others,” Ndaule says.
“The misperception in most cases leads to increased possibilities of harm and fatalities,” she says
“People also blamed their violent acts on being under the influence, while others intentionally used alcohol prior to engaging in violent acts, knowing that their violent acts were to be blamed on alcohol.”
As a result, she says, Basotho boys developed the perception that alcohol abuse was a passport to perpetrating intimate partner violence.
Beautiful Dream Society, an NGO committed to ending human trafficking and exploitation in Lesotho and beyond, says gender-based violence is found around the world,“but it is particularly prevalent in Lesotho”.
In 2021, the NGO says, 47 percent of the women murdered in Lesotho were killed by their husbands and partners.
In the first half of 2022, the Police Child and Gender Protection Unit received 45 physical assault reports and 184 sexual assaults reports with female
victims in Lesotho
“There is no way of knowing how many violent acts went unreported,” it says, in a report published in 2024.
In July last year, the United States' Millennium Challenge Corporation reported that Lesotho has one of the highest rates of GBV in the world.
It says over 86 percent of women in Lesotho have experienced some form of violence in their lifetime, and 40 percent of men admitted to having perpetrated violence against women.
Majara Molupe
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