Exclusive · Power Utility in Crisis

Directors learned of the Acting Managing Director’s security detail from the pages of this newspaper. Now a board insider says the Lesotho Electricity Company is “divided right at the centre” over Tšeliso ‘Mokela’s conduct and mandate — and points to the Ministry of Energy and Mining.

By Staff Reporter  |  Maseru

The board of the Lesotho Electricity Company is split down the middle over the conduct of its Acting Managing Director, with one director telling the Lesotho Tribune that the company’s most senior oversight body is now divided right at the centre.

The board member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak publicly, accused Acting Managing Director Tšeliso ‘Mokela of ill discipline, of operating outside his mandate, and of taking consequential decisions without reference to the board that appointed him.

The clearest illustration, the source said, was the procurement of a security detail for Mr ‘Mokela — a decision several directors say they learned about only when this publication reported it.

“…I was shocked that such a consequential decision was made without some of us not knowing,” the source said.

Before publishing that report, the Lesotho Tribune put questions to both Mr ‘Mokela and board chairperson Thabo Khasipe. Neither responded. Fresh questions put to both men for this article were also unanswered at the time of publication.

A three-month job, nine months on

Part of the unease inside the boardroom, the source said, is a lack of clarity about what Mr ‘Mokela was actually appointed to do.

The record gives that complaint some weight. When LEC announced his appointment in October 2025, the board was explicit that the role was interim: a three-month appointment, made pending the outcome of disciplinary proceedings against substantive Managing Director Mohlomi Seitlheko and other suspended executives. Nine months later, Mr ‘Mokela is still in the chair — and those disciplinary proceedings, arising from suspensions handed down in March last year, remain unresolved.

That drift matters. An acting appointment carries a narrower licence than a substantive one, and the longer it runs without being renewed, converted or closed off, the harder it becomes to say where the authority for long-term commitments comes from.

“We have never seen an MD always on field with Phapano.”
LEC board source

The Principal Secretary in the room

The second charge our source levels is one of misplaced priorities. Mr ‘Mokela, the director alleged, spends around half his working time in the company of Tankiso Phapano, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Mining, rather than on the rescue of the utility itself.

“We have never seen an MD always on field with Phapano [PS],” the source said.

More seriously, the source alleges that the division at board level has been driven by Mr Phapano, who is said to issue instructions to Mr Khasipe on matters that have startled other directors. Those specifics will be published in a subsequent article; the individuals implicated have been given time to answer detailed questions.

This publication has not independently verified the claim of instruction. What is on the public record is that the ministry has written directly to the LEC board on matters that ordinarily sit with directors. In a letter dated 15 May 2026, Mr Phapano told Mr Khasipe that the external audit and forensic investigation had established sufficient grounds to open formal disciplinary proceedings against implicated executives, and directed the board to institute them. The same letter put the utility’s losses over three years at more than M1 billion.

Under conventional state-owned enterprise governance, a shareholder ministry appoints directors and sets policy direction, while decisions on executive discipline sit with the board. A ministerial letter of that kind is not, on its face, improper. It does sharpen the question our source is asking in blunter terms: who, in practice, is running the Lesotho Electricity Company?

A company with no room for error

Whatever the merits of the boardroom quarrel, it is playing out at an institution with almost no margin left.

The Auditor-General’s 2024 report found LEC unable to account for M568 million. Mr Khasipe has himself described what the incoming board found in late 2024 as a company in intensive care — haemorrhaging cash, with internal controls that barely functioned and an information technology policy untouched since 2005. The utility recorded a M78 million loss in 2022/23 and has projected far heavier losses since. It has spent roughly M12 million keeping suspended executives on the payroll. Its attempt to interdict the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee from investigating it was dismissed by Chief Justice Sakoane Sakoane, at considerable cost to its standing with the public.

The underlying economics are harder still. LEC buys peak-hour power from Eskom at around M6 a unit and sells it to Basotho at roughly M1.45. Mr ‘Mokela has said plainly that the company is not financially sustainable and requires a government subsidy to fund daily operations. Customers, meanwhile, have spent much of July absorbing rolling interruptions the company attributes to Eskom maintenance on the transmission lines feeding Lesotho.

The case for the defence

It should be said that Mr ‘Mokela has a record to point to.

Since taking office he has publicly named political interference and patronage hiring as the root of the rot, in terms few parastatal chiefs have been willing to use. He moved to cut the executive team from eleven members to five. He signed power purchase agreements with two solar generators to reduce dependence on imported electricity. And it was an internal drive he initiated to trace financial leakages that surfaced an alleged M81 million electricity fraud scheme said to have run since 2015 — a matter now before the Maseru Magistrates’ Court, with five accused.

None of that is nothing. It is also not an answer to the governance question. A manager can be right about the disease and still be wrong about the limits of his own office — and a board that learns of its own Managing Director’s security arrangements from the press has a problem regardless of how that Managing Director is performing.

What happens next

The immediate test is whether the board resolves the question of Mr ‘Mokela’s mandate: confirm him, replace him, or define the acting role properly and put a term to it. The second is whether the disciplinary process against the suspended executives, now more than a year old, is ever concluded.

The Lesotho Tribune has put detailed questions to Mr ‘Mokela, Mr Khasipe and Mr Phapano. This publication will carry their responses in full should they be provided.

Editor’s note

The allegations of ill discipline, incompetence and improper direction reported here are the account of a single LEC board source who spoke on condition of anonymity. They have not been independently verified by this publication. The Lesotho Tribune sought comment from Mr ‘Mokela, Mr Khasipe and Mr Phapano before publication and received no response. All three are entitled to a right of reply, which this publication undertakes to carry in full and unedited.

Part one of two · Part two examines the instructions passed from the Ministry of Energy and Mining to the LEC board