The board of the Lesotho Electricity Company has sanctioned an acting managing director’s salary ten times what company policy allows, while sources inside LEC say he travels with a two-vehicle Toyota Fortuner security convoy. The company owes its electricity suppliers hundreds of millions of maloti and survives on government bailouts.
Tšeliso Mokela is the acting managing director of the Lesotho Electricity Company. His company owes South Africa’s Eskom and Mozambique’s Electricidade de Moçambique hundreds of millions of maloti. Its liabilities exceed its assets by M98.6 million (approximately $5.99m at today’s rate of M16.44/$1). Its cash reserves have fallen by M145.8 million (approximately $8.87m). The government injected M300 million (approximately $18.24m) to keep the lights on. The board of directors, sources tell the Lesotho Tribune, has authorised Mokela a security arrangement that they say has no precedent for a parastatal executive in this country.
“This acting MD uses a company Toyota Fortuner and his security entourage uses another Fortuner. Not even a minister in this country is guarded like this!” a source with direct knowledge of the arrangement told the Lesotho Tribune.
“Not even a minister in this country is guarded like this!”
The Lesotho Tribune put these concerns to LEC in writing. The company said it would respond next week. This report will be updated in full when that response arrives.
The pay arrangement
The acting managing director question sits in a wider pattern of expenditure that the LEC board approved while the company bled money. In March 2025, the board suspended the entire 10-member executive management team to allow a forensic audit by the Auditor General. Board chairperson Nathaniel Maphathe vacated his post and took the acting managing director role. Over the following 11 months, LEC paid the suspended executives approximately M12 million (approximately $730,000) in salaries. That figure excludes the acting allowances paid to the staff covering their roles.
The Public Accounts Committee summoned LEC in June 2025 and found that Maphathe had drawn M170,000 (approximately $10,340) per month as acting salary, equal to that of suspended managing director Mohlomi Seitlheko. LEC’s own 2021 compensation policy caps acting allowances at 10 percent of the substantive salary, which would be M17,000 (approximately $1,034). The board had instead applied the outdated 2015 policy to justify paying the full amount. The PAC found that Maphathe had in addition received a company vehicle, a M4,000 fuel allowance, and mobile phone benefits.
The board subsequently reversed course, cutting acting allowances to the 10 percent ceiling in August 2025 — only after the committee’s scrutiny. Tšeliso Mokela has since been appointed in the acting managing director role. It is under his tenure that the security convoy arrangement, as described by sources to the Lesotho Tribune, is said to be in place.
The financial position
An external audit submitted to the Ministry of Energy in January 2025 found that LEC’s current liabilities exceed its assets by M98.6 million (approximately $5.99m). Cash reserves had fallen by M145.8 million (approximately $8.87m). The auditors issued a disclaimer opinion on the company’s accounts after management failed to supply adequate records. The audit also found that LEC had been relying on manual financial journal entries without supporting documentation, flagged as a high risk for fraudulent transactions, and that the company had failed to adhere to the King IV Code on Corporate Governance.
The structural cause is straightforward: LEC buys electricity from Eskom and EDM at prices higher than it charges consumers, generating losses it cannot absorb. Bulk electricity costs rose from M805.8 million (approximately $49.02m) in the 2022/23 financial year to M1.18 billion (approximately $71.78m) in 2023/24, a rise of 46.85 percent. The company imports as much as 89 percent of its electricity needs at market prices while selling below cost to consumers.
The government injected M300 million (approximately $18.24m) to allow continued electricity purchases. A previous board was dissolved in October 2024 by then-Energy Minister Prof Nqosa Mahao, who cited the board’s failure to meet its fiduciary duties. That board had approved M6 million (approximately $364,900) in staff bonuses despite the company’s financial position. Mahao was himself dismissed by Prime Minister Sam Matekane in November 2024 before the High Court resolved a challenge the board had launched against his show-cause letters.
The current board, inducted between November and December 2024, inherited those conditions. It then approved acting allowances at ten times the rate the company’s own policy prescribed. Sources say it has now also approved a security and vehicle arrangement for the acting managing director that no comparable official in Lesotho receives.
The Lesotho Tribune asked LEC to confirm whether Mokela’s security detail exists, who authorised it, what it costs the company per month, and what the board’s basis was for approving it. LEC said it would respond next week.
