The Revolution for Prosperity has long insisted it is united behind its reform message. But a leaked and heated exchange between two of its own MPs tells a very different story. The messages, dripping with accusation, resentment and outright hostility, reveal a party broken into factions and paralysed by infighting at constituency level. What emerges is not a healthy internal debate. It is a political knife fight happening inside the ruling party’s own house.
The conversation, between RFP backbencher ‘Mope Khati and Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane, reads like a political earthquake. The two men accuse each other of sabotage, vote interference, manipulation of constituencies, and deliberate obstruction of public services. Both claim the other is running parallel structures on the ground. Both insist the other is lying. And neither hides the bitterness.
A Backbencher Declares War
In the first message, ‘Mope delivers a scathing rebuke. He accuses Minister Mpotjoane of positioning himself as a kingmaker inside RFP. He says the Minister treats constituencies like private territory and recruits his own preferred candidates behind the backs of elected MPs. The tone is raw. He accuses the Minister of undermining him in Pela-Ts’oeu, blocking services meant for his voters and spreading messages that promised government projects will never materialise. He even warns that the RFP leadership should tell him directly if they no longer want him as an MP.
His frustration is not quiet. It is a roar.
“You Are Not a Godfather Here”
Khati fires a slavo, reminds Mpotjoane that he once said Sam Matekane (RFP leader) was merely a front for Democratic Congress.
You always complain!
Mpotjoane denies blocking electricity connections or bridge construction in Pela-Ts’oeu. He denies recruiting candidates in constituencies that are not his own. He accuses ‘Mope of twisting facts and weaponising private conversations they shared.
He calls ‘Mope a habitual complainer…
It is a reply that reveals a man deeply insulted and prepared to fight back.
Accusations of Parallel Structures
The exchange then escalates into claims that Mpotjoane has been coordinating teams within Pela-Ts’oeu. ‘Mope insists that the Minister’s drivers, allies and committee members have been moving through his constituency campaigning for a candidate allegedly loyal to him. He says these individuals even boast that public services will be withheld because they have the Minister’s blessing.
It is an extraordinary accusation for one ruling party MP to direct at another.
A Party Coming Apart
What the conversation shows is not simply personal disagreement. It is evidence of structural decay inside RFP. MPs no longer trust one another. Ministers are suspected of interfering in constituencies not their own. Grassroots committees are split into hostile camps. Promised public services are allegedly used as political weapons. Internal disputes are no longer discussed quietly in party rooms but hurled across text messages in the language of betrayal.
The tone is emotional. It is territorial. It is personal. And it exposes a party struggling to contain its own ambitions.
Old Ghosts of Coalition Politics
What ‘Mope says at one point should worry the RFP leadership. He compares the party’s internal sabotage to the chaos that destroyed the All Basotho Convention. In Lesotho’s political history, this is not a light warning. Parties here do not collapse from opposition pressure. They collapse from internal poisoning.
RFP may be following the same path.
A Party With No Internal Discipline
The exchange makes one thing clear. The party has no functioning dispute-resolution mechanism. If MPs resort to public outbursts and private text wars, it means no one at the top is enforcing discipline or mediating conflicts. It means factions are running freely. It means the promise of unity that helped RFP win the 2022 election has evaporated.
Both men accuse the other of feeding private conversations to the party leader. Both accuse the other of dishonesty. Both believe they are victims of political sabotage.
In a party with firm leadership, such an exchange would not be possible.
What This Means for Governing
Factional fights inside a ruling party always spill out into governance. The allegations here point directly to stalled public projects in Menkhoaneng and Pela-Ts’oeu. They point to cabinet ministers accused of blocking development for political advantage. They point to MPs who no longer coordinate but openly accuse each other of sabotage.
If the ruling party is this fractured internally, the country’s governance will inevitably feel the consequences.
When the Leader Is Present But Leadership Is Absent
What makes this entire saga even more astonishing is where it unfolded. These were not private side-messages exchanged in frustration. This was a full-scale political knife fight happening inside an official WhatsApp group that includes Prime Minister Sam Matekane and the entire RFP leadership. They watched the blows land. They watched the accusations fly. They watched their MPs tear each other apart in full view of the party command. And they said nothing.
Not a correction. Not a reprimand. Not even a call for calm.
Silence became the leadership’s only contribution.
It was the kind of silence that tells a story all on its own. A story of a leader who has lost the room. A story of a movement that no longer fears its own centre. A story of a governing party that has become so uncertain of its authority that it cannot even contain a public internal brawl happening right in front of it.
And now something darker has surfaced. RFP insiders say the party will not field candidates in constituencies belonging to nineteen MPs who have been demanding that Matekane fire corrupt ministers. Even if these MPs win their primaries, the party will simply refuse to register them with the IEC. In Peka, for example, RFP has already signalled that if MP Mohopoli Monokoane wins the primary, the party will abandon the constituency entirely. Instead, it will openly instruct its supporters to vote for Tello Kibane, who is preparing to run as an independent candidate.
It is a move that reveals a party leadership willing to punish dissent even at the cost of shrinking its own footprint. It is also a move that confirms what many Basotho have suspected but could not yet prove. The RFP is no longer fighting the opposition. It is fighting itself. And the battlefield is every constituency where an independent mind refuses to bow to a corrupt minister or a powerful faction.
What the public witnessed in those WhatsApp messages was not just two MPs trading insults. It was the live disintegration of internal discipline. It was the slow unravelling of authority. It was a governing party losing control in real time.
If this is how RFP behaves behind closed doors, the question is no longer whether the party is divided. The real question is whether it is still governable at all.
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