By Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja

Last week, the President of the Law Society of Lesotho (LSL) added me to their interactive platform where all lawyers of Lesotho are members. I was added as a representative of the Nigerian Law Society (NLS) with whom the Lesotho Law Society (LSL) had just signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the purpose of collaboration on delivery of continuing legal education programmes.

Without divulging the details of the conversations, I can say without an iota of any doubts, that there is hope for the survival of the legal profession in both Lesotho and Africa as a whole. What I witnessed was a collective condemnation of a certain errant lawyer by all the lawyers on that platform. No one spoke in his favour, nobody mentioned that the said errant lawyer is entitled to the “presumption of innocence”, and all the talk about his fundamental human rights and the plethora of preliminary objections (and other technicalities) that we use here in Nigeria to deflect attention and set so many “gangsters” free and allow them return to their looting ways. All the Lesotho lawyers were unanimous in their condemnation of the “illegal” action of the said “lawyer” and suggested ways that the Law Society of Lesotho could penalise said “lawyer”. I have previously written that the police in Lesotho have a practice of posting the pictures of offenders on their social media platforms.

This in itself is a huge deterrent to many citizens of Lesotho. The reason is because if ever you face appears on any of those police social media platforms, It doesn’t matter whether it is a minor offence such as a traffic offence, then the entire society will ostracise you and practice social distancing from such a person.

Such a person can even lose their employment because of having their face on the police social media platforms.

This is a thing that is taken seriously here in Lesotho. I once had a group of persons from our congregation at my residence for a small dinner get-together. I tried my best to impress as a good host by bringing red wine and other forms of alcohol. Everyone partook of the said red wine and alcohol except the person who was supposed to drive them home. The person refused to taste even a drip of alcohol because according to the said driver, if one their way home, the police performs a breathalyser test and even one drop of alcohol is found by the breathalyser machine, then the driver’s face will be featured on the said police social media platforms. The driver said that if that happens then, the said driver cannot preach freely from house-to-house within their neighbourhood as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses because of having previously appeared on the police social media platforms.

This is just to make the point that it is the morality of the majority of citizens of any country, their collective condemnation of evil actions that is a very important complement to having a plethora of laws, and machinery for administration of justice. Witnessing this in the Kingdom of Lesotho, gives me a lot of hope that something beautiful is happening within the legal profession here in Lesotho and within Africa as a whole.

It is as if a “rose” is growing out of this concrete, we call Africa. I have adapted this from the title of a poem written by the late Tupac Shakur: “The Rose Grew out of Concrete”. It was written between 1989 to 1994.

“The Rose That Grew from Concrete” is a poem by Tupac Shakur that conveys the idea that someone can become great despite coming from a place that is not considered great. The poem uses the rose as a symbol of beauty and love, and compares it to people who can be beautiful despite their imperfections. The concrete represents a place that is hard, unnourishing, and not appreciated, such as a ghetto.”