Moeketsi Majoro

Moeketsi Majoro was born on November 3, 1961 in the Leribe District of northern Lesotho, a largely agricultural region in the lowlands near the border with South Africa ^[1]. He grew up in a country that had gained independence from Britain only five years after his birth, and his generation came of age during the long period of political turbulence that marked Lesotho in the 1970s and 1980s.

He pursued higher education at the National University of Lesotho at Roma, where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics ^[2]. He then continued his studies in the United States at Washington State University, completing graduate work in natural resource economics, including a doctorate ^[2]. That training in applied economics, unusual among Basotho politicians of his era, shaped the rest of his career. Colleagues and journalists would later describe him first as an economist and only second as a politician.

Anyone asking who was Moeketsi Majoro before politics finds an academic. After returning home he lectured in economics at the National University of Lesotho during the 1990s, teaching students in a department that supplied much of the country's civil service ^[2].

Majoro moved from the lecture hall into government service, joining Lesotho's Ministry of Finance where he rose to senior positions, including service as Principal Secretary, the top civil service post in the ministry ^[3]. In that role he worked on budgets, public debt, and the management of revenue from the Southern African Customs Union, which supplies a large share of Lesotho's state income.

His technical reputation carried him beyond national borders. From 2008 he worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, serving as an adviser and alternate executive director representing the Africa Group 1 constituency, a bloc of more than twenty African states ^[3]. The IMF years gave him direct experience of international finance and a network that few Basotho officials possessed.

The turn to electoral politics came with the All Basotho Convention (ABC), the party founded by Thomas Thabane. When Thabane formed a coalition government after the 2012 election, Majoro was brought into cabinet as Minister of Development Planning, serving from 2013 until the coalition collapsed in 2015 ^[4]. In the June 2017 general election he won the Thetsane constituency in Maseru as an ABC candidate, entering the National Assembly in his own right ^[4].

After the ABC returned to power in 2017, Thabane appointed Majoro Minister of Finance ^[4]. He inherited a difficult ledger. Lesotho depends heavily on customs union receipts, remittances from workers in South Africa, water royalties, and textile exports, and all of these were under pressure. Majoro presented budgets that pressed for restraint in the public wage bill and warned repeatedly about declining revenue ^[5].

His time at the treasury coincided with deepening instability inside the governing party. The ABC split into factions loyal to Thabane and factions seeking his exit, particularly after police named the elderly prime minister as a suspect in the 2017 murder of his estranged wife Lipolelo Thabane, an accusation he denied ^[6]. As the crisis wore on through 2019 and early 2020, Majoro, widely viewed as competent and untainted by the scandal, emerged as a candidate acceptable to rival camps.

Among notable Moeketsi Majoro facts from this period: he was not a party founder, held no deep factional base, and owed his standing mainly to his record as a manager of public money. That profile, a liability in ordinary times, became an asset when the party needed a compromise figure ^[6].

Thomas Thabane resigned in May 2020, and on May 20, 2020 Majoro was sworn in as Prime Minister of Lesotho, heading a new coalition anchored by the ABC and the Democratic Congress of Mothetjoa Metsing's former rivals under Mathibeli Mokhothu ^[1]. He took office in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, days after Lesotho confirmed its first coronavirus case, the last country in Africa to do so ^[7].

The pandemic dominated his early months. His government imposed lockdowns coordinated with South Africa, which surrounds Lesotho entirely, sought vaccines through the COVAX facility and the African Union, and tried to cushion the textile industry, the largest private employer, from collapsing orders ^[7]. He also created a national COVID-19 secretariat to centralize the response after criticism of the initial command structure ^[7].

Beyond the emergency, Majoro pressed the long-running project of constitutional and security sector reform that Lesotho had promised the Southern African Development Community after years of coups and army interference in politics. An omnibus constitutional amendment package advanced through parliament during his term, though key portions stalled and were later contested in the courts ^[8]. Any full Moeketsi Majoro biography has to weigh that unfinished reform effort alongside the pandemic response.

His premiership was never secure. He survived internal ABC revolts and, in early 2022, lost the contest for the party's deputy leadership, which effectively ended his claim to lead the ABC into the next election; the party instead chose Nkaku Kabi as its candidate for prime minister ^[8].

The general election of October 7, 2022 transformed Lesotho's political landscape. The Revolution for Prosperity, a new party formed months earlier by the businessman Sam Matekane, won the largest share of seats, while the ABC suffered a heavy defeat ^[9]. Majoro accepted the outcome and oversaw an orderly transfer of power, and Matekane was sworn in as prime minister on October 28, 2022 ^[9].

The peaceful handover drew notice in a country where transitions had often been accompanied by military tension. Majoro left office after roughly two and a half years, having led Lesotho through the worst of the pandemic without the constitutional crises that had ended several previous governments ^[9].

Since stepping down he has kept a relatively low public profile, appearing at regional and international forums on economic and governance questions rather than seeking a return to frontline party combat ^[9].

Majoro is married to Masekoalane Majoro, who served as Lesotho's First Lady during his premiership and took part in public health campaigns connected to the pandemic response ^[1]. The couple have children, and the family has generally stayed out of the political publicity that surrounded some of his predecessors.

He is known for a reserved, professorial manner. Reporters covering his government often contrasted his data-heavy speeches with the more theatrical style of veteran Basotho politicians ^[6]. He speaks Sesotho and English, and his public remarks return frequently to themes of fiscal discipline, job creation, and the risks of Lesotho's dependence on external revenue ^[5].

Assessments of Moeketsi Majoro achievements usually begin with stability. He took over a government in disarray, kept a fractious coalition functioning, and handed power to an elected successor on schedule, an outcome that was far from guaranteed given Lesotho's history ^[9]. His pandemic management, though criticized at times for slow procurement and hard lockdowns, avoided the health system collapse many had feared in one of Africa's poorest states ^[7].

His economic record is more contested. Growth remained weak, unemployment stayed high, and the structural problems he had diagnosed as finance minister, a bloated wage bill and overreliance on customs revenue, largely outlasted his government ^[5]. The constitutional reform package he championed did not fully survive legal challenge, leaving the security sector question open for his successors ^[8].

Still, his career traces an unusual arc for the region: village-born academic, IMF adviser, treasury chief, then head of government. For students of southern African politics, who was Moeketsi Majoro is answered less by any single law or project than by the demonstration that a technocrat could reach, and peacefully leave, the highest office in Lesotho ^[1].