African King Arrested

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31255, 30 December 1966, Page 9

African King Arrested

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) MASERU (Lesotho), December 28. Heavily-armed police today guarded the little red-brick palace where King Moshoeshoe II of the newly-independent Lesotho—formerly Basutoland—was placed under house arrest by his Prime Minister soon after midnight.

The move by the Prime Minister, Chief Lea b u a Jonathan, aged 52, came after a day of violence in which at least seven people died, scores were injured and about 160 arrested.

Para-military police armed with rifles and tear-gas guns surrounded the palace soon after the white police commissioner, Mr B. Sands, served on the 29-year-old King a house arrest order signed by Chief Jonathan under the country’s Emergency Powers Act.

Chief Jonathan said in a

statement last night that yesterday’s disturbances in this black enclave inside South Africa were the result of a long-hatched plot between the Oxford-educated King and the leader of pan-Africanist Opposition parties to topple the Government by force. He said they had hoped that “in the resulting upheaval the king would assume the dictatorial powers for which he has always yearned.” The King, seeking sweeping executive power in place of his present role as a rubberstamp constitutional monarch, was to have addressed a rally yesterday to further his demands in defiance of the Government. But he did not turn up.

Police cancelled the rally and violence broke out.

Earlier a police inspector was shot and hacked to death and four police troopers were injured when they stopped vehicles taking people to the rally at Thabo Bosigo, about 15 miles from here.

Today, Mr Ntsu Mohkehle, leader of the powerful Opposition Basutoland Congress Party, seemed to avert the imminent threat of more violence by issuing a press statement denying that his party was involved in any antiGovernment plot or intended

to overthrow the Government unconstitutionally.