I and many of my colleagues in practice owe an

I and many of my
colleagues in practice owe an inexpressible debt to him and to his
predecessors
I am going to decline to articulate some of the most humorous
moments I had with him, lest I be accused of turning this rare moment into a
comical one.

Your Lordships,
I will strive on this occasion to speak about things that matter to the
profession, I shall do so, but only in part. For what I want to talk about
today is a common malaise: a lack of critical introspection across the face
of legal life in this jurisdiction. My humble thesis is that, for all lawyers,
there are disturbing developments about which we are insufficiently
articulate and active. I’ll ask that I be allowed to illustrate my point with
scattered examples from three different areas of our shared complacency.
The first concerns adjudication. The second concerns legal practice. And
the third concerns the academia, what they do in legal education and
what we, the legal profession, do or should ourselves do in legal
education.
Time does not permit today to speak in detail of the many challenges with
which I believe courts in Lesotho are confronted with. I would however
like to say two things in this respect. The first is that it is time to end an
approach which is insufficiently rigorous in the scrutiny of the judgments
of this Honourable court, and how they function.
I do not mean by this that there should be anything less than professional
respect for judges, and least of all that there should be the kind of attacks
on courts, chiefly by political figures, which from time to time have been
manifested.
But other than the writings of a few law teachers in the faculty of Law in
the National University of Lesotho, What probing critique has there been
in the last few years of the work of this Honourable Court as the highest
and last resort for litigants? It is perhaps prudent to commend among
others the detailed exegesis of my learned senior Advocate K.K. Mohau
K.C. on this Honourable Court’s decision in Mothobi v. Sebotsa.
1
A
publication which is showcased in the venerable Lesotho Law Journal
2
-
This case commenced in the High Court as an action for an order of
specific performance of a contract of sale of rights in immovable property.
The purchaser sought an order directing the heir of the lady who had sold
him her rights in some immovable property, to sign all documents
necessary to effect the transfer of the lease over that property into his
names. The ‘agreement’ sued upon was a verbal one allegedly concluded
in 1982; and the summons for its enforcement was only issued in June
2005, some twenty three years after the agreement had been concluded.
This was after the alleged buyer had taken occupation of the premises and
rented them out to his own tenants immediately after the conclusion of
the purported agreement. The High Court granted the orders sought but,
1 2007-2008 LAC 439
2 Volume 18 2008-2009 p. 175

on appeal, this Honourable Court set aside the orders of the High Court
and substituted in their place, an order dismissing the claims with costs.