The Communist Party of Lesotho (Mokhatio oa Makomonisi a Lesotho) is a political party in Lesotho

Lesotho

Lesotho , officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country and enclave, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. It is just over in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. Lesotho is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The name...

, founded on May 5, 1962. The founding secretary of the party was John Motloheloa. Other early leaders of the party included Mokhafisi Kena and Sefali Malefane. Edward Mofutsanyana was a member of the Communist Party of South Africa Central Committee

Central Committee

Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...

 (disbanded 1950) but had no part in the Lesotho party. Joe Matthews of the South African Communist Party (founded 1953) financed the launch of the Lesotho party but later supported the ANC-allied Marematlou Freedom Party. The South African Communist Party

South African Communist Party

South African Communist Party is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H...

, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party and Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...

 of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...

 sent greetings on the occasion of the founding of the party. The party began publishing Mosebetsi.

During the 1960s, the party split into Soviet-allied (Kena, Malefane, Mtji, and Ms Hoohlo) and Chinese-allied (Motloholoa, T. Leanya, and T. Nqojane) factions. In the 1970 election, its two Moscow-allied candidates at Thaba Chitja (Kena) and Tsoelike (Malefane) received 25 and 18 votes respectively. Ther party was officially banned in February 1970, but went underground and continued its activities. After the 1986 coup, its leader, Sefali Malefane, a university lecturer in Economics, was made a minister in Major-General Lekhanya's regime. The party was made legal again in 1991.

After the fall of apartheid rule in neighbouring South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, the party advocated union with South Africa.

The party ceased the publication of its newspaper, Mafube, in 1997.

The party's current leader is Manny Stevenson.