{"id":203300,"date":"2025-07-26T03:24:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T01:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-director-of-passports-suspended\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T03:24:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T01:24:56","slug":"lesotho-director-of-passports-suspended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-director-of-passports-suspended\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesotho: Director of Passports Suspended"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"4\"><em>&#8230;amid ongoing passport crisis<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"29\">The Director of Passports, Mpiko Rafono, has been suspended for three months by the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftainship, Home Affairs and Police, &#8216;Mamphaka Mabesa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"32\">The reasons for Mr Rafono&#8217;s suspension remain unclear. When contacted for comment, Mr Rafono said he had not been informed of the basis for his suspension and referred questions to Dr Mabesa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"39\">&#8220;Please go and ask the PS as the person who suspended me. She is the one who&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202507250016.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Lesotho\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/\">Lesotho<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;amid ongoing passport crisis The Director of Passports, Mpiko Rafono, has been suspended for three months by the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftainship, Home Affairs and Police, &#8216;Mamphaka Mabesa. The reasons for Mr Rafono&#8217;s suspension remain unclear. When contacted for comment, Mr Rafono said he had not been informed of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":203301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1406],"tags":[258,256,400,4717,1407,257,17895,254,4314],"class_list":["post-203300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lesotho","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-director","tag-lesotho","tag-lesotho-news","tag-news","tag-passports","tag-south-africa-today","tag-suspended"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}