(PERSPECTIVE) "LESOTHO: THE BASTARD CHILD OF SOUTH AFRICA"

By Contributor Nadira Omarjee in Johannesburg, South Africa

(HN, September 3, 2010) - Lesotho is a country that is neatly tucked away within the splendour and beauty of the Maluti Mountains and the Katse dam. These mighty lovers live in tranquility and abject poverty, surrounded by their wealthy relative – South Africa.

The story of Lesotho is a sad one. This place of magnificence is home to the third highest HIV and AIDS prevalence rates in the world - about a quarter of all adults are infected. With a population of around 2-million people, Lesotho is struggling to maintain its children (of the 280,000 HIV positive adults, about 21,000 are also living with the disease). There are more than 220,000 orphans and vulnerable children in Lesotho, and almost three-quarters became so because of HIV and AIDS.

On top of the disease burden of HIV AIDS, Lesotho struggles with poverty and food insecurity. Because less than 10 percent of the country is under cultivation, almost 70 percent of its annual cereal requirement is imported - mainly from South Africa.

Most Basotho people are subsistence farmers, miners in Lesotho’s diamond mines, migrant labourers and labourers in border industrial programmes for companies like Levis Strauss and The Gap. South African mines utilise Basotho labourers between 3 – 9 months a year. Lesotho provides the means for maintaining cheap foreign labour to South Africa with little benefit to the source country.

This unrequited love from Lesotho towards South Africa is an unhealthy relationship that gives little to nothing back to Lesotho.The HIV epidemic in Lesotho has hit children disproportionately hard

South Africa gets a substantial portion of its water from Lesotho’s Katse dam and part of its electricity is also generated from there as well.

But in terms of giving back to Lesotho, South Africa plays no major role in ensuring good governance in the country - nor does it support poverty eradication programmes (and I don’t mean migrant labour as a strategy for this unwholesome love affair).

Moreover South Africa does not provide effective HIV and AIDS programmes for the Basotho people. Sadly, the long-term effects of such a parasitical relationship between Lesotho and South Africa will lead to the eventual demise of the Kingdom of Lesotho.

If so, would it be the worst thing for Lesotho to be absorbed into South Africa? I don’t think one can pronounce best solutions in matters of the heart because these issues are complicated.

Nation-states are determined by language and culture and to that extent Lesotho’s blankets - which are a cultural symbol of the country but are produced in South Africa - places Lesotho separate to South Africa. 

There is also the issue of national identity and this is an emotional issue that cannot be decided in opinion pieces but must be decided by the Basotho people themselves. However South Africa does have a serious responsibility towards Lesotho when it consumes its people and resources.

South Africa is therefore obliged to care for the Basotho people. Anti-retroviral treatment (ART) and poverty eradication programmes must be jointly organised between South Africa and Lesotho to ensure that the Basotho people thrive.

South Africa can no longer torture Lesotho through negligence and disrespect. It is high time that South Africa realises that what happens within its borders and outside its borders has an effect on its economy and people. 

No more can Lesotho be treated as the illegitimate member of the family.

--- Nadira Omarjee a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Johannesburg, working on HIV and AIDS and gender related issues in the South African Development Community region.