Category Archives: Lesotho

King Charles acknowledges ‘painful’ past as calls for slavery reparations grow at Commonwealth summit

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Some leaders had hoped Charles might use his speech at Chogm in Samoa as an opportunity to apologise for Britain’s colonial past

King Charles acknowledged “painful aspects” of Britain’s past while sidestepping calls to directly address reparations for slavery at the summit of Commonwealth leaders, saying “none of us can change the past, but we can commit … to learning its lessons”.

Charles was speaking to leaders representing 56 Commonwealth nations at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in the Pacific nation of Samoa, his first time attending the summit since taking the throne. In his speech, the king also addressed the climate crisis, development challenges and paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth.

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Candidates to lead Commonwealth urge reparations for slavery and colonialism

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Three African contenders for role of secretary general call for financial measures or reparative justice

The three candidates to be the next secretary general of the Commonwealth have called for reparations for countries that were affected by slavery and colonisation.

The candidates from the Gambia, Ghana and Lesotho expressed their support for either financial reparations or “reparative justice”, as they made their pitches to lead the 56-country organisation at a debate hosted by the Chatham House thinktank in London on Wednesday.

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Lesotho orders indefinite curfew after radio journalist is shot dead

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Murder of Ralikonelo ‘Leqhashasha’ Joki prompts crackdown in southern African nation amid warnings of threat to media freedom

Lesotho has imposed anationwide curfew after the killing of a prominent radio presenter in the capital, Maseru, this week.

Ralikonelo “Leqhashasha” Joki, who worked for Ts’enolo FM radio station, was shot at least 13 times by unknown assailants as he left the studio at 10pm after his Sunday evening show.

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Vaccine certificates-for-sale scam undermines Lesotho’s Covid effort

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The documents, necessary for entry into bars and sporting venues, are being sold by unscrupulous health workers for less than £20

The Lesotho government’s plans to implement a Covid passport system this week are being undermined by widespread fraud involving certificates being sold to unvaccinated people.

Covid-19 vaccination certificates are being sold for less than £20 by unscrupulous health workers to the largely vaccine-averse population in Lesotho, where there has been little positive campaigning around the jabs.

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Lesotho murder rate ranked sixth worst in world as judicial system breaks down

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Killings of police officers in tiny mountain kingdom has added to sense of ‘lack of consequences’, say analysts

The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho has the sixth highest murder rate in the world, according to a recent World Population Review report.

The global average murder rate is seven per 100,000 people, found the report, and Lesotho had a rate almost six times higher at 41.25. The report ranked Lesotho as only safer than El Salvador (82.84 per 100,000 people), Honduras (56.52), Venezuela (56.33), Virgin Islands (49.26) and Jamaica (47.01).

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Lesotho’s PM isolating with Covid as cases ‘go unrecorded’

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Medics fear government is failing to gather data as ‘social media conspiracies’ slow vaccination take-up

Lesotho’s prime minister, Moeketsi Majoro, has said he is isolating after testing positive for Covid-19, as doctors warned that the true tally of cases in the country was going unrecorded.

Majoro tweeted that he had taken a travel-related test that came back positive.

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‘It opened my eyes’: Lesotho ski resort goes off-piste to keep workers

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The pandemic has hit tourism but retraining and a range of initiatives have enabled staff to stay and even hit the slopes

Masiane Nthina made her way nervously from the kit room to the slopes. Shuffling with skis on her feet for the first time is not easy.

Nthina, an intern at the Lesotho Tourism Development Corporation, lives close to Afriski Mountain Resort, but had never visited it. She had always viewed the resort as the preserve of the elite and thought that on her meagre wages she could not afford to go.

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Woman shot dead in Lesotho as factory workers’ clashes with police escalate

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Trade unions say they have lost control of protests over pay as employers cite impact of Covid for restraint

A woman has died after being shot during violent clashes between factory workers and police in Lesotho as trade unions say they have lost control over angry protests over pay.

Demonstrations spilled over into violence in what is the second week of industrial action, with looting and damage to several businesses in the capital Maseru.

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Lesotho firm first in Africa to be granted EU licence for medical cannabis

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Breakthrough could create thousands of jobs for villagers and help exports to other markets

A company in Lesotho has become the first in Africa to receive a licence to sell medical cannabis to the EU.

The country’s top medical cannabis producer, MG Health, announced it had met the EU’s good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, allowing it to export cannabis flower, oil and extracts as an active pharmaceutical ingredient.

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Harry Lewis obituary

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My father, Harry Lewis, who has died aged 93, was a carpentry and joinery teacher who spent many years working abroad, first as a Christian missionary in Malawi and then in government teaching posts there, and in Lesotho and Kenya.

Harry was born in London to Minnie Lewis, a housemaid. He never knew his father, and at the age of two he was put into the Farningham Home for Little Boys in South Darenth, Kent. His time there made him strong and resilient, and it also gave him a great appreciation of life.

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Lesotho sacks hundreds of striking nurses as doctors warn of dire shortages

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The African state was already struggling to cope with TB, HIV and Covid before latest response to demands for equal pay

Lesotho has sacked hundreds of its nurses over the past few days in a row over pay. The small southern African country’s main hospital in the capital, Maseru, fired 345 nurses and nursing assistants, who have been on strike for the past month, with immediate effect.

The nurses went on strike to press the government-owned Queen Mamohato Memorial Hospital (QMMH) to give them the same salaries as their counterparts in other government and private institutions. Opened in 2011, QMMH is state-owned but run by the Tšepong Consortium, comprising five companies, namely Netcare Healthcare Group and Afri’nnai of South Africa, and Excel Health, Women Investment, and D10 Investments of Lesotho.

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Out of Africa: how Netflix’s ambitions could change the continent’s cinema

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The streaming giant has come knocking, but a lack of infrastructure and government support continues to hinder the continent telling its own stories

It was the sight of donkeys carrying camera equipment that reminded Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese he was shooting in Lesotho. The director was filming This Is Not a Burial, It Is a Resurrection in a remote part of his tiny home nation, which has no cinemas and – unsurprisingly – zero film infrastructure. “It’s a bit daring to take a crew there and shoot because there’s no electricity,” Mosese says from his home in Berlin. “Especially when we go to the mountains – we had to rely on the donkeys because at some point we just couldn’t carry the equipment.”

The shoot ran on petrol-powered generators. Villagers pitched in as ad-hoc crew members. Many fingers were crossed. “We had to build everything from scratch,” he says. That approach didn’t harm the film. Critically lauded, the stylish mood piece about grief, community and egregious land development has been entered in the Oscars as the country’s 2021 candidate.

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Landlocked Lesotho faces food crisis amid Covid border closures

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Food price increases and economic impact of lockdowns have left a quarter of the kingdom’s population reliant on food aid, UN warns

Almost a quarter of Lesotho’s population will require food aid between January and March as a result of Covid-19 restrictions, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned.

More than 580,000 people out of a population of 2.2 million are estimated to be food insecure, despite predictions of normal to above average rains this year and the potential for above average cereal production.

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‘We can’t cope’: Lesotho faces Covid-19 disaster after quarantine failures

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Rise in cases reported after workers returned from South Africa for Christmas, with many crossing illegally to avoid tests

A Covid-19 disaster is threatening the small southern African kingdom of Lesotho after revelations that the government released people who had tested positive for the virus from quarantine early.

Government sources this week said they had been sending Covid-19 patients home from as far back as last June over cost concerns.

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This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection review – an uncompromising tale of resistance

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Mary Twala gives an intimate yet epic performance as an 80-year-old widow fighting plans for dam that will obliterate her village in Lesotho

This is an extraordinary and otherworldly feature film from the tiny landlocked kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. It is the tale of a rebel spirit: an elderly woman who opposes government plans to flood her village, making way for a dam. It’s a film about resistance and resilience, but director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is coolly unsentimental and realistic about the inevitable march of capitalism and construction. Weaving in ideas around displacement, collective identity and history, this film takes on almost mythic qualities.

Related: From Beyoncé to the Oscars: Mary Twala, Africa's queen of cinema

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The women fighting sexual abuse in the factories where your jeans are made

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An investigation into working conditions in garment factories in Lesotho revealed widespread sexual abuse of women. Annie Kelly travelled to southern Africa to investigate

Last year, a report by the Workers Rights Consortium NGO revealed widespread rape, sexual assault and harassment at a number of garment factories in Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho.

The Guardian’s Annie Kelly tells Rachel Humphreys how she travelled to Lesotho to discover for herself what had been going on in factories producing jeans for top brands such as Levi’s and Wrangler. Sethelile Nthakana, a WRC researcher, explains how the factories would operate using casual workers chosen at the gates, who would then be expected to enter relationships with the bosses who had selected them.

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Matsepo Ramakoae and Lesotho’s lost chance to elect its first female leader

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After the resignation of Thomas Thabane the small south African nation could have addressed its huge political gender imbalance. What happened?

Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom in southern Africa, has always been dwarfed in size and achievements by its neighbour South Africa.

Many people around the world were not even aware of Lesotho’s existence until the beginning of this year when then prime minister Thomas Thabane and his third wife, Maesaiah Thabane, were accused of murdering Thabane’s estranged second wife, Lipolelo, in 2017.

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Global report: WHO says Covid-19 ‘may never go away’ and warns of mental health crisis

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Trump brands Fauci’s caution over reopening ‘unacceptable’; Russia has second highest infections; Japan eyes lifting national emergency

The World Health Organisation has warned that coronavirus “may never go away” as its experts predicted that a global mental health crisis caused by the pandemic was looming.

The global health body on Wednesday cautioned against trying to predict how long coronavirus would keep circulating, and called for a “massive effort” to overcome it.

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Lesotho PM under police investigation deploys army to ‘restore order’

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Thomas Thabane faces calls to step down after allegations of possible involvement in murder of ex-wife

Lesotho’s prime minister announced on Saturday that he had deployed troops in the streets to “restore order”, and accused unnamed law enforcement agencies of undermining democracy.

Thomas Thabane is under pressure to step down after police said they suspected him of a hand in the murder of his estranged wife in 2017, a case that has thrown the country into political turmoil.

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Lesotho PM requests immunity from charge of murdering wife

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Lawyer argues that Thomas Thabane’s office gives him immunity from prosecution

Lesotho’s prime minister has made a surprise appearance in court, where his lawyer argued that his office granted him immunity from prosecution for allegedly murdering his estranged wife shortly before he took power.

Thomas Thabane sat in the public gallery of the court in Maseru, the capital of the small mountain kingdom, with his present spouse. He had been due to appear on Friday to be charged with murder, but had not appeared, saying he had to travel to neighbouring South Africa for medical treatment.

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