Police claim ‘strong case’ against Maesiah Thabane for 2017 killing of Lipolelo Thabane
Lesotho’s first lady Maesiah Thabane has been charged with murder for her alleged links to the brutal 2017 killing of the prime minister’s previous wife.
Maesiah Thabane, 42, will spend the night in custody after she came out of hiding and turned herself in to the police earlier on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Rural areas worst hit as massive fall in food production causes severe hunger for a quarter of country’s population
Tšepo Molapo gazes into space, worrying about where the next meal will come from. Next to him, his two-year-old granddaughter plays, oblivious of their desperate situation.
Molapo’s children all died at illegal mines in neighbouring South Africa, where they had trekked in search of work.
Continue reading...Women at factories in Lesotho owned by Taiwanese firm say jobs and promotions in jeopardy if they refuse advances, claims report
Women producing jeans for American brands including Levi Strauss, Wrangler and Lee have been forced to sleep with their managers to keep their jobs or gain promotion, an investigation into sexual harassment and coercion at garment factories in Lesotho has found.
Brands have responded to the “extensive” allegations by the the US-based Worker Rights Consortium by signing enforceable agreements with labour and women’s rights groups to eliminate gender-based violence for more than 10,000 workers at five factories owned by the Taiwanese company Nien Hsing, one of the southern African country’s largest employers.
Continue reading...Driven by need, tens of thousands of women are risking death, disease and sexual violence to scrape a living in the country’s informal mining sector
On the outskirts of Durban Deep, an abandoned mining town with a labyrinth of underground tunnels long since abandoned by the big gold companies, Elizabeth goes rhythmically about her work.
Grinding piles of rough stones into white, gold-flecked silt on a large concrete slab, the 40-year-old is one of the ghostly dust-covered zama zamas – artisanal miners, mostly illegal – who have turned to scavenging in disused gold and diamond mines across South Africa.
Continue reading...