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dam-l Lesotho unemployed miners
March 25, 1998
>
>Mine Shaft: Kingdom of Lesotho
>tunnels into trouble as gold prices
>dive
>
>BY ROBERT BLOCK
>The Wall Street Journal
>
>MASERU, Lesotho (Wall Street Journal) -- David Baholo
>Ntlhakana, a recruitment officer in the this tiny kingdom for
>South Africa's gold mines, measures the impact of the
>collapse of world gold prices by the piles of stones outside
>his offices.
>
>They are rough beds, laid out by unemployed miners who
>sleep under cold mountain skies night after night, hoping that
>come morning, Mr. Ntlhakana will hire them to head back to
>the mines. Hundreds sleep on the stones -- more all the time.
>
>``This is the worst there is in Lesotho,'' Mr. Ntlhakana says,
>scanning the stones and the jumble of men wrapped in
>traditional blankets milling around the dirt road across from
>his agency. Some implore him with their eyes or hold up
>creased records of employment. Mr. Ntlhakana used to hire
>men like these by the thousands, but today he has nothing to
>offer. He has hired only 20 people all year.
>
>``Kingdom of the Sky'' is what some travel writers call
>Lesotho, a lovely landlocked enclave of pale green valleys and
>razor ridges that rises from the heart of South Africa. For
>generations, Lesotho men have marched off to work South
>African mines, often under brutal conditions, and often in the
>most dangerous jobs. Their muscle is Lesotho's only
>significant export; though they typically make about $12 a
>day, the money they send home is vital to the survival of most
>of the kingdom's two million subjects.
>
>Their great migration has reshaped the traditions of Lesotho's
>dominant Basotho tribe: Working the mines is the chief rite of
>passage and mark of manhood. Basotho dances and songs
>pulse with the loss and longing that comes from life in the
>dark shafts, a long way from home.
>
>Now, global economic factors have driven gold prices to their
>lowest level in two decades. South Africa's once-mighty gold
>industry, the world's highest-cost producer because of its
>aging, deep deposits, laid off 50,000 workers last year and
>may lay off 100,000 this year. That is a threat to South
>Africa's journey away from its apartheid past and to stability
>throughout Southern Africa, and it will be on the minds of
>President Clinton and his advisers as they travel to South
>Africa this week.
>
>So far, South Africa seems to be weathering the storm. But
>for Lesotho, perennially ranked by the United Nations among
>the world's poorest countries, the decline of the mines is a
>profound national disaster.
>
>As recently as 1989, about 130,000 Lesotho miners worked in
>South African gold mines. That dwindled to 96,000 last year;
>barring a surge in gold prices, some union officials estimate
>that an additional 30,000 Lesotho miners will be layed off this
>year.
>
>There are few jobs for them back home, where unemployment
>runs at more than 50 percent. Miners' remittances typically
>make up a quarter of Lesotho's gross domestic product; for
>each laid-off miner, an average of 12 people -- the average
>number of dependents each miner has -- lose their chief source
>of cash, according to government figures. Complicating
>matters, drought followed by floods have wiped out many
>crops this season, raising the specter of food shortages in rural
>areas, just as ever more miners are on their way home.
>
>The situation is grim enough that some fear Lesotho could
>become Africa's next trouble spot, with potentially distressing
>geopolitical consequences. For now, though, the effects in
>Lesotho are more on people than on politics, as is clear in
>places like Mafeteng. The town is important as a transport
>hub, and sits in one of the most mine-dependent regions of the
>country. Until the mines began laying off workers, no one
>from Mafeteng could ever imagine a January when men from
>all over Lesotho didn't descend on the town for the last leg of
>their journey to the mines.
>
>Tseliso Lesibe certainly couldn't. His father worked
>underground, and his grandfather before that. When a cave-in
>injured his dad in 1984, Mr. Lesibe, then 22 years old, left
>college and took his place at the rock face in the Freegold
>Western Holdings mine, a three-hour drive from the Lesotho
>frontier.
>
>``You see, it has always been something of a cultural tradition
>in Lesotho that when a baby boy grows up, the pride for him
>is to work in the mines,'' Mr. Lesibe explains. ``It is where he
>becomes a man.''
>
>But this January, instead of starting a new year blasting ore
>out of the South African ground for his bread and his family
>honor, Mr. Lesibe, along with about 400 colleagues, returned
>home to Mafeteng after being laid off.
>
>``The mine captains just came to us and said the shaft was
>closing,'' Mr. Lesibe recalls. That was it. Goodbye.''
>
>Fourteen years of digging gold earned Mr. Lesibe a severance
>package worth about $2,000. Now he spends his days
>hunting for new opportunities before the money runs out.
>Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out a photograph of
>his three young sons and looks at it a long time. ``Of course
>this is having a terrible impact on my life,'' he says. ``But I
>refuse to believe that because I am no longer working in the
>mining industry that it is the end of my life.''
>
>That seems to make him an exception here. Unlike Mr.
>Lesibe, the majority of former miners in Lesotho are poorly
>educated, with no skills for anything but mine work.
>Remaketse Fobo, 33, can't read or write. When asked which
>mine he used to work at, he pulls from under his cap a piece
>of paper that he thinks bears the name of his former employer
>-- his pink slip. But it turns out to be a receipt for the last big
>food purchase he made for his family. The receipt, for the
>equivalent of $15, is five months old.
>
>``Once we lose a job, we have problems,'' Mr. Fobo says.
>``We have not only lost work, we have lost ourselves. Now
>we are desperate for any job, anything we can do to make us
>feel like men. But all we know how to do is work in the
>mines.''
>
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>
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>
>NewsHound is a service of Knight Ridder.
>For more information, write to: speak@newshound.com
>
>This material is copyrighted and may not be republished without
>permission of the originating newspaper or wire service.
>
>
>Posted at 8:46 a.m. PST Wednesday, March 25, 1998
>
>
>
>Lesotho-Gold
>
>MASERU, Lesotho: the mines.''
>
>That is a result in part of Lesotho's curious history. Founded
>by a renowned Basotho chieftain named Moshoeshoe in 1824
>on a natural rock fortress called Mountain of the Night,
>Lesotho managed a degree of independence for most of the
>19th century by acting as a buffer between the Afrikaners'
>Boer Republic and British colonial interests as they vied for
>power in Southern Africa. It supplied seasonal farm workers
>to both, but its own best farmland was eventually grabbed by
>Afrikaner farmers, and Lesotho wound up being annexed by
>the British in 1868. When huge gold deposits were
>discovered near Johannesburg in 1886, Lesotho found a
>niche: Exporting labor to the mines.
>
>Mine union chiefs talk now of the need for retraining miners
>for other lines of work. In a rural area called Duma on the
>outskirts of Mafeteng, government VIPs and union officials
>have gathered to inaugurate a chicken-farming project; the idea
>is a favorite of union officials because selling live chickens
>requires little experience and no education. Women grill meat,
>and young boys put on jangling metal bracelets and pointed
>straw hats in preparation for dancing.
>
>The many unemployed miners leaning on walking sticks seem
>curious, but uninspired. Godfrey Seboko, 53, lost his job in
>the mines years ago and has worked little since. ``I take small
>temporary jobs when I can, but even these are hard to find,''
>he says.
>
>Would he ever consider poultry farming? ``That's not really
>for me,'' Mr. Seboko says, laughing and shaking his head.
>``Most of us want physical work. Raising chickens is not a
>job for a man.''
>
>Many already have had to stoop to work they disdained
>before. Sheepherding has always been regarded here as work
>for boys. But all along the winding road from Maseru to
>Mafeteng, sinewy young men tend platoons of bleating sheep.
>The men are former miners: They wear their hard hats, rubber
>boots and mining jumpsuits beneath their wool-blanket
>wraps.
>
>``Once, a man would never have been seen working as a herd
>boy,'' says Puseletso Salae, a leader of Lesotho's
>mine-workers union. ``That's why they wear their miner's
>clothing, so people will know they once had a man's job.''
>
>The job losses are eating away at the traditional family
>structure of the Basotho people. Tsotetsi Malibe, 31, lost his
>job in 1994. He was an assistant underground-locomotive
>driver. Like rock driller and winch operator, that is one of
>mining's most dangerous jobs -- and the kind of work
>Lesotho miners have long dominated.
>
>Mr. Malibe has been searching for mining work for four
>years. He lives in Mafeteng, and returns home on Fridays to
>visit his two children, but says he is always back at the
>mining recruitment office in Maseru by Monday morning. He
>no longer can afford the fees to send his kids to school.
>``Right now my father helps me with what's left of his
>savings but, that won't last much longer,'' he says. ``You
>can't imagine how I feel. My wife can hardly stand to look at
>me anymore.''
>
>In fact, one of the effects of Lesotho's dependence on
>earnings from migrant labor was that the women of Lesotho
>became very independent, managing the affairs of the home on
>their own with the money the men sent back. Most saw their
>husbands only a few times a year. With the men now coming
>back, these relationships have been thrown off kilter.
>
>Divorce, say the men loitering outside the recruitment office,
>is rampant. When asked how many have left their wives or
>been left by their wives, the men look down and shuffle
>nervously before a few dozen raise their arms in
>acknowledgment.
>
>Crime, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other social ills
>have also risen with mine unemployment, and some in Africa
>think Lesotho could deteriorate into the continent's next major
>trouble spot. Lesotho's Minister of Labor, Victor Molopo,
>himself a veteran of the mines, says that the government is
>concerned about the plight of the miners, but adds that the
>government ``hasn't sat down and discussed it yet.''
>
>Few miners have much faith in the government, anyway.
>Lesotho has had six coups since being granted independence
>by Britain in 1966; it has a rich history of palace intrigues and
>paralyzing bureaucratic infighting. The current ruler, King
>Letsie III, has talked of reform since his inauguration last fall,
>but most miners aren't counting on much government help.
>
>So the former miners sleep on stones, and cling to the hope of
>somehow making it back to the mines. Some have been living
>outside Mr. Ntlhakana's recruiting office for more than a year.
>Some say they are afraid they will die there. Most don't have
>money even to buy cheap meat and roast corn from the shanty
>shops down the road.
>
>Mr. Ntlhakana asks the men why they continue to wait when
>they know there is no recruiting, only more layoffs. A man in
>a purple hardhat and yellow rain jacket volunteers an answer.
>
>``We wait here because we hope,'' he says. ``We have no
>hope except for the mines. So for now, all we can do is
>wait.''
>
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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