Why is lesotho in south africa

The former British protectorate has been heavily dependent on the country which completely surrounds it - South Africa. Over the decades thousands of workers have been forced by the lack of job opportunities to find work at South African mines.

Five years later, after the return to civilian government and amid political instability, he abdicated and his father was reinstated as monarch. Letsie III was restored as king in after his father died in a car accident. The monarch has no legislative or executive powers. It also obscures the complex realities of conflict and cooperation by restricting their domain to interstate relations. Furlong, This hypothesis makes it possible to move beyond the consensual representation of the LHWP as a shared and mutual ly beneficial scheme.

This point fits w ith the prevailing discourse in Lesotho, especially in the h ighlands, that regards the LHWP as a catastrophic project with tragic consequences for the local populations : a project that has n o t kept its promise s about the work and development that the construction of its infrastructure was supposed to bring. From this viewpoint , the LHWP could be painted as a project essentially imposed from the outside on Lesotho in order to capture the precious water from the h ighlands , with only the well-being of South Africa in mind.

This reluctance reveals the lack of interest of both the Lesotho and South African negotiators in the politically and symbolically marginali s ed populations of the h ighlands. Thus the LHWP is to be analysed as a material and discursive assemblage that brings together three distinctive types of territorialities.

Firstly, the Lesotho nationalist territoriality seeks to monopolise any social and spatial processes in favour of the national scale. Secondly, the Basotho communities claim autonomous and transnational territoriality as the proper scale of their daily practices against the interference of Lesotho and South Africa and expect their transboundary practices to be unencumbered by borders and the bureaucracy they entail.

In order to undertake this repatriation project, a stigmati s ing discourse was required , and t he depiction of the h ighlands as traditional and out side the modern world was a way to perform th is marginali s ation. It also converg ed with the economism that has defin ed the LHWP from the outset. It justified a miserabilism regarding the h ighlands, notably by considering their usage of water to be unproductive because the Basotho were not valorising it to a significantly economical extent.

This representation a dds to a long-time blindness concerning Lesotho Ferguson, and especially its h ighlands. It legitim ised this massive intervention inside its territory in the name of moderni s ation. While the spatial practices of these populations are quite modern, they are problemati s ed by the state because they largely slip out its control except for the small interference created by bureaucratic border obstacles Coplan, Thus , this relative deterritoriali s ation, which r elegat es them to being marginali s ed territories requir ing repatriat ion , was intended to justify forcing the jurisdiction of the state onto the h ighlands in the name of develop ing and moderni s ing them.

This nationalist scalar attempt was allegedly pursued for the common good. But t he LHWP has incidentally performed a reterritoriali s ation inside the national state territory by making the redeploy ment of the state apparatus a financial and material possibility. The extension of the state presence in the h ighlands had been impossible before because of the weak means of the state and because this territory had no roads. And it has been perceived as such by the Basotho populations Thamae and Pottinger, They also claim it on a historical basis.

This transnational territory in which they carry out their daily practices spreads to South Africa, far wider than the Lesotho national territory itself.

In relation to this scale, the highlands are far from marginal: On the contrary, it constitutes the heart of this territory claimed by the Basotho Coplan, These uprisings have systematically been violently repressed. These two territorialities have tend ed to reinforc e each other at the same time as they followed a trajectory in conflict with the Basotho territoriality.

It has ignited internal clashes in Lesotho and a deepening of social and spatial inequalities in Maseru and the h ighlands. Thus it has fuel l ed political instability, which has manifested as major uprisings. The territorialities of South Africa and Lesotho, as much as that of the Basotho , have been reworked by the emerg ence of this new transnational assemblage in their reciprocal relationships and in relation to this new scale. The LHWP not only amplified the differentiation between metropolitan and mountain scales but also exacerbat ed the social and political tensions resulting from the ever more blatant inequalities characteri s ing the post- a partheid era.

Agnew, J. Review of international political economy , 1 1 , Arnauld de Sartre, X. Antheaume, B. World Bank Blanchon D. Karthala Editions. Blanchon, D. Coplan, D. African Affairs , , Davidsen Delaney, D. Political geography , 16 2 , Devitt, P.

African Study Monographs , 31 2 , Ekers and Loftus Ferguson, J. CUP Archive. The Governor's Agent was resident at Maseru. The following census figures were available for Basutoland in Basutoland gained full independence from Britain on 4 October and became known as Lesotho.

Jonathan Leabua became the country's first Prime Minister. Lesotho was also rocked by a military takeover, which forced King Moshoeshoe II into exile. Constitutional government was restored in after 23 years of authoritarian rule, which included seven years of military rule.

Lesotho is the main supplier of water to South Africa and in turn receives its electricity from its neighbour. It is completely surrounded by South Africa.

Further Reading. It should be abolished. Lesotho has only survived this long thanks to apartheid. In those days we had embassies and we received international aid. Now when we ask for help for our education system, the aid people tell us to turn to South Africa.

But his unemployed son, Seeiso, 26, had reservations about becoming a South African. We Basotho are very attached to our identity. The thought of losing that scares me. Tyhali argues that there is nothing drastic in the concept of the United Nations having to take down a flagpole in New York, or in the Commonwealth and African Union losing a member. He points out that when Japan play Cameroon in the World Cup on 14 June in Bloemfontein, the sound of fans blowing their vuvuzela horns will almost be audible in Maseru.

Yet Basotho, with their worthless travel documents and a team that is ranked nd in the world , will not be able to attend. He says the People's Charter Movement has broad support because it does not threaten the monarchy. The people who are nervous are the politicians, who are afraid of losing their power base.

We would keep our king. Look at the king of the Zulus: he is very happy to be part of South Africa. The main thing we are after is one common identity document with South Africa so that everyone can come and go as they please,'' he said.