LESOTHO: Job-hungry Basotho risk exploitation in South Africa
MASERU, 9 March 2006 (IRIN) - Desperate Basotho are risking exploitation in neighbouring South Africa as they search for employment outside the borders of Lesotho, one of the least developed countries in the world.
On a warm autumn morning in Maseru, Lesotho's capital city, a crowd of young men congregate at a traffic circle, waiting to be picked up by anybody who might come looking for a labourer.
"Life has been difficult since I was retrenched from the South African mines and I came back to Maseru looking for a job," said 36-year-old Motlalentoa Monyamane. Originally from the rural town of Butha Buthe in the southern part of the country, he has been a regular at the traffic circle since 2003.
"I went back to South Africa to work in the factories in [the port city of] Durban late last year, but the working conditions were just too horrible. The starting salary was below that of the factories here in Lesotho," he explained.
"Because we do not have proper documentation, we cannot take the matter [to the authorities] anywhere. When we report to the police they say we are illegal immigrants who need to be deported back to Lesotho."
Monyamane's tall frail frame looks as if it has seen better days. Dressed in a blue overall, he is one of thousands of Basotho men who go into the city each day to look for work. Some wait outside factories hoping to be called in; many others cross into South Africa, hoping to find a job that will lift them out of poverty.
Lehlohonolo Matsoai, 28, said he endured three weeks of hardship when he was hired as a labourer on a state housing project in South Africa's northern Limpopo province in February.
"We spent three weeks working like slaves. We slept outside and were forced to eat baboon meat because there was no food. Snakes crawled into our blankets at night and bit us. A group of four people were forced to construct and complete a four-roomed house a day, and for each house we would share [payment of] US $200, yet we were promised $583 each for every completed house," he alleged.
Eventually, five of the workers 'escaped' and fled back to Lesotho. "Forty-one others are still stuck in Limpopo, as they do not have money to come back home. They need help because they are not even taken to a doctor after being bitten by snakes or crawlies," Matsoai said.
The Basotho did not have work permits and had been told to disguise themselves as South Africans from the rural district of Qwaqwa near Lesotho, Matsoai explained.
Macaefa Billy, leader of Lesotho's Factory Workers Union (FAWU), said unemployment, poverty and despair made young Basotho vulnerable to exploitation.
About half the Basotho live below the poverty line, and according to official statistics 31 percent of people of working age are unemployed. But Billy says the jobless rate is much higher - closer to 65 percent - and this was the primary reason young men crossed the borders of the tiny landlocked country in search of jobs in South Africa.
"Last year alone, more than 15,000 Basotho men and women lost jobs in the textile industry, which was the main employer [in Lesotho]. That is nothing compared to the 23,000 Basotho men retrenched from South African mines between 2002 and 2003. So if you look at all these figures, adding school leavers to them, where are they being absorbed [in the job market]?" asked Billy.
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