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Re-evaluating Modernisation and Dependency in Lesotho
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
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The Kingdom of Lesotho is a small country, an enclave of South Africa, occupying 30,350 square kilometres of highland, ranging from 1,500 metres above sea-level at its lowest point to 3,300 metres at its highest. Although only about 13 per cent of the total area is arable, the majority of the de jure population of 1·5 million are predominantly rural.1 While the climatic conditions of this elevation are not alwaysfavourable to agricultural production, there are some fertile pastures in which sheep and mohair-producing goats graze contentedly.2 But the sanctity exuded by quiet mountain vistas is tempered by the stark hardships which accost many Basotho in their daily lives. The country is said to be ‘poor’ in that it cannot adequately provide for much of its population. Therefore many migrate to work in South African mines rather than trying to eke out an existence from the land or seeking limited employment in the cities.3 There are also others whose daily life revolves around desperately securing, by any means available, food for themselves and their families.
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References
Page 591 note 1 It is necessary to separate the de jure from the de facto population because, as stated in the Second Five Year Development Plan, 1975/76–1979/80 (Maseru, 1975), Vol. 1, p. 6, ‘some 50% of the male labour force (140,000 to 175,000 men) plus some 10% of the female labour force (about 25,000 women)’ are employed in South Africa.Google Scholar
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Page 599 note 2 The two countries (along with Swaziland and Botswana) are bound in the South African Customs Union which effectively creates a free-trade zone. By means of agreed mathematical formulae, the B.L.S. governments must prove how much compensation they are annually entitled to from the pool of customs and excise collected by South Africa.
Page 599 note 3 Bardill and Cobbe examine this in more detail, and they also note, op. cit. p. 67, that the attitude of some donor countries is ‘arrogant and condescending’.
Page 599 note 4 Ström, Gabriele Winai, Development and Dependence in Lesotho, the Enclave of South Africa (Uppsala, 1978). One wonders whether the Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme will affect the first of these, and à propos the second, the 1979 I.L.O. report argues, op. cit. p. 291, that ‘the distribution of income in Lesotho is much more uneven than has hitherto been supposed’.Google Scholar
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Page 601 note 3 Bardill and Cobbe, op. cit. p. 200. Cf. Cobbe, James, ‘Economic Aspects of Lesotho's Relations with South Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 26, 1, 03 1988, pp. 71–89.Google Scholar
Page 602 note 1 However, it should be noted that this paradigm still clings to the notions of poverty and development. The ‘another development’ model, for instance, recommends that work be conducted in, and in alliance with, local communities, ‘Geared to the satisfaction of needs beginning with the eradication of poverty’, according to the 1975 Dag Hammarskjöld Report on Development and International Co-operation, published in Development Dialogue (Uppsala), 1/2, 1975, p. 28.Google Scholar
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Page 603 note 2 Naipaul, Shiva quite appropriately suggests that ‘The Third World is an artificial construction of the West – an ideological empire on which the sun is always setting’; ‘The Illusion of the Third World’, in Harper's (New York), 09 1985, pp. 15–18.Google Scholar
Page 604 note 1 Ibid. p. 16.
Page 604 note 2 Esteva, Gastavo, ‘Development: metaphor, myth, threat’, in Development: seeds of change (Rome), 3, 1985, pp. 78–9.Google Scholar
Page 605 note 1 van de Geer, Roeland and Wallis, Malcolm concur with this, though for somewhat different reasons, in their Government and Development in Rural Lesotho (Roma, 1982).Google Scholar
Page 605 note 2 Foucault, Michel, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Rabinow, Paul (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York, 1984), pp. 32–50.Google Scholar
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