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Street children football maseru lesotho
Street children playing football in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Street children playing football in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Lesotho's people plead with South Africa to annex their troubled country

This article is more than 13 years old
Popular campaign grows within the HIV-stricken monarchy to relinquish independence and accept rule from Pretoria

Thousands of people in the impoverished Commonwealth kingdom of Lesotho have asked South Africa in effect to annex their state because it has been bankrupted by the HIV pandemic.

The move comes as South Africa, in a move to secure its borders ahead of the World Cup, which starts on Friday, has barred thousands of people from Lesotho from crossing its borders.

"Aids has killed us,'' said charity director Ntate Manyanye. "Lesotho is fighting for survival. We have a population of about 1.9 million but there may be as many as 400,000 Aids orphans among us. Life expectancy has fallen to 34. We are desperate."

Ten days ago, several hundred people marched through the capital Maseru and delivered a petition to parliament and the South African High Commission requesting that their country be integrated into its giant neighbour, which completely surrounds it. "We have 30,000 signatures. Lesotho is not just landlocked – it is South Africa-locked. We were a labour reserve for apartheid South Africa. There is no reason for us to exist any longer as a nation with its own currency and army,'' said Vuyani Tyhali, a trade unionist and initiator of the Lesotho People's Charter Movement.

Lesotho, two hours from Bloemfontein at the end of the N8 highway, is the world's highest country – no part of it lies below 1,400m above sea level – and one of its most beautiful. Its mountains and valleys are peppered with horsemen wearing conical straw hats and traditional blankets fastened with giant safety pins. Rivers cross roads, rather than the other way round.

But the African idyll masks harsh realities. In the past 12 years, valleys have been flooded to produce dams to feed Johannesburg, 250 miles away, with water. Yet a third of the country's wells are dry. Its highly mechanised new diamond plant has failed to absorb tens of thousands of labourers laid off by South African mines. Even its textile industry – which at its height employed 50,000 people – has collapsed.

Salaries are low. A factory worker in Bloemfontein earns around 2,400 rands (£213) a month against 700 maloti (£63) in the constantly retrenching Chinese–owned textile plants of Lesotho.

The impact of Aids – brought in by the migrant workforce – has ruined the economy. Uniquely in the developing world, Lesotho's deaths are close to outnumbering its births. A third of the population is HIV positive.

In 1980, Lesotho produced 80% of the cereals it consumed. Now it imports 70%. The only real cash crop is marijuana, grown between rows of maize and smuggled to South Africa on donkeys. Drug cultivation is such a lifeline that the children clothed and fed with its proceeds have a name: bana bamatekoane (children of marijuana).

Manyanye's charity, Sentebale, was set up in 2006 by Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso, Lesotho's high commissioner in London and younger brother of the king, Letsie III. Its work – including night schooling for herd boys and activity groups for HIV-positive orphans – is keeping the country on life support. But morale is low. Volunteer Selloane Taole said: "Nurses and teachers are leaving the country because there is no future. You just see everyone dying."

The argument for incorporating the constitutional monarchy as South Africa's 10th province is compelling. Lesotho's children are taught that their country exists because King Moshoeshoe I, founder of the Basotho nation, stood up to the Boers and British in the late 19th century. In reality, the British allowed the kingdom to survive so as to keep the Boers of the Orange Free State from the sea.

Many Basotho look to South Africa's government for compassion. The African National Congress was founded in Lesotho in 1912 by King Letsie II. During the struggle against apartheid, the ANC's armed wing organised its guerilla units from the enclave.

But the government in Pretoria has a short memory. Last Tuesday, South Africa stopped recognising the temporary travel documents Basotho have used for years to shuttle in and out of the Free State to work. "Lesotho's inefficient government has not produced passports for five years," said Tyhali. "Thousands of people doing piece jobs over the border are now forced to stay in Lesotho or cross over illegally and face deportation."

South Africa's home affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa rejected the idea that Lesotho should be treated as a special case. "It is a sovereign country like South Africa. We sent envoys to our neighbours – Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Lesotho – before we enforced the passport rule. When you travel from Britain to South Africa, don't you expect to use a passport?"

Few Basotho feel attached to their currency or their borders – even less to their chaotic 122-seat parliament, which limps from one disputed election to the next amid assassination attempts and strikes. A recent study by the African Union noted a "lingering threat of internal conflict'' and identified deep problems of corruption and accountability. The report stopped short of calling for Lesotho to be annexed but recommended economic integration with South Africa.

Sekhobe Letsie, chief of Koung Makhalaneng, said Basotho were attached to their monarchy, not their politicians. "The maloti is a worthless currency. We do not even print it. We buy it from Britain and there is an arrangement to give it parity with the South African rand. 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. "If you look at them, they have lost their traditions and roots. 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 152nd 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. ''I doubt if the king is jittering about this. 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.

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