Clerics join protest against Lesotho border queues

MASERU – You know there’s
trouble queuing at a border post
when the region’s church leaders
rise up in protest.
In a meeting in Johannesburg
recently, the leadership of the
Anglican Church of Southern
Africa took note of irksome delays
at Lesotho’s border posts, and
demanded a meeting with the top
leaders of South Africa and Lesotho,
including President Jacob Zuma
and Lesotho’s long-serving Prime
Minister (since 1998) Pakalitha
Mosisli, as well as both countries’
foreign ministries and transportation
officials.
Like road freight hauliers and
civilian travellers, the clerics don’t
like the lengthy border queues that
have become a fixture since the end
of the Fifa World Cup. For three
months before, during and after
the games SA kept is borders open
with Lesotho on a 24/7 basis, and
the smooth flow of traffic must
have seemed heavenly to the church
leaders. But those days are over.
“The people of Lesotho have
since the World Cup suffered
greatly at the Lesotho-South African
borders due to exceptionally long
queues averaging five hours,”
the Anglican leadership said in a
statement.
“This practice is having adverse
effects on the lives of people on
both sides of the border,” they
noted.
Commercial road cargo is
also slow post-World Cup. Road
freight haulers are the commercial
and humanitarian lifeline into
the landlocked country wholly
surrounded by SA.
The global recession halved
export-dependent Lesotho’s GDP
growth rate from 3.9% in 2008
to 1.6% last year. But industrial
production was still increasing
last year (by 1.5%) instead of
declining, and construction projects
are widespread throughout greater
Maseru, including a new shopping
mall downtown.
2010 was ten months old before
the first good rains hit the country.
The effect on food production from
the drought was profound, but the
impact on the road infrastructure
was mixed.
One road freight company owner
told FTW, “There was less money
spent on road maintenance because
of no flash flood wash away, and
even the pot holes in town were
less. I don’t know if road accidents
were down but they were different.
Instead of our trucks having
accidents because of rain there were
bad dust storms and the sands and
dirt blew over the highways and
made them treacherous.”
Food aid continues to constitute
large volumes of imports, and
with persistent drought this is
likely to continue, the World Food
Programme’s office in Maseru told
FTW. Only 1000th of Lesotho’s
land area – 30 sq km out of 30 355
sq km – is irrigated, and only 10%
of all land is arable.
About 20% of Lesotho’s
approximately 7000 km of roads are
tarred.
For a small country Lesotho has
a lot of airports, but only three of
them with paved runways. The rest
offer the only swift links to the
mountainous terrain where road
travel is difficult. Air freight goes to
even the smallest airstrips, usually
comprising emergency food aid and
medical supplies.