NEWS
AND FEATURES ON THE SOLIDARITY 2000 CAMPAIGN IN COPENHAGEN
Lesotho
Rebuilding The Civil Society
By Farah Khan
MASERU June 2000 (IPS) - In the five years since the United Nations Social Summit in Copenhagen, MS in Lesotho has focused on helping to build a civil society movement in the kingdom. The importance of civil society in bolstering democracy is a relatively new concept on the entire African continent and is a phenomenon that has developed on a large scale only in the past 10 years.
Lesotho came to the party even later. MS Director for Lesotho Claus Loshenkohl says that no NGOs from the country attended the Copenhagen conference in 1995 and have thus had to play catch-up with the development commitments pledged by different governments at the Summit.
MS has played a significant role in helping local NGOs to get up to speed and prepare their shadow report. In this, they faced difficulties because the Lesotho government did not easily supply its report. MS was forced to postpone its country conference preceding the Copenhagen+5 meeting for this reason. Up to early June, NGOs had therefore not yet completed their report.
When Lesotho became a democracy in 1993, MS shifted its emphasis from government assistance to NGO assistance. It chose two main areas of work: democracy and governance, as well as environmental protection.
"Civil society needs to be strengthened," says Loshenkohl. "Political parties take up the whole scene in Lesotho." Three main political parties are at constant loggerheads, meaning that the past six years has been a short and fragile history of coups and counter-coups among the three.
''Political space is dominated by this kind of politicking and MS has tried to fill the gap by encouraging a deeper understanding of democracy among the population. It funds about 10 human rights and democracy organisations,'' said Loshenkohl.
These organisations are primarily involved with paralegal training, rights training and advocacy. MS has also used the space created by the freeing up of the airwaves by sponsoring radio programmes about rights, which are reportedly very popular.
A Legal Resource and Advice Centre also takes up test cases to enshrine a legal tradition of human rights and development. The other leg of MS work in Lesotho is tackling environmental degradation. There are too many cattle for the tiny, mountainous country to sustain and the land is overgrazed. "This causes landslides and deep holes in the ground known as dongas.
A big part of our work is donga rehabilitation," says Loshenkohl. An NGO called Grow, assisted by MS, works in the north-eastern region of Lesotho to teach farmers forms of sustainable agriculture. This region can only produce enough food for six months of the year and usually has to import the rest.
The precarious situation has been exacerbated by the large-scale retrenchment of miners by the South African mining industry who have increased the demand for food. Loshenkohl says that foreign aid to Lesotho has declined throughout the Nineties and MS is one of few agencies with a presence in the country.
"We can see an impact, especially with our support for NGOs." But even the NGO sector is not immune from the persistent brain-drain of skilled Basutho. "The impact of our partner organisations change. Many key people have decided to take jobs outside the country."
Frustrated by a declining economy and a fractious body politic, "many well-educated Basutho are leaving because of a lack of future opportunities," says Loshenkohl. MS has worked in Lesotho for 25 years and began as a volunteer programme building foot-bridges and clinics.