Posted
07 Mar 2025
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Posted07 Mar 2025
Lineo Rakaibe is a Gender Expert working with LEI in Lesotho. She writes from her experience as a District Gender Officer under the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Social Development, and, more recently as a Senior Social and Behavioural Change Specialist on the Land and Gender consultancy. This consultancy is part of the Market Driven Irrigated Horticulture (MDIH) project, which is funded under the Millenium Challenge Corporation Lesotho Compact.
Please note that the names of those quoted in the article have been changed.
“Naa lefa laka joaloka mosetsana le tla fetela baneng baka ha nka hlokahala?” “Will my inheritance as a married daughter pass over to my children when I die?”
“Naa lefa laka joaloka mosetsana le tla fetela baneng baka ha nka hlokahala?”
“Will my inheritance as a married daughter pass over to my children when I die?”
Growing up as a Mosotho girl in the rural areas of Lesotho, I became aware that girls were considered less important compared to boys in Basotho families. I was frequently reminded that I had no right to inherit any part of my father’s estate. This estate was referred to as my father’s because my mother, being female, also lacked any rights to the land. To my shock, my widowed mother was the one who would constantly remind me that my home belonged to my brother. He was not called by his name, rather “Mojalefa” – literally translated as “the one who eats and pays.” I became aware that I was not a permanent member of my childhood home, as I was expected to marry. Given the socio-economic reality in Lesotho, where marriages are increasingly unstable, and divorce, poverty, and unemployment are rising at an alarming pace, my future felt uncertain and daunting.
I recently participated in an intensive 3-month effort to support the registration of women’s land rights in a rural area of Lesotho called Phamong, as part of the MDIH land irrigation project in that area. Many people don’t know where Lesotho is, so I guess I should use this blog to spread the word before getting down to the tougher issue of how to overcome discriminatory norms around women’s land rights….
Bokong Valley in Lesotho’s Highlands.
Lesotho is a mountainous country, landlocked by the Republic of South Africa, with an estimated population of 2.2 million people. Lesotho is mountainous, indeed very mountainous – so much that it snows in winter. With almost two-thirds of the land area as highlands it leaves only 10% as lowland which is arable and suitable for agricultural production.
As with many countries in Southern Africa, agricultural productivity in Lesotho is affected by adverse weather conditions, overgrazing and over-cultivation. Our weak land tenure system also affects productivity as there are often disputes over who owns the land. Like other countries, urban sprawl is increasingly encroaching on the borders of rural areas, with such developments diminishing even further the country’s scarce fertile land.
My family story is not unique. In Lesotho women have long been denied access to land. Lesotho customary land rights are traditionally vested in men and passed on through the male line. Indeed prior to 2006, married women were treated as minors in the eyes of the law and couldn’t even own land. The story of Mme Malerato, told to me in the context of our work in Phamong Community Council, is just one of countless such examples.
“My land in [the] form of fields did not benefit my family,” eighty-three year old widow, Malerato told me. A mother of seven children, Mme Malerato had been customarily married and lived happily as a stay-at-home mom with her husband for 29 years. Her husband passed in 1987 leaving her with eight children – five were still minors. What she told me next was very emotional.
Mme Malerato from Phamong.
“When my husband passed on… I was regarded as one of his dependents. He was working in the mines in South Africa … My younger brother-in-law who was expected to maintain the deceased’s dependents as the ‘customary heir’ did not care about our welfare. The three plots/fields he used without discussing anything with me, sometimes he would give us a few items of product, but most often he would not. Life became difficult… I had a proposal from someone who wanted to rent a portion of our land. The prospective buyer made an offer to give us food throughout the year because he is aware of the children’s situation. However, my brother-in-law … did not agree with the proposal. He indicated that he does not need any help. The family tried to intervene by holding meetings regarding the matter, but the brother concerned did not attend the meetings … We had even sought assistance from the local chief who sent his messengers to summon my brother to him, but to no avail. I had to leave my children and work in the kitchens in South Africa so that I could provide for my family – yet I had land that could be used to sustain our lives.”
In the 1990s the law’s denial of women’s land rights became completely unsustainable. This was partly due the increase in educated female (and male) professionals. In urban areas inheritance disputes were increasingly being taken to court to argue against these discriminatory laws, and attempt to secure land rights and livelihoods for female relatives. Legislative reform was desperately needed to give women rights to land.
As a result of a series of law reforms from the early 2000s, we now have a legal framework that affords daughters equal inheritance rights with their brothers, and wives joint ownership over property with their husbands – including when they are validly married under customary law. Even though there is no adequate information about the number of customary marriages, I believe the most recent statistics showed that around 54% of marriages fall into this category, so this legal reform recognising rights to joint property rights in customary marriages was critical.
The Land Administration Authority (LAA), an autonomous government body established in 2010 to improve land administration, reduce land transaction costs and the time taken to acquire leasehold titles, and register leases, the highest form of ‘ownership’ in Lesotho. Its data shows a significant increase in both women and men as joint landowners and an increase in women owning land on their own since the law reforms.
Land Administration Authority, 2019.
Even so, the law is one thing and the reality is another. Despite these promising and exciting law reforms, women, especially women in rural area, too often remain stuck with tenure insecurity. Women’s tenure insecurity is reflected by inappropriate, exploitative and unfair administrative practices within government that limit women’s land rights in contradiction to the law. Many women don’t know the new laws – especially in rural areas. Some women continue to even see themselves as subservient to their sons or husbands
Likeleli is a twenty-one-year-old who has just completed her secondary education. Her father passed on in June 2024 after a short illness, leaving them as orphans as her mother had already passed on when they were young.
“Just after burying our father, our hero, who had been taking care of us, I saw the true colors of my elder brother. Together with family they agreed that he is the customary heir as such he took all the documents and went to register the land in his names(excluding us siblings, two sisters) to our area chief. He was aware the [irrigation] project was about to start, hence he was in such a hurry to have all documents in his names. My father had always said all his property belonged to all of us, but he had not put that in writing. Unfortunately, when he died even our uncles, who knew this, turned against us.”
Basotho, the people of Lesotho, place great value on land. This is because it is a critical resource for livelihoods and rural development. Like any other African country, land is a convertible asset which can be used to access benefits and privileges such as collateral, access to credit and financial markets, agricultural inputs, decision making on products of their agricultural labour and of course a source of nutrition. Lack of access to land and land rights therefore reduces women’s access to these resources and their full contribution to the eradication of hunger and poverty.
In a closed session in Phamong, the 30-year-old daughter of a deceased single parent shared her story. She explained that after her mother’s death in 2010, her only brother, who is the customary heir, moved into their home with his family. Initially, she thought her brother’s stay would be temporary, but the family ended up staying for almost two years. After completing her first degree and securing a job, she decided to pursue her dream to build another stand-alone apartment (a two-bedroom house) on a portion of land near their home. When she approached her brother about this, to her shock he told her not to even consider building on the land and threatened to kill her if she returned home. At that time, she was renting a place in Mohale’s Hoek. She checked with the Area Chief’s office, following advice. To her disbelief, she discovered that her brother had registered all the land – that is not just the residential home of her mother, but also the fields. He had registered the parcels in his and his wife’s names, effectively leaving her homeless.
In May 2024 I was lucky enough to be hired by Land Equity International (LEI) to work as a Senior Social and Behavioural Change Specialist for the MDIH Land and Gender Consultancy. I saw this job as furthering my desire to change discriminatory social norms in Lesotho around women’s access to land, and my goal to increase the capacity of women to participate in the economy on an equal footing with men.
Under the MDIH project, Phamong (and three other sites across the country) would be developed into an irrigation scheme. It would support economic development by moving farmers away from rain-fed subsistence farming, and towards more commercial agriculture by providing training and irrigation infrastructure. Importantly the project has a firm emphasis on women’s inclusion and that women should benefit from the intervention.
As a very first step to developing the irrigation infrastructure, the owners of the land in the scheme needed to be identified, engaged and registered as the owners of the land. Our consultancy was hired to make sure this process recognised and supported women’s (new) rights to land as set out in the most recent legal reforms and challenged discriminatory social and gender norms. We also aimed to support other vulnerable groups – such as people with a disability and orphans – so that no one would be left behind in this irrigation project.
Phamong lies at the foothills of a mountain range, south Mohale’s Hoek district. It is a 4-hour drive from Maseru and close to the border with South Africa – in short, potentially an ideal location to develop export crops. As we quickly discovered, it is also a poorer part of the country, with high rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, and unemployment and until recently the community was still far from developed.
Project affected person’s home, visited during the census period of the Land and Gender project.
Our objective in Phamong was to set in motion a series of discussions and awareness raising activities in the pre-registration period. These activities would ideally result in a shift towards women registering their land rights, and community norms moving away from the idea that women are not able or allowed to own land. We also wanted to develop a plan for preventing, mitigating and responding to gender based violence risks that would likely arise in the context of women claiming the land.
After some time strategising, we developed a ‘Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Action Plan’ which provided a set of reinforcing interventions to support change (See image). Our strategy was not set in stone – we were convinced that we would need to be able to adjust our approach as we learned.
Our work in Phamong, from October 2024 to January 2025 involved four main activities in Phamong, underpinned by administrative changes that are gender-inclusive:
Women’s group using emojis and pictures to show challenges they have.
To date we don’t have results on whether our project activities have achieved their objectives. We should receive the project data around registration soon and at that point we can see any influence we may have had on who registered their land in the area. Still, anecdotally and based on the discussions, we see positive signs. There appears to be some agreement on the transition from customary heirship to co-ownership by all siblings. There is hope, because Basotho are aware that the ‘customary heirs’ do not fulfil their obligations – and they want to avoid that. Men as spouses are also willing to register jointly with their spouses as they want to ensure that resources such as land remain within the nuclear family. Reality has also shown the instability of marriages for girls and the resulting need to include daughters as well as sons in inheritance planning.
Manka, another Community Council closer to Maseru (the capital) is the next project irrigation scheme area that we will work with. I look forward to working with more affected communities and I am hoping that leaders and other norm holders will be welcoming as in Phamong. Manka is bigger than Phamong, but we have faith that the necessary social changes we want to see will still take place.
Header Image: Separate groups; women discussing their specific land challenges in the MDIH Land & Gender Community Dialogues in Phamong.
In spirit of reconciliation, Land Equity International acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
