Migration, Remittances and Development in Lesotho

PAST MIGRATIONS

MIGRATION POLICY SERIES NO. 52 7 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk A semi-structured questionnaire was prepared to provide basic data on household demography, income, and remittance information. Respondents were then asked to elaborate on their perceptions of the importance of migration, household decision-making on migration and the impact of migration to South Africa on the household and the community . Five focus groups were conducted (two with migrants, two with remittance receivers and one with remittance-based entrepreneurs). All interviews were conducted in Sesotho and transcribed and translated into English for analysis. PAST MIGRATIONS O ver the course of the twentieth century, the people of Lesotho became deeply reliant on migration to South Africa.10 An extensive research literature in the 1970s and 1980s showed that circular migration between Lesotho and South Africa had an impact on all aspects of Basotho economic, social and cultural life: dividing families, weakening domestic social structure and organization, undermining agricultural production and productivity, compromising health, exacerbating rural poverty and intensifying gender inequality.11 Migration was consistently seen as having a relentlessly negative impact on development, an interpretation of the migrationdevelopment relationship that persists to the present. Lesotho was once the “granary” of Southern Africa, the home of a productive agricultural peasantry producing crops for export but was reduced over time to an impoverished labour reserve for South African industry. The central question for these researchers was not “Why are the Basotho still poor?” but rather “How have the Basotho become poor?”12 The historical and contemporary dependence of households in Lesotho on migration to South Africa was recently described by Turner as follows: For generations, Basotho livelihood aspirations have focused on wage employment. For most of this time, the country’s role as a regional labour reserve meant that most of this wage employment was across the border in South Africa. To have at least one wage earner in the family is seen as the foundation of livelihood security, both through current wage income and through future activities. These future activities (notably farming) can be built from the assets that wages may buy, and may continue long after wage earning has ceased. Poverty threatens households that are unable to break into wage employment, or that lose such employment permanently.13 MIGRATION, REMITTANCES AND ‘DEVELOPMENT’ IN LESOTHO 8 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk The inter-generational character of migration from Lesotho to South Africa was corroborated by the MARS, which found that 76% of Basotho respondents (household heads or their partners) had parents and at least 25% had grandparents who had worked in South Africa. This compared to a regional average of 57% and 23% (Table 1). Table 1: Migration Experience of Parents and Grandparents Lesotho Region* Parent Worked in Another Country (%) Yes 76.2 57.1 No 15.7 34.7 Don’t Know 8.1 8.2 100.0 100.0 Grandparent Worked in Another Country (%) Yes 24.4 22.6 No 21.1 43.3 Don’t Know 54.5 34.2 Total 100.0 100.0 Source: SAMP Household Survey * Includes Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe During the twentieth century, the major form of legal movement between Lesotho and South Africa was contract migration for work on the South African gold mines. Lesotho (along with Malawi and Mozambique) became a major supply source for the mines.14 The number of migrants increased over time and reached nearly 130,000 at the peak in 1990 (Table 2). Almost 50% of households in Lesotho had at least one household member working as a migrant on the South African mines in the late 1970s. Migrants signed contracts of up to a year in length and spent a good part of their working lives away from home. Most migrants were young, single men who aimed to return permanently to Lesotho once they had accumulated sufficient stock and savings to marry and establish their own household. Their sons, when old enough, would take their place on the mines. Mine work is extremely demanding both physically and mentally.15 Not all men were suited to, or capable of, working underground. Some therefore migrated to South Africa to work in other sectors such as manufacturing and construction. But mining overshadowed all other forms of migrant employment. In 1975, for example, 81% of migrants worked in mining, 7.5% were in manufacturing, 5% in domestic work (mainly women), 3% in construction, 2% in government and 1% in agriculture.16 MIGRATION POLICY SERIES NO. 52...