One of Many: Exploring the Implications of South African Labor Migration on Lesotho

By Brett Rau, writing from the University of Georgia.

(This article was originally printed in the Spring 2026 edition of our print magazine. To see the entire magazine, click here.)

“Get up, get up, son of mine, and see if people are at the door; for I am hungry and would eat meat.” The voice was that of a man, seated in front of some red-hot cinders in the middle of the hut. The little boy ran to the door, and, upon seeing two girls standing there, implored them to run away at once. This oral story, the Village Maiden and the Cannibal, is a traditional folktale told by the Basotho people where a group of young maidens attempt to enlist the help of a few men to save the village from starvation. One of the men turns out to be a cannibal, and the story cautions listeners to be wary of strangers. Oral traditions like the Village Maiden and the Cannibal can be found in all corners of the world, per linguist and folklore scholar John Foley. One characteristic of oral tradition is that it is often not one consistent narrative; it is a living body which accommodates the events of people’s lives. Such narrative differences can be seen in Walter Jekyll’s essay, where he recounts different tellings of the same story further north: unlike the southern Basotho tale, the North-east Nyasa and Kilimanjaro versions of the Village Maiden and the Cannibal include the girls being aided by an animal. Oral tradition is a longstanding practice of the Basotho people who inhabit the Maloti mountains. They reside in a nation-state known as Lesotho, which translates to ‘land of the Basotho’ in Sesotho, the national language. In modernity, Lesotho is a self-governing sovereign entity and identified as such by the United Nations, but economically, independence is far from the case. Much like orators’ different approaches in arriving at the moral of the story in Village Maiden and the Cannibal, scholars have offered divergent narratives to explain the economic struggles of Lesotho. Perhaps the most compelling telling relates to migratory labor. Lesotho has become overly reliant on South African labor migration rooted in colonial era policy, which has become ultimately detrimental to contemporary economic and social development. 

The relationship between South Africa and Lesotho, along with the corresponding existence of regional labor migration, can be traced back to the colonial period. Descendants of the Sotho people, the Basotho were first formally unified under King Moshoeshoe during the first half of the nineteenth century, largely in response to the Mfecane (Zulu term), or ‘The Crushing’ (English term), a warring period that uprooted many southern African communities. Shortly after the formation of the first Basotho nation, the Afrikaners—colonizers of Dutch descent—slowly encroached on the territory. Faced with a difficult dilemma, King Moshoeshoe decided to apply for the aid of the British, and their response was received favorably. At this point, the first Basotho nation was officially demarcated and operated by the British. The discovery of diamonds in the Cape Colony, or more specifically in Kimberly (northwest of Maseru, Lesotho’s capital), in 1867 attracted a wide array of Africans for labor. During this period, a semi-symbiotic relationship developed where these rapidly expanding miner communities provided a location for Basotho crop exports, and many Basotho men participated in labor emigration to South Africa for diamonds. Importantly, the first Basotho men who participated in the labor migration did so “for discretionary reasons, not out of economic necessity,” according to scholars Rosenburg and Weisfelder. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, agricultural exports began to decline as protective tariffs by a neighboring Afrikaner republic, and the formation of small canyon-like features known as dongas, erased the agricultural surplus supporting the more sustainable system of labor migration. As a result, many Basotho were forced into more unsustainable patterns of migrant labor.     

Mining in apartheid South Africa is often not a desirable form of employment. Thousands of unskilled black migrant workers traveled from across the southern region of Africa to work in encampments often referred to as compounds. The conditions were often inhumane for the Basotho, given that they were sent to work underground in a racially segregated system. Due to the isolated nature of the compounds, sex work was extraordinarily common. Men typically worked in several month periods and were only permitted to see their families every few months. As South African activist Alice Kinloch wrote in 1897, “for more than a quarter century Kimberly has been the stage for the worst forms of undisguised inhumanity”.

 Gold mining was a very common career for Basotho men up until the industry crashed in the 1990s. Decreasing gold prices and a necessity to dig deeper to access dangerous gold deposits led to less mining opportunities among Basotho men. A steep reliance upon labor migration for Lesotho’s economic output has created a system whereby in 2023, remittances, or money sent from migrant laborers back to family and friends in their country of origin, reached US$485 million—nearly 23 percent of Lesotho’s gross domestic product (GDP).  As such, Lesotho is “one of Africa’s most remittance-dependent economies” as reported on by the Lesotho News Agency. Therefore, these statistics on male miners and remittances demonstrate how Lesotho is straying farther from economic self-sufficiency.

In what has historically been a male dominated field, migration to South Africa for employment opportunities has become increasingly common among women compared to what used to be a historically male-dominated sector. An account from a woman living in Maseru interviewed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who wished to remain anonymous provides insight into the poor working conditions. She began doing domestic work like cooking and cleaning as a teenager in South Africa. She explains that each job follows a similar pattern: “initial understanding, coupled with expanding duties, denial of rest days, and growing hostility once I became settled.” Women involved in domestic labor migration are often treated very poorly, and far too often are victims of verbal abuse. Jobs are usually obtained through social networks and connections rather than through official job application portals. Many migrant workers are in low-income fields and are seasonally employed. As a result, even though rates of labor migration cut across gender, factors like education and job formality often influence migration decisions. 

A commonality between Basotho labor emigrants and Lesotho’s domestic opportunities is a lack of formality. Formal employment remains a struggle in which many are paid based on verbal agreement rather than formal contracts. In 1999, the Central Bank of Lesotho noted that half of all Basotho employed in formal positions were employed in South Africa rather than Lesotho. Domestically, the government remains the primary formal employer, offering positions as teachers, civil servants, and in the armed forces, to name a few. Private sector jobs that function on a word-of-mouth basis account for 49.4 percent of jobs, a figure estimated by the 2024 Lesotho Labor Force Survey. Because of a lack of opportunity, South Africa attracts many laborers by offering formal positions that many Basotho cannot find in their own country. One major issue of having a large amount of emigrating workers is the lack of tax dollars available for Lesotho’s government. In the words of Mathabo Makoko, the Commission General of the Revenue Services of Lesotho, “domestic resource mobilization is no longer optional. It is a necessity,” and to that end “the true future of Lesotho’s development rests in our ability to generate and mobilize our own resources.” Here, a feedback loop develops: many Basotho are not paying taxes due to either the informal nature of employment or because they work abroad, and therefore because of poor funding the government is unable to effectively operate an agency to enforce efficient tax collection. In other words, tax dollars are needed to enforce the collection of taxes. One consequence of Basotho workers in South Africa in informal positions is the reduction of function for the government.      

A heavy reliance on remittance payments from Basotho emigrant workers in South Africa has done significant damage to Lesotho’s economic sustainability and consequently the state of its society. Referring to Mathaba Makoko’s quote, it is not that Lesotho should rely less on foreign resources and labor markets, but it is required that they simultaneously mobilize domestic markets. The economic direction of Lesotho is unsustainable. Given the circumstances, the government should begin to remedy these issues, but they lack many of the resources to do so. Lesotho must in a sense modernize and adapt to an ever-changing global economy. Interest has developed among member states of the African Union in the past few years regarding the capabilities of artificial intelligence. Dr. Ahmani Abdou-Zeid states that AI presents an opportunity for Africans and could be a driving force for economic and social progress. Lesotho needs to find a niche in the global market and could, for example, develop a national strategy to be a regional hub for data centers. But in any case, Lesotho needs to draw the interest of private investors without compromising the Basotho identity. To explain the current political economy in Lesotho, many people will provide different explanations. Like the nature of oral traditions, mine is just one interpretation of many.