Maseru

Southern African leaders gather for a summit on Thursday in Lesotho to discuss ways of streamlining trade to boost development in the poverty-sticken 14-nation regional bloc. The two-day talks will look at economic goals set for the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Discussions will also touch on subjects such as the Aids pandemic.

The tiny Southern African kingdom of Lesotho is one of the world’s worst Aids-hit countries with a 27% infection rate, but only about 11% of people in need have access to free anti-retroviral drug treatment. Aids kills nearly 70 people each day in the landlocked mountainous state.

About a quarter of the population in Lesotho will need food aid in the next five months, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a report released in the Southern African country. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation and the WFP said the situation is exacerbated by the Aids pandemic.

Lesotho is facing a fourth successive year of severe food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). Early assessment of the 2004/05 harvest has shown there will be some improvement in the cereal yield, although it is expected to be below the five-year average.

Lesotho’s ruling party has won local government elections in the small mountain kingdom, the first to be held since it gained independence from Britain in 1966, an election official said on Monday. The municipal elections were to choose representatives to 129 councils, with a third of the seats reserved for women.

Voters in Lesotho were casting their ballots on Saturday in their first local elections since the tiny southern African kingdom gained independence from Britain in 1966. However uncertainty over the role and powers of the new office bearers has taken some of the gloss off what should have been landmark polls.

The southern African kingdom of Lesotho is set to hold its first-ever local elections on Saturday but uncertainty over the role and powers of the new office bearers has taken the sheen off the polls. Grassroots elections were first mooted in 1993 when the Basutoland Congress Party came to power after a series of military dictatorships.

Prince Harry, the second son of the heir to the British throne, was expected to arrive in Lesotho on Monday, the British high commission there said. ”He will be here for a few days … Basically he will be here to follow up on the charity work he did when he was in Lesotho for two months last year,” said the deputy high commissioner to Lesotho.

Reserving 30% of wards in local elections in Lesotho exclusively for women is ”sexual apartheid”, an opposition politician said on Thursday. Lesotho’s Local Government Act reserves 390 out of 1 272 electoral divisions — to be contested on April 30 — exclusively for women.

Six textile factories have closed and their foreign owners fled Lesotho, leaving about 6 650 workers jobless in the small mountain kingdom in Southern Africa, the Factory Workers’ Union said on Wednesday. The union’s secretary general, Billy Macaefa, blamed the closures on the end of worldwide textile quotas that limited competition from cheap Asian exports to the United States and European Union.

An estimated 15% of babies born in Lesotho become infected with HIV each year, the Lesotho government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Wednesday. Unicef and the government released a mid-term review on Wednesday of their programme of cooperation for 2002 to 2007.

Lesotho’s director of public prosecutions has threatened to prosecute members of the Law Society for criminally defaming High Court judges in a memorandum. Lindiwe Sephomolo, secretary of the society, said on Tuesday the memorandum dealt with the ”constitutional infirmity” of the appointment of acting Judge Brendan Cullinan.

HIV/Aids could reverse most of the development in Lesotho since independence and could drive the country into extreme poverty, the Central Bank of Lesotho has warned. The impact of the disease is being felt at all levels, with prolonged illness inducing financial hardships in many ways, said the bank’s Economic Review for the first quarter of 2004, released last week.

Under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, hundreds of women bend over sewing machines and ironing boards amid piles of brightly coloured cloth. Almost 25 000 T-shirts roll off the Shining Century production line each day, destined for store shelves at the Gap and Old Navy outlets in the United States.

The Lesotho and South African governments and the Freedom Park Trust of South Africa will hold commemoration services in Maseru on Friday and Saturday for freedom fighters who lost their lives during South African Defence Force raids into Lesotho in the 1980s.

Botswana’s President Festus Mogae says all southern Africa is confronted with a host of challenges, including poverty, famine, unemployment and vulnerability of economies to drought, the HIV/Aids pandemic and a desire for further access to global markets.

One of the world’s leading electrical companies, Schneider Electric, has been implicated in a R16-million bribery case in the Lesotho High Court. The alleged bribery relates to the construction of the now-completed Lesotho Highlands Water Project. French-based Schneider boasts operations in 130 countries.

The last Lesotho Queen Mother, Queen Mamohato Bereng Seeiso, was laid to rest at Roman Catholic cemetery at St Louis Mission in Matsieng, south of Maseru on Friday. Thousands of Basotho mourners attended the funeral service.

Lesotho’s queen mother, Mamohato Bereng Seeiso, the mother of King Letsie III, has died after collapsing at the Roman Catholic church in Mantsoenyane outside Maseru.

The Lesotho government has taken another step to show the world that it will continue to fight corruption after the bribery scandal involving millions of rand over the construction of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.

The World Food Programme (WFP) in Maseru announced on Monday that Lesotho will need emergency assistance to feed thousands of hungry people over the next 12 months.

Southern African Development Community defence ministers ended a two-day meeting in Maseru on Friday where they discussed a blueprint for defence, security and safety for the region.

The Lesotho Court of Appeal on Monday confirmed the conviction of the former head of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority on 13 counts of receiving bribe money from international contractors and consultants.