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HIV/AIDS AND ITS IMPACTS ON LAND TENURE AND LIVELIHOODS IN LESOTHO
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Impacts of HIV/AIDS on land issues and livelihoods
Postponement of Land Revocation
In both study areas, Matsatsaneng and Ha Poli, land administration and management is still under the control of the chiefs. The chiefs have not been observing the legislation on deprivation of land left fallow. Instead, to avoid revocation HIV/AIDS affected households have been reporting their problems to the chiefs who grant them an informal concession, indefinitely postponing deprivation.
By invoking compassion to relax the binding force of the law in the face of the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, the chiefs have not only strengthened their authority but also ensured that land management at the community level provides a relatively secure means of livelihood for the HIV/AIDS affected households.
Sharecropping Arrangements
Sharecropping arrangements have a long history. They have enabled households to gain access to land and to ensure food security within communities. For example, households that have no land but have remittances they can use to buy agricultural inputs often sharecrop other peoples’ land. By the same token, households with land but no income and/or labour use sharecropping to gain access to farming inputs and labour from those who do not have land.
This study found that infected households are increasingly using sharecropping, as they are often too sick to work in their fields and gardens. Sharecropping allows them to avoid the risk of revocation and assures them of continued access to agricultural land and food. Fortunately in the Katse study area, where some community members have lost land to the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, there are always willing sharecroppers when needed.
Sharecropping has decreased the incidence of land left fallow, especially amongst chronically ill individuals. They explained that the few reported cases of land left fallow were more a result of natural factors such as prolonged rains or drought that delayed farming operations than chronic illness. The men’s group in Matsatsaneng expressed similar views.
Women’s Land Rights
All the widows interviewed reported that they had been allowed to retain their late husbands’ agricultural land. They were also empowered to make arrangements such as sharecropping or hiring people to work on their land when necessary. However, the men’s group in Matsatsaneng explained that widows lost title to the land if they remarried, since land could not be transferred from one community to another, and by remarrying a widow gains access to her new husband’s land.
Interestingly, interviewed widows were aware of this and were quite clear that they would not consider remarriage since they would lose their social status within the community. Those who had commenced counselling sessions and whose HIV status had been confirmed were also totally against remarriage since they did not want to infect prospective husbands.
Inheritance and Succession
In both study areas AIDS orphans were found to be still very young and therefore could not be interviewed. However, the men’s group in Ha Poli explained that orphans are always treated fairly and that if they are still young their uncles use their late parents’ land to raise them until they are old enough to inherit the land. The women’s group in the same area, however, pointed out that there are cases where orphans are cheated out of their heritage by the uncles. They also showed that in some cases the orphans are forced to seek refuge with their maternal grandparents because relatives on their father’s side thought that by caring for them they would be infected by AIDS. In this case they lose their rights to their father’s land. Some of the orphans in Ha Poli were being raised by the hospital because their relatives had abandoned them.
Based on this analysis it is clear that it is not only the probable replacement of the chiefs by land boards that is likely to increase insecurity around HIV/AIDS orphans’ inheritance of land, but also the stigma attached to people who have died of the virus.
Land Sales/Land Conversions
This study has shown that land is a highly valued commodity that HIV/AIDS infected individuals and households see as the ultimate form of security for children if their parents die. The fact that the land is poor and its productivity is low does not diminish its value. Those without land who affected by the virus are seen as the most destitute. Thus, despite their depressed financial situation, this affected households reported that they have never considered sale of land as an option.
Labour
Agricultural production is the main source of livelihood in both communities, even for households affected by the epidemic. In-depth interviews with affected households revealed that illness had a substantial impact on agricultural yields because of its negative affect on household labour, the mainstay of extensive subsistence farming.
Due to loss of labour some farming activities have to be postponed or abandoned. This is true for field cropping, vegetable gardening and livestock rearing. For example, agricultural production depends on the division of labour between adult males and females, and children, who participate under the supervision of adults. Informants from affected households revealed how HIV/AIDS affects the labour available for work in the fields.
Farm Operations
Some households indicated that chronic illness and HIV/AIDS had not led to any changes in the management of home gardens and in production. Available household members could effectively manage gardens because they were generally small, or the infected person was not responsible for the home garden.
However, other households reported a decline in production in their home gardens since being afflicted with HIV/AIDS. This was either because they had stopped work on their gardens altogether, or their labour input had declined due to episodes of intense illness that affected the normal activities of household members who were not infected.
Loss of Assets
Household members indicated that from the onset of symptoms families incurred costs for medical treatment and transport to varying degrees. The net impact depends on the diversity of resources that households have, the perceived seriousness of the symptoms experienced, and what members of affected households believed to be the cause of symptoms and therefore the appropriate treatment.
Loss of Cash Income
In households where the infected member was employed, the most immediate impact felt was loss of regular income. In both communities, it was mainly men who had stopped working either because they could not cope and decided on their own to stop working, or they were retrenched because of illness. This happened to people employed in the South African mines and those employed locally, particularly in the construction works on the LHWP. One young male respondent told us how he was retrenched, even though he did not associate his illness with HIV.
Savings and Investments
Households where someone had been employed in the South African mines had substantial savings and some investments from remittances. The investments were in both physical and human capital. In the absence of income, these households resorted to savings to pay for medical expenses and all other expenses such as the education and clothing, ordinarily paid for from income. This pattern of expenditure steadily eroded household savings.
Loss of Livestock
Livestock are among the household assets affected by HIV/AIDS and chronic illnesses. Most affected households have lost other sources of income and are now selling livestock to meet medical expenses. The increased sales of livestock deplete assets and deprive some households of cattle needed for draught power in the fields. Households have also lost livestock through stock theft, said to have reached pandemic levels, particularly in the mountain areas. These losses are a major factor inhibiting effective land use as mutual support in the community is based on people having some resource to offer, even if it is only one draught animal. Helping young people with nothing to contribute towards production is a relatively new phenomenon that communities are still grappling with.
Funeral expenses and other cultural obligations, such as the requirement to slaughter a cow when a household member dies, have also exerted pressure on household resources. In both communities people pointed to instances of more than one person dying in a family within a short period of time. At Ha Poli community leaders mentioned that they often buy coffins on credit for the most destitute households, but even before they can settle these debts they have to buy another coffin, sometimes for the same family.
Loss of Indigenous Knowledge
Apart from the direct impacts that HIV/AIDS has on livelihoods through loss of labour and income, many children will grow up without the guidance of their parents. This is because HIV/AIDS mainly affects young adults who are primarily responsible for socialising children. Their death leaves a wide gap between grandparents and children.
Children will have difficulty learning how to produce effectively in the fields because their parents will not be there to train and supervise them while their grandparents will be too weak to assist. At Ha Poli the community is already operating under serious constraints due to prolonged drought and massive land losses to the LHWP. As a result harvesting enough food is a struggle in which they have to use tactics learnt over a period of time. For example, they mentioned molutsoane the rain making ritual as one tactic.
Household demographic changes due to adult mortality suggest that there will soon be many young orphans who have missed the opportunity to acquire survival skills from their parents. Much indigenous knowledge on food production will disappear with negative impacts on livelihoods. The anticipated demographic changes are a serious challenge for sustainable livelihoods.
Conclusions
The current wave of land policy reforms in Lesotho has been aimed at promoting economic growth and reducing poverty through the commercialisation of agriculture. The continuous review of the land acts in an effort to secure women’s rights to land is also commendable. However the design of the land policy measures oriented towards commercialisation does not seem to acknowledge the wide range of stakeholders particularly those affected by HIV/AIDS and the nature of constraints, which may not allow them to pursue the commercialisation goals.
HIV/AIDS affected households face several problems that hinder effective land management. These problems have compelled them to resort to sharecropping in order to sustain their livelihoods even though this arrangement threatens food security. Prevalence of HIV/AIDS has also invoked compassion on land management institutions at the local level that have consistently avoided applying the legislation thereby postponing revocation indefinitely. The stigma attached to HIV/AIDS has negatively impacted on women’s and orphan’s inheritance to land. For example, some orphans have been forced seek refuge with their maternal grandparents thus denied their patrilineal heritage. The various impacts of the pandemic on land issues have resulted in declined quality of life and unsustainable livelihoods.
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