HIV/AIDS threatens land policy reforms

Lesotho's current land policy reforms have focused on the commercialisation of agriculture to promote economic growth and reduce poverty. But the explosive combination of food insecurity and HIV/AIDS could derail the process, a report has warned. The report, a follow-up of a study carried out by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN), found that young people were dying in "large numbers", leaving agricultural activities in the hands of the elderly. "This was a very big problem. Traditionally in Lesotho, when parents become elderly, they hand over their pieces of land to their children. But now their children cannot support them or work in the fields because they are sick and dying," Matseliso Mphale, the study's principal investigator, told IRIN. In the previous study, land was a highly valued commodity that HIV positive households saw as the ultimate form of security for their children if they died. But two years after the study was conducted, the sale of land by HIV/AIDS affected households was on the increase. More than 75 percent of the community members interviewed during a feedback workshop revealed that community members were trying to meet medical and funeral expenses by selling off their land. "People are desperate," Mphale noted. Widows interviewed in Ha Poli, a remote village in the Lesotho highlands, were also selling agricultural production equipment to meet burial expenses. Existing land reform policies have revoked ownership of land left fallow for two years. The study found that people living with HIV/AIDS were now employing sharecroppers, as they were often too sick to work their fields. This arrangement allowed them to avoid the risk of their land being revoked and assured them of continued access to agricultural land and food. But this arrangement was under strain and there was now a "reluctance" to engage in sharecropping, as HIV-positive households were increasingly dishonouring their agreements by abruptly selling land or livestock, sometimes without alerting their contractual partners. The breakdown of these coping strategies left households "even more vulnerable", the report said. According to Mphale, HIV/AIDS affected rural households should be encouraged to produce cash crops like vegetables. Participants complained, however, that produce from their gardens was not enough to support the household's requirements, and would not provide them with essentials such as grain.