Maseru — The following is a presentation by DR Phororo at the commemoration of the international day of poverty eradication - held at Lesotho Sun on October 15, 1999

Poverty in Lesotho manifests itself in four ugly faces: political, economic, social and agricultural. Each face is disfigured by deep, contorted ugly scars. Intrigue, predacious tendencies and intransigence scar the political face; disguise, xenophobia and corruption scar the economic face; and insensitivity and helplessness scar the social face. Farming on depleted dry land in the midst of abundant water scars the agricultural face.

I have decided to address the ugliness of poverty for two reasons. First, my instructions conveyed to me by the efficiently authoritative Principal Secretary of Planning, Mrs. Rapolaki, was to highlight the poverty situation in Lesotho, with some data or examples within a time limit of ten minutes allocated to my presentation. I have chosen to give examples. Secondly, I know and anticipate that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Honourable Maope, is the best qualified person to provide poverty data to dress up the ugly face of poverty, as his political calling demands.

Let us begin with the ugly political face of poverty in the current political environment. As I said in my introduction political face of our poverty is disfigured by three scars - intrigue, intransigence and predaciousness.

Let us examine the first scar, i.e. political intrigue. Political instability is a fertile breeding ground for poverty. The Interim Political Authority (IPA) was established to restore political stability in Lesotho, following a chain of post-election events that shook national peace and stability. Intrigue manipulated by some political parties in IPA is evident. These parties are anxious to be part of a future government, yet they are dismally failing to run their own party affairs. The august body has thus become another breeding medium for political instability and thus perpetuation of poverty.

The second scar is intransigence. It is characterised by the newly acquired culture of no-consensus in IPA. As a result, we are nowhere near holding free and fair general elections in year 2000. Without elections, there is no democracy, and without democracy the ugly face of poverty cannot be removed from the countryside. The face will continue to be a nightmare to children, youth and women, and indeed the whole nation.

An opportunity has been created for political parties to assess their strengths and weaknesses by holding two by-elections before the end of the millennium. Intransigence of some political parties has come up to the surface like asparagus shoots emerging from the soil. These parties, perhaps more for fear of revelation of their weaknesses, than matters of principle, are rejecting this golden opportunity. To know one's weaknesses and inadequacies is a valuable lesson that can indicate areas where improvement is required. If a politician fears to lose, he will always be a loser, and will strive to compensate for the fear by causing political instability.

The third scar is predaciousness, i.e. the compulsive desire to prey on the poor. The scar is the most horrendous. In a bid to redress their own individual poverty, the members of IPA are callously, cruelly and crudely striving to burden the poor with an unjustified ballooned parliament of 130 seats, up from the present 80 seats. They have contrived an unintelligible so-called Mixed Member Parliament that violates the cardinal democratic principle of majority rule through winner ELECTED representatives.

In Lesotho, the system is motivated by poverty of politicians and not poverty of the electorate, and can only condone lazy, unaccountable politicians whose aim is to sponge on the poor at all costs. The additional unelected members are to be sustained by the taxes of the poor. It is a sad, sad leap or hobble into the new millennium.

Coming to the 2nd ugly economic face of poverty, the scenario swings like a pendulum between national and international spectrum. The three fearsome scars are those of disguise, corruption and xenophobia. The first scar of disguise is exhibited by the criteria and benchmarks we apply to measure poverty. The international jargon is GNP and GDP. Improve both, especially GDP, then you are on the way to eliminating poverty. Lesotho's performance trend on these criteria has been positive, and yet people are getting poorer and poorer with respect to intensity and spread of poverty.

The local economists (especially at NUL) have buried their heads in the sand and are so complacent as not to unravel this mystery. Our politicians appear content in patting themselves on the shoulder in international conferences when they report on Lesotho's economic progress. And yet we only touch the tip of the iceberg by short-tem measures such as fato-fato. What has happened to Poverty Reduction in the Context of Good Governance? Where is the political will?

The second poverty scar on the economic face is corruption. We hear more about the resolve to stamp it out at international and national fora, but the resolve appears to be an unfulfilled wish. Internationally, alleged corrupt practices on a massive scale, for example, in Lesotho Highlands Water Project are an example. Nationally, press reports of corrupt conduct in the public service are common. And yet the disadvantaged poor continue to pay sales tax religiously, only to be gobbled by the advantaged pirates. The third fresh poverty scar on the economic face is xenophobia. We adorn the one cheek of economic face with promises of economic partnerships face-lift, while slapping the other cheek with xenophobia. We want foreign investment, but we readily harass and plunder the property of foreigners. Acquisition of this new character by Basotho does not augur well for poverty reduction and eradication. It kills the goose that lays the golden egg. Behind it all, politics rears its ugly head as it has happened in 1998 political disturbances.

Turning to the third ugly social face of poverty, here the scars of insensitivity and helplessness are deep in the skin. As long as the few select haves can have enough to eat, drink, avail themselves of good schools and medical services, and play around with electricity switches in their homes, they are insensitised to the plight of have-not majority of the poor.

This does not suggest that we must all be poor. But at individual and policy level, let us have the will and strive to ensure that the little wealth we have acquired, through contributions of the poor and the not-so-poor alike in the economy, is equitably distributed.

The helplessness scar of the social face of poverty disfigures innumerable faces across the country. We don't need to be told of the misery of women scouting the countryside to pick wild vegetables, shrubs and cowdung to cook household meal or sell the products to buy meagre supplies of mealie meal or paraffin, or for paying school and medical fees.

When AIDS virus strikes in the households, it aggravates the helplessness and deprivation of the poor. They spare all they have to care and eventually bury their beloved victims, and thus their poverty mounts. Medical science may not have the cure or biological preventative products yet to stop the ravages of AIDS, but we have the capacity, which is unoptimised by policy makers, to declare an emergency on AIDS, and indeed, on poverty.

If AIDS invaded any Western country with the ferocity it is incapacitating the Southern and Eastern African countries; a cure would have been found long ago. We know the West has always been concerned about population explosion in the developing world. AIDS and senseless wars and crimes ironically committed by Africans themselves on their own citizen add to the unappetising and unpalatable menu of poverty.

Finally, I conclude with the fourth ugly, poverty based agricultural face. The scars are too numerous to diagnose and address within the given time. They can be lumped together under two critical issues. Firstly, natural resources. Lesotho has limited arable land that is progressively being reduced to a desert. The major available resources of rangeland are being progressively depleted through overgrazing. These trends represent the fundamental enemies of food security. Regarding arable farming, Lesotho has and is pursuing irrelevant, unsustainable strategies. We are practising and promoting hydroponics (farming without soil) without water. If all the funds available over the years had been used for harnessing our abundant water resources for agricultural purpose, we would have been very close to achieving food security and poverty eradication objectives.

Secondly, the scars of poverty are most pronounced with respect to the rangeland utilisation. The basic problem is human factor. We have entrusted this major critical resource to herdboys. Herdboys epitomise the poverty situation in Lesotho in terms of human deprivation and environmental resources degradation. The continual use of herdboys is an indictment on our society and a mark of national irresponsibility.

What shall or can we do about these ugly scarred faces of poverty in Lesotho? Do some plastic surgery, or be contented to live with the nightmarish sight? While plastic surgery may be a solution, the surgical knives of our social surgeons - the politicians - are too blunt or rusty. Their aides and assistants in the theatre -economists and an array of professionals - are blinded by their wealth and opulence ironically made possible by the poor.

But the ugly scarred faces of poverty will always haunt us. There is no escape or hiding place because for the privileged Basotho to attempt to run away from poverty is to run away from their own selves - their own poor milieu of humanity. Together with the poor, and with solidarity and determination, we must and can create opportunities and choices to get out of the poverty net. By so doing, even if the established scars of poverty may be hard to obliterate, the ugliness can be transformed to prettiness through confidence building. Most importantly, we can prevent the development of scars of poverty in the resilient young faces of our youth.

Your Excellencies, Lesotho may be poor. But there is one important dimension in which the nation is not poor, and that is, the freedom of expression. Even the poor can express their views as freely as the rich alike without any fear of harassment. That is one of the critical confidence building secrets, and the Government deserves praise in this respect.