“Lesotho, is the world’s highest country – no part of it lies below 1,400m above sea level – and one of its most beautiful. Its mountains and valleys are peppered with horsemen wearing conical straw hats and traditional blankets fastened with giant safety pins. Rivers cross roads, rather than the other way round.
But the African idyll masks harsh realities. In the past 12 years, valleys have been flooded to produce dams to feed Johannesburg, 250 miles away, with water. Yet a third of the country’s wells are dry. Its highly mechanised new diamond plant has failed to absorb tens of thousands of labourers laid off by South African mines. Even its textile industry – which at its height employed 50,000 people – has collapsed.
Salaries are low. A factory worker in Bloemfontein earns around 2,400 rands (£213) a month against 700 maloti (£63) in the constantly retrenching Chinese–owned textile plants of Lesotho.”
I am sad for the people of Lesotho.
Reading this from today’s Guardian however, made me realize again how even-handed God is in HIS goodness, how he scatters beauty to the rich and poor; gives beauty to the pampered Swiss just as he gives it to the desperate people of Lesotho.
To some extent, the mountains of Switzerland, where we spend 3 unforgettable weeks, are as unpromising as those of Lesotho or more so (no diamonds in them!!). However, the people of Switzerland have not been the victims of colonization.
Now this is a subject I need to think through.