AFRICAN BLIZZARD

Maseru, Lesotho, Southern Africa. 
My son Jackson and I arrived here in a snow storm.  It soon became a raging blizzard.  Inches of snow, accidents all over the place, for most people here (they all belong to a tribe called Basotho) have never seen snow, much less know how to drive in it.

In the car with us to the hotel was a Namibian diplomat here to negotiate a trade agreement.  As we watched the winter spectacle through the windshield in amazement, I commented, "This has got to be caused by global warming, so these accidents are all George Bush's fault."

He didn't know if I was serious at first, but when he saw me smile he got the joke and burst out laughing.

An African blizzard may seem a joke, but that southern Africa is suffering through one of its coldest winters isn't.  (Remember that it's winter now below the Equator.)

It's just another one of the blizzard of problems that a place like Lesotho (luh-soo-too) is enduring, none of which is a laughing matter.

It had a heroic start in the 19^th century.  As you can see, it's a small country (11,500 square miles, smaller than Maryland) completely surrounded by South Africa:

South Africa is the creation of original Dutch settlers (who called themselves Boers from the Dutch word for farmer) during the late 1600s starting around Capetown, and British colonists who took the place over in the early 1800s.

The Brits and the Boers were always duking it out, so the latter began trekking to the north and claiming more territory.  They ran into a very smart tribal chieftain who had welded a collection of tribes and clans into a nation of folks speaking one tribal language (Sesotho – suh-soo-too, so his kingdom was called Basotho, people (ba) who speak it.  The Brits called it Basutoland.)

This was King Moeshoeshoe (mow-shway-shway, 1787-1870).  He was renowned for his acts of friendship towards enemies he had beaten.  But beating Boer trekkers claiming his land in the 1830s just made the Dutch more resistant than ever to his pleas for friendship.  So Moeshoeshoe turned to the Brits for help.

For 30 years he tried to get Britain to rescue him from the Boers, whom he kept defeating in battle.  Finally, in 1868, Queen Victoria agreed to make Basutoland a formally recognized British Protectorate.  The Brits then forced the Boers to sign a treaty defining the boundaries of the protectorate, which remain Lesotho's borders today.

King Moeshoeshoe I had created and preserved his nation.  He died happy in his achievements two years later at age 83.  Basutoland thus escaped the racist terror of apartheid imposed upon the blacks of South Africa during the 20^th century, and was a haven of freedom when it gained independence as Lesotho (Land of Sesotho-Speakers) in 1966.

Naturally, the Communists tried to take it over.  The South African Communist Party, under the leadership of KGB agent Joe Slovo, organized a Lesotho Liberation Army and tried to seize power.  This led to a long series of military coups until there were actual elections in 2002, internationally judged fair.

Lesotho is now a constitutional monarchy with King Letsie III mostly a figurehead, and Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili a legitimate head of state with an elected Parliament and opposition parties.  Corruption is diminished, the free market and foreign investment encouraged, the economy is improving.

One interesting reason for the economic improvement is the Chinese.  Ever gone to a Wal-Mart to buy some article of clothing and noted on the label:  "Made in Lesotho"?

The Chinese have set up textile companies here – none are locally owned – to take advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act passed by Congress in 2000 which allows African-made textiles imported into the US duty and quota free.  Tiny Lesotho has thus become the largest exporter of clothing to the US in all sub-Saharan Africa.

The Chinese now employ over 50,000 folks here, providing livelihood for (when you include their families) 300,000, or 15% of the entire population of 2 million.

One problem, though, is the chronic complaint that the Chinese have become very unpopular because of their attitude of arrogant superiority towards the Basotho and treat them like dirt.

Still, given all of this, things seem looking up, politically and economically, for this courageous small Black African nation.  Where's the blizzard?

It's called AIDS.

It's bad, horribly so, in many other African countries.  Here it is of truly epic proportions.

Life expectancy is plunging.  In the 1990s it was 56 years for women.  It's now 37.  A life expectancy of 37 years.  That's Paleolithic.

An FSO (foreign service officer) at the US Embassy here in Maseru confided in me:  for young women in Lesotho between 18 and 24 the AIDS infection rate is over 60%.

The cause?  "Multiple concurrent partners."  That's the euphemism of choice.  Basotho chicks are the biggest sluts in Africa.  The FSO calls it "the feminization of AIDS."

The same pathological promiscuity infects the morals of women in nearby Botswana and Swaziland.  But no place comes close to Lesotho, where over 30% of the entire adult population is infected.

So many people are dying that there aren't enough farmers to grow enough food.  Mass hunger and starvation is now being predicted.  "Lesotho Facing Food Crisis," blared the front page headline in the local newspaper The Public Eye last Friday (6/22).  Hundreds of thousands of tons of food will be needed next year, according to the World Food Program.

There's no way around it, for Lesotho's fate is baked in the demographic cake.  Lesotho is doomed.  The African Blizzard is going to sweep it away.

It really is a lovely place with lovely people.  But all the wishful thinking, emotional sympathy, or alleviating women of responsibility and the consequences of their promiscuity to blame it all on men (who obviously bear their share of responsibility and consequences as well, for they are dying in droves too), won't change the awful reality.

You can almost hear King Moeshowshoe weeping for his people.  But were he alive today, would he have tolerated such promiscuity among them?  Lesotho and most African countries have no such leaders now.  Thus in their place is the African Blizzard.