Lesotho

Mampolokeng Mosolo is the picture of a dignified, proud African gogo (granny). Dressed in her Sunday best—pressed white shirt, knee-length black pencil skirt, impeccable hair and sensible heels—Ms Mosolo commands a soft power during the Khoelenya Community Council meeting in Mohale’s Hoek, a remote area in the west of Lesotho.

The council members are discussing sexual and reproductive health and rights. Ms Mosolo addresses her peers on the council with the quiet assurance of someone who has been on a life-changing journey she could not have imagined for herself as a younger woman.

When Ms Mosolo first found out that her grandchild—who was assigned female at birth and she raised as a girl—identified as a boy, she thought Mpho had been sucked into a satanic cult.

“I didn’t take it very well to hear that my grandchild thought of herself as a transgender boy,” Ms Mosolo says, a term she heard for the first time when Mpho broke the news of his gender identity to her.

When Mpho was 16 years old he would wear trousers to school as the institution’s policy gave girls the option to wear dresses or slacks.

“When girl students were then told to wear dresses, he refused and stopped going to school,” Ms Mosolo says. 

Mpho eventually went back to school later that year to take exams but failed his assessments. He dropped out and then went to a local vocation school to learn sewing. That did not last long either, Ms Mosolo says, as her grandchild faced stigma and discrimination from students and teachers for being a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community.

Tampose Mothopeng, a Mosotho activist and human rights defender, says LGBTI people in the small mountainous country often face a backlash from their families, peers and members of the broader community. 

“LGBTI people face a lot of challenges daily,” he says. “Rejection, limited access to health-care services, stigma and discrimination and psychological issues. For instance, the health-care system is designed by the very system that rejected you. We must challenge the system until it sees us as human beings,” he emphasizes.

Mr Mothopeng runs the People’s Matrix Association, a community-based organization that advocates for LGBTI and gender-nonconforming people in Lesotho. Mr Mothopeng says it is essential to have a community driving its own mandate, otherwise organizations cannot fully understand, “the true challenges that communities are going through.”

“Without passion there is no way we can sustain volunteerism,” he continues. “Communities can stand up for their rights better than others. We need communities running their own projects.”

Indeed, Ms Mosolo and Mpho’s relationship took a positive turn after Ms Mosolo was referred to the People’s Matrix Association after attending a local HIV and gender-based violence workshop in her community, where issues of sexual orientation and gender identity were raised, and she wanted to know more.

“I received training from the People’s Matrix Association. I then sat Mpho down and said, “My child, I have accepted this because this is something that exists. They say that you are born with it and that you feel it in your blood,”” she says.

The People’s Matrix Association works with a wide range of partners to conduct sensitization workshops on LGBTI issues and works closely with faith-based organizations in Lesotho to foster a culture of acceptance between the church and LGBTI people.

The Khoelenya Community Council works in partnership with Phelisanang Bophelong, a community-based organization that provides HIV prevention and treatment support to people living with HIV. PB, as it is known locally, with the support of UNAIDS, supports the council to run HIV, sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence sensitization dialogues with the local community.

Through this forum Ms Mosolo was further exposed to LBGTI people and, through this experience, came to understand her grandchild better.

Mpho is now 23 years old and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Ms Mosolo hopes he will return home to Lesotho one day. She says she would like to build him and his future wife a home on her land. “I would rest knowing Mpho has a place to call his own,” she says.

Ms Mosolo’s journey has brought her a great deal of acceptance, a quality she promotes to her peers on the council and to people in her community. She too has become a human rights defender.

“As people we need to accept and embrace that this is here. I have seen with my own eyes that some men fall in love with men. We need to embrace it for children to progress with their lives,” she says.

When Lineo Tsikoane gave birth to her daughter, she was inspired to intensify her advocacy for gender equality to give Nairasha a better life as a girl growing up in Lesotho.

“I think a big light went off in my head to say, “What if the world that I’m going to leave will not be as pure as I imagine?” I ask myself, “What kind of world do I want to leave my daughter in?”” she says.

As a result, Ms Tsikoane champions for women’s social, economic and legal empowerment at her firm, Nairasha Legal Support. It offers legal support for women in small and medium enterprises and women who are survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

“Our main focus is gender-based violence, because this happens to be a country that has one of the highest incidences of rape and intimate partner crime in the world,” she says.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, violence against women and girls had reached epidemic proportions globally.

According to UN Women, 243 million women and girls worldwide were abused by an intimate partner in the past year. In Lesotho, it is one in three women and girls.

Less than 40% of women who experience violence report it or seek help.

As countries implemented lockdown measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus, violence against women, especially domestic violence, intensified—in some countries, calls to helplines increased fivefold.

In others, formal reports of domestic violence have decreased as survivors find it harder to seek help and access support through the regular channels. School closures and economic strains left women and girls poorer, out of school and out of jobs, and more vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, forced marriage and harassment.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) works together with UNAIDS, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization on 2gether4SRHR, a joint programme funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, to address HIV and sexual and reproductive health in Lesotho.

During Lesotho’s lockdowns, UNFPA worked with Gender Links, the Lesotho Mobile Police Service and others to support efforts to prevent and respond to incidences of gender-based violence.

“We are ensuring that a helpline, where people experiencing gender-based violence can call, is in place and is working and we are also providing relevant information through various platforms for people to access all the information they need on gender-based violence,” says Manthabeleng Mabetha, the UNFPA Country Director for Lesotho.

Mantau Kolisang, a local policeman from Quthing, Lesotho’s southernmost district, characterized by rolling hills and vast landscapes, says one reason why gender-based violence is prevalent in Lesotho is because the law is not heeded in the rural areas.

“It’s difficult to implement the law since these are remote areas,” he says, adding that while he has made arrests, he has no transport to access far-flung areas in the small mountainous region. 

Lesotho’s law states that a girl can marry at the age of 16 years. However, Mr Kolisang says cultural practices, coupled with contraventions of the law, has made some men believe a 13-year-old girl “can be a wife”, exposing Basotho girls to violence.

“Men don’t regard it as a crime,” he says, adding that girls have been abducted from the mountains for forced marriages.

Between 2013 and 2019, 35% of adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa were married before the age of 18 years. Girls married before 18 years of age are more likely to experience intimate partner violence than those married after the age of 18.

Because of poverty, gender inequality, harmful practices (such as child, early or forced marriage), poor infrastructure and gender-based violence, girls are denied access to education, one of the strongest predictors of good health and well-being in women and their children.

In Lesotho’s legal system, women are regarded as perpetual minors. This categorization infantilizes women, Ms Tsikoane says. A man who abuses a woman can often walk away unscathed from the justice system if he says the woman in question is his “wife”, she adds.

“This makes women vulnerable to commodification because a child can be passed around,” she says.

Ms Tsikoane says there is a direct link between the minority status of women and HIV infection in Lesotho. In 2019, there were 190 000 women 15 years and older living with HIV in Lesotho, compared to 130 000 men. 

Adolescent girls and young women between the ages of 15 and 24 years are particularly vulnerable. They accounted for a quarter of the 11 000 new HIV infections in Lesotho in 2019.

“My hypothesis is women cannot negotiate safe sex,” says Ms Tsikoane.

The dangerous reality that Basotho women live in worries Mr Kolisang. But due to a lack of institutional support and resources, he feels his actions have limited effect.

“I feel for these children. I feel for these women. I do feel for them. I can help, but the problem is how?” he laments.

Ms Tsikoane says she finds “trinkets of opportunities” for her and her colleagues to help their clients and navigate a legal system that is not favourable towards women.

“So, if you are not being well assisted at a police station, if you feel like someone is dragging your case and you are struggling to get an audience, we are there. We will support you and we will fight with you,” she says. 

Matšeliso Setoko stands at the gates of Seboche Mission Hospital in Lesotho and points at the high mountain peaks in the distance.

“Some of our patients come from beyond those mountains,” she says. “Some of them will walk for two hours before they find a taxi, then will ride in the taxi for another three hours before they get here. Some come on horseback.”

Seboche Hospital is located in Butha-Buthe, Lesotho’s northernmost district, in the village of Ha Seboche, accessible only via a winding dirt road with steep twists and turns. Despite its remote location, the hospital has gained a reputation as a centre of excellence since its founding in 1962 and people are willing to travel long distances to go there.

Ms Setoko is the head of the hospital’s antiretroviral therapy clinic and frequently goes out of her way to ensure that her patients have access to their medicines and adhere to their treatment. Lesotho has the second highest HIV prevalence in the world, with an estimated 340 000 people living with HIV. Twelve thousand are children between the ages of 0 and 14 years.

“We often encounter difficult cases,” she explains. “For example, some children have lost their parents, are diagnosed HIV-positive and are chased out of their relatives’ homes when their relatives find out about the diagnosis. In those cases, I go and talk to the relatives to try and understand why they would do such a thing. I find out who the child’s new treatment supporter is and I work closely with him or her to make sure that the child continues to take their medication.”

The arrival of COVID-19 in Lesotho, however, brought a set of challenges unlike anything that Ms Setoko has faced in her 23 years of working at Seboche Hospital. 

In the first week of July 2020, a staff member tested positive for COVID-19 and the hospital was forced to shut down for a week. This coincided with the beginning of a nationwide strike by health workers, who demanded that the government provide them with a COVID-19 risk allowance and adequate personal protective equipment. The strike only ended on 27 July.

“Our services were suspended for most of July, but I knew that I had to find a way to help my patients, particularly the children I work with,” says Ms Setoko. “I’m responsible for about 130 children who are on HIV treatment. So, I went to the filing cabinets and took out all their files and found out that many of them needed refills. I went to the pharmacy and got the medication for all of them—enough for three months.”

Ms Setoko then liaised with her colleagues—lay counsellors, nurses and other staff members—to find out who lived in the same villages as her patients. She assembled packages of medicines for each village and asked her colleagues to take them home. She then called all the children’s carers to inform them that their medicine could be picked up from the hospital staff member living in their village.

Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the borders between Lesotho and South Africa were closed from the end of March to the beginning of October. Many of Ms Setoko’s adult patients are migrant workers in South Africa. Before the onset of COVID-19, her patients would regularly travel from South Africa back to Seboche Hospital to collect their three months’ worth of HIV treatment or would send a relative to pick up their medicine on their behalf. With borders closed, however, many found themselves stuck in South Africa for six months. Again, Ms Setoko had to devise innovative solutions to ensure that her patients did not default on their treatment.

“I think I helped around 50 patients who were in South Africa,” she recalls. “If they were about to run out of antiretroviral therapy, I asked them to identify the clinic closest to them and wrote a referral letter for them. I then took a picture of the letter and sent it to them via WhatsApp or else emailed a PDF copy of the letter to the clinic if that was required. I would also call the nurses at the relevant clinic in South Africa to make sure that my patients received the correct antiretroviral medicines.”

There is a low rate of testing for COVID-19 in Lesotho, with less than 2% of the country’s population having been tested. 

“The numbers we are seeing do not give us a true picture of what is happening with COVID-19 in this country,” sighs Ms Setoko. “We are not doing enough testing and it can take weeks for people to get their results. We are also not doing enough contact tracing, so it makes it difficult to contain the spread of the virus.”

In the face of such challenges, Ms Setoko recognizes the value of cooperation and solidarity, both at the community and organizational levels, in efforts to continue with HIV prevention and treatment programmes in the era of COVID-19.

“As Seboche Hospital we are lucky to have the support of other organizations, such as our strong partnership with SolidarMed, a Swiss non-profit organization. We also work closely together as staff from different departments, because when people work together, they can achieve any goal.”

It is a sunny weekday morning in the small town of Morija, Lesotho. On the expansive lawn of the Morija Museum and Archives, under the shade of tall trees, a group of children and teenagers sit on evenly spaced plastic chairs.

They have all had their temperatures checked, have washed their hands at purpose-built tippy-taps and are wearing brightly coloured seshoeshoe fabric face masks.

The learners would usually be in school at this time, but schools throughout the country remain closed due to COVID-19. In response to this crisis, local community-based organizations have had to implement new and innovative programming.

This particular programme is called Skills & Soup, implemented by the Hub, a Morija-based nongovernmental organization. On a bi-weekly basis, groups of learners visit to receive a nutritious meal and participate in a range of activities and educational programming, including dance and taekwondo, maths and science lessons and COVID-19 awareness sessions.

Today, the Hub is hosting a pair of guest facilitators from the Maseru-based nongovernmental organization Kick4Life, which specializes in delivering HIV and life skills education through sports-based curricula.

Puky Ramokoatsi, an experienced educator and gender equality activist, is leading the session with confidence and ease. She begins with an energizer, getting the learners to stand up to chant and dance along with her, all the while remaining at a two-metre distance from one another. She keeps her mask on throughout the session, the volume and authority of her voice unhindered.

During the session, Ms Ramokoatsi and her co-facilitator, Mbulelo Mochochoko, play a series of sound clips from a portable speaker. The clips, taken from new animations developed by Kick4Life, feature catchy music and short conversations between two characters who discuss a range of health-related topics, including HIV, nutrition, mental health and ways to protect oneself against COVID-19.

“Who can remind me which fluids can transmit HIV?” asks Ms Ramokoatsi after one of the clips has played. The children stand up and stretch their hands out eagerly, competing to be the first to give the correct answer.

The session is a far cry from Kick4Life’s signature programming, which typically includes close-contact games and activities, with children huddled in groups for discussions or holding hands while standing in a circle.

As with community-based organizations across the region, Kick4Life has adapted its approach to HIV and health education to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission and in response to national lockdowns and government-mandated restrictions.

“We were forced to close our offices in March, when Lesotho went into lockdown, so we had to quickly adjust,” Ms Ramokoatsi explains. “We partnered with the British High Commission in Lesotho to adapt our curriculum into six short animations which could be easily distributed through our online platforms and to include new messaging about COVID-19. We also aired the sound clips from these animations on national radio stations. These are some of the ways that we continued to engage with young people even during the lockdown.”

While COVID-19 cases remain relatively low in Lesotho, at just over 2000 cumulative cases as of November 2020, testing capacity is also low. Only 25 500 tests have been conducted since March 2020. By comparison, a neighbouring country, South Africa, has conducted more tests than this in one day.

In 2019, there were 340 000 people living with HIV in Lesotho, 120 000 of whom are not on HIV treatment.

In addition, a third and silent epidemic plagues Lesotho—that of sexual and gender-based violence. It is estimated that one in three women in Lesotho have experience sexual or physical violence in their life—the same as the global average.

Ms Ramokoatsi has been involved with Kick4Life since 2010, when she began to participate in the organization’s programmes because of her love for football. At the time, she knew very little about HIV, and her interest in the issue was piqued by the fact that her aunt had recently died of AIDS-related illnesses.

“I didn’t understand enough about HIV when my aunt was sick,” recalls Ms Ramokoatsi. “I judged her negatively and didn’t support her. When I learnt more about HIV, I realized how wrong I had been. I made it my purpose after that to support people living with HIV, to give others the support that I hadn’t given my aunt.”

Having experienced sexual abuse herself, Ms Ramokoatsi is acutely aware of the healing power of sports and education and reflects on the difficult transition from face-to-face learning and close-contact activities to virtual and socially distanced programming.

“Before COVID-19 we were in the process of helping several young women who had experienced sexual violence and were slowly opening up to us after taking part in our programmes,” Ms Ramokoatsi explains. “When we were forced to close, we lost touch with some of them. We’ve had to find ways to continue with our programmes and to keep reaching out to our participants, but it hasn’t been easy.”

Ms Ramokoatsi emphasizes the importance of organizations working together in their responses to COVID-19 awareness and health education. “Today, for example, we’re delivering this session thanks to our partnerships,” she says. “I hope more organizations can work like this to share resources and information.”

“I always say that the best part of the game is the opportunity to play. That attitude applies to everything: instead of sitting on the sidelines, get involved. Learn about the situation or the issues around you, whether it’s HIV or gender-based violence or COVID-19. Learn how you can adapt, how you can take care of yourself, and then find a way to help others,” she says.

For five weeks in 2018, teams of up to 10 people in each of 120 clinics and hospitals across Lesotho sifted through more than 180 000 records of people diagnosed with HIV and receiving care. The goal: to count the number of people living with HIV who were on treatment in June 2018.

During the long and dusty days, the teams attached green stickers—indicating active on treatment—or other coloured stickers—specifying that a person had defaulted, transferred or died—to nearly 80% of all patient files in the country. Facility by facility, counts of the number of people found to be active on treatment were compared to counts previously reported to the Lesotho Ministry of Health and other partners, including the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. All of this to confirm that the country’s reporting adds up.

“Together with our team, we reviewed the treatment status of more than 5000 people at the Senkatana Clinic in Maseru, Lesotho, one of the oldest and busiest treatment centres in the country. After two days of reviewing the paper-based files, we found about 30% more people on treatment than the clinic had reported to the Ministry of Health in June 2018,” said Motselisi Lehloma, Ministry of Health Officer. Overall, the exercise found an underreporting to the Ministry of Health of 3% for all the 120 facilities visited.

Since early 2017, UNAIDS and other international partners have supported more than 15 countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, to verify that the number of people reported currently to be on treatment is accurate. This work also supports facilities to improve the accuracy of the data reported through their health information systems by reviewing patient registries and processes for collecting, aggregating and reporting treatment numbers.

“The exercise that Lesotho undertook to audit and validate treatment numbers underscores its commitment to accurately monitor programme impact,” said Kim Marsh, Senior Adviser, Epidemiology and Monitoring, UNAIDS. Thanks to these efforts, and the efforts of many other countries in the region, UNAIDS and stakeholders can be confident in treatment numbers that allow us to monitor progress towards 90–90–90. Through debriefings with clinical staff and written reports, minor deficiencies were addressed on the spot and larger systematic issues were brought to the attention of the ministry and implementing partners in order for them to adopt necessary corrective actions.

Lesotho has one of the highest burdens of HIV in the world. In 2017, 320 000 people were living with HIV in the country, an HIV prevalence of 23.8%.

GENEVA, 24 October 2018—The Prime Minister Thomas Thabane and the First Lady of Lesotho, Maesaiah Thabane, visited UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to advocate for the end of AIDS and reduce its impact on young people.

They met the Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé, and UNAIDS staff members. 

Around one in six people in Lesotho is living with HIV, one of the highest rates in the world. And more women are affected than men—27.7% of women are living with HIV, while 19.7% of men are. Progress has been made, with AIDS-related deaths declining from 15 000 in 2005 to about 5000 in 2017, but more needs to be done to prevent new HIV infections, notably from mother to child, with the mother-to-child transmission of HIV rate standing at 11.3%.

“We can and we will end new HIV infections among babies,” said Mr Thabane.

The First Lady meanwhile has been a champion of young people. She has shown strong commitment to reducing breast cancer and cervical cancer and pushing access to integrated reproductive health services. 

“If we want to reduce and end gender-based violence against women, we must send our girls to school and keep them there,” said Ms Thabane. “We must invest in girls.”

Mr Sidibé expressed his full support, praising Lesotho for making significant progress in its HIV response. He said, “Ending AIDS begins with young people. That means engaging girls and boys and providing them with information through traditional and social media channels.”

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé, has completed a five-day visit to three countries in southern Africa. The mission included high-level political discussions, the launch of the Lesotho HIV health and situation room and a frank and open dialogue with women activists about how to address sexual harassment and abuse.

Beginning in Lesotho, Mr Sidibé attended the launch of the HIV health and situation room with the Deputy Prime Minister, Monyane Moleleki. Special guest Naomi Campbell was invited by UNAIDS to join the two-day country visit to learn more about the HIV response.

The Lesotho HIV and health situation room shows real-time service delivery data, producing a comprehensive picture and understanding of Lesotho’s HIV epidemic. It enables quick feedback on results at the national and community levels and identifies bottlenecks in access to health-care services.

“The launch of the Lesotho HIV and health situation room gives us access to data to shape impactful and efficient health programmes. These are the kind of innovations that will bring services to those who need them most and ensure that no one is left behind by the AIDS response,” said Michel Sidibé, the UNAIDS Executive Director.

On the eve of the launch, Mr Sidibé and Ms Campbell visited the Queen II Hospital in Maseru, Lesotho, and met with young women living with HIV and others affected by the epidemic.

“I commend the Government of Lesotho and its partners for the progress made in the AIDS response. But the work is far from done. The reality is that we are not reaching adolescent girls and young women. I leave Lesotho today empowered, inspired, encouraged and determined to do all I can to highlight this critical issue,” said Ms Campbell.

In South Africa, Mr Sidibé addressed the Pan African Parliament and underlined the importance of integrated health approaches that were people-centred. He urged parliamentarians to commit more domestic funding for health services to increase the sustainability of the AIDS response and to put in place more preventative measures to improve people’s health. In addition, he called for laws to protect women and vulnerable groups. 

Mr Sidibé left the parliamentary session to meet civil society activists concerned by UNAIDS' response to allegations of sexual harassment and abuse in the organization.

At a follow-up meeting the next day, Mr Sidibé and women activists met to discuss their concerns.

Mr Sidibé agreed with activists to issue a statement following the meeting. The statement begins:

‘During my recent visit to South Africa, I listened carefully to you, I heard you. The HIV epidemic is inextricably linked to sexual and gender-based violence and the two can never be separated. We need the passion of advocates to move issues forward.`

During his visit to South Africa, Mr Sidibé held separate meetings with the President, Cyril Ramaphosa, the Deputy President and South African National AIDS Council Chair, David Mabuza, and the Minister of Health, Aaron Motsoaledi. They discussed plans to increase the number of people on treatment by 2 million by 2020 and the need to empower local and provincial authorities to bring treatment and prevention services closer to vulnerable communities.

The last leg of Mr Sidibé’s visit saw him arrive in Lusaka, Zambia, to confer the 2018 UNAIDS Leadership Award upon Kenneth Kaunda for his efforts in strengthening the AIDS response.