The state and development: an analysis of agricultural policy in Lesotho, 1970–1993

This is an interpretation of major trends rather than an exhaustive account of agricultural policy in Lesotho. The aim of this paper is to situate the discussion of agricultural policy within the nexus of external influence, domestic social relations and macro‐economic forces. The discussion begins by detailing the main socio‐economic changes from 1970 to the early 1990s, which appear to have precipitated a rural crisis. It will be shown that there is evidence of growing poverty and rural differentiation resulting from limited opportunities for employment and falling per capita agricultural production. Many of these features can neither be predicted nor analysed by the existing academic literature on contemporary Lesotho. The most influential of this work has been concerned to locate Lesotho as a ‘labour reserve’, and intimately bound up with the construction of this literature has been the assumption of a fundamentally homogeneous rural populace. This has precluded an analysis of the political or class character of Basotho society, and this has extended to analysis of the state. While the tools of state policy have been few, it will be argued that government intervention has a political, not a technical, character. Intervention has taken the form not only of outright conflict with donors, but also more commonly of government intransigence. Implemented agricultural policy has had little positive effect on the poorest, but it has maintained powerful rural elites and hence the rural status quo.