Introduction
Issues such as land tenure are of greatest concern in countries like Lesotho where food security is a priority and where most people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. Agriculture provides rural households with cash and non-cash incomes that are essential for their survival.
Lately, the spread of HIV/AIDS infection has threatened survival strategies based on agriculture. In 2000 there were an estimated 108 174 HIV/AIDS cases amounting to over 10 per cent of the total population (GoL, 2001). The spread of HIV/AIDS threatens to increase problems of access, use and rights to land among community members as it erodes the human resource base. This has implications for the land tenure system, which at present does not make allowances for the realities of HIV/AIDS facing many agrarian societies. HIV/AIDS has affected various facets of life, however, the experiences of affected households have not been documented. This study makes a contribution to documenting the impacts of HIV/AIDS on land issues and people's livelihoods.
Objectives
The objectives of the study were:
- To identify the coping strategies that households affected by HIV/AIDS adopt in order to survive.
- To assess how these coping strategies are related to land tenure provisions and their implications for food security and sustainable livelihoods.
- To document the experiences of affected families regarding protection of the land rights of widows and orphans.
- To find out the extent to which the provision for leases has provided opportunities for households affected by HIV/AIDS.
- To determine the link between the problem of HIV/AIDS and increasing land sales and conversions.
Findings
The most immediate impact felt by households in which the infected individual was employed was loss of regular income. In both the communities of Ha Poli and Matsatsaneng it was mainly men who had stopped working either because they could not cope and decided on their own to stop working, or because they were retrenched due to illness. This happened with people employed in the South African mines and those employed locally, particularly in construction work on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). In most households the bulk of savings were used to pay for medical expenses as the disease became more serious and for funeral expenses.
In the absence of other options in both communities, agricultural production is the main source of livelihood. In-depth interviews with affected households revealed that illness had a substantial impact on agricultural yields. This was attributed to the fact that most farming activities were directly affected by illness with some activities having to be postponed or abandoned. Affected households reported declining productivity in their home gardens since contracting HIV/AIDS.
Livestock are among the household assets affected by HIV/AIDS and chronic illnesses. Due to loss of income experienced by most affected households livestock is sold to meet medical expenses, school fees and other recurrent expenditure. This has a negative effect on livelihood sustainability because livestock are sold more frequently and in some cases all the stock are sold off. Livestock sales have deprived some households of cattle needed for draught power in the fields. This is a major factor inhibiting effective land use. It also has an impact on cooperative working arrangements that rely on households contributing at least one form of resource to the production process.
Chronic illnesses including HIV/AIDS have had a direct impact on food security. Illness affects not only agriculture but also all the other ways of producing or accessing food.
The study found that as a result of HIV/AIDS affected households are increasingly using sharecropping arrangements to work their fields and to avoid revocation of land left fallow. This assures them of continued access to agricultural land and to a share of the harvest. Households that have sold their livestock to cover medical expenses use sharecropping to gain access to draught power.
The study revealed that agricultural land was a highly valued asset that HIV/AIDS infected individuals and households see as an ultimate source of security for their children if they die. For this reason it is not sold to meet expenses incurred as a result of the illness.
Widows reported that they had been allowed to retain their late husbands' agricultural land and that they were empowered to decide on sharecropping arrangements and to hire people to work on their land when necessary. Despite this, women's land rights, though clearly stipulated in law, are not always protected. Practices vary depending on the manner in which land rights are interpreted, the circumstances, the level of understanding about AIDS and the fairness and compassion of the local authority. The situation of widows is worsened by perceptions in the community about the factors contributing to HIV/AIDS and by the stigma attached to the disease, with the blame usually placed entirely on women.
In both study areas AIDS orphans were found to be very young. Views on their treatment vary. Men's groups generally maintain that the orphans are treated fairly and that if they are still young their uncles use their late parents' land to raise them until they old enough to inherit the land. The women's groups pointed out that there were cases where orphans were cheated out of their heritage by their uncles. Traditionally the extended family has taken care of orphans, however under the impact of growing poverty and the fear and stigma attached to HIV/AIDS this practice is breaking down and orphans are being abandoned or left unclaimed in hospital. AIDS orphans lose their land benefits and rights when raised in hospitals or by the maternal side of the family.
Apart from its direct impacts on livelihoods through loss of labour and income, HIV/AIDS also means that many children will grow up without the guidance of their parents. This is because the disease mainly affects young adults who are primarily responsible for the socialisation of children, leaving a wide gap between grandparents and children.
In response to the effects of HIV/AIDS the affected households and infected individuals have adopted a number of strategies such as sharecropping, livestock sales and mafisa to ensure that assets such as land remain in their custody and to foster food security. Sometimes children are withdrawn from school as a coping strategy to cut down on the household expenses.
The escalating morbidity and the growing death rate are depleting the human resources of institutions providing services to communities. They are also limiting the number of local entrepreneurs able to take over these services and the capacity to generate income through the commercialisation of agriculture.
The spread of HIV/AIDS is exerting overwhelming pressure on the health services to diagnose the disease in order to provide proper treatment. However, many institutions lack finances and equipment to conduct proper testing procedures and rely on circumstantial evidence for diagnosis. In some cases has led to loss of integrity for the institutions concerned. Given the public stigma attached to the disease people have objected to being labelled HIV positive on the basis of circumstantial evidence and this has contributed to people with ailments avoiding the health services.
As a result of HIV/AIDS the survival of the extended family and social fabric of the community support systems are threatened. These kinds of support systems are gradually eroding due to poverty, the magnitude of HIV/AIDS pandemic and stigmatisation of the disease. This is a serious issue as the government strategy relies on using traditional and community support systems to limit expenditure.
Recommendations
- There is a need to develop and support income-generating initiatives for people affected with HIV/AIDS that take into account the limited labour capacity of infected individuals and affected households. Opportunities to earn income will ensure that HIV/AIDS affected households do not always depend on hand outs that hurt their pride and depress them. Such activities will give the victims a sense of purpose and keep them active.
- Policies to address the felt needs of people infected by HIV/AIDS should be developed. These policies should be developed in a participatory manner and should recognise the affected households as stakeholders. They should be formulated with all the stakeholders and designed in a way that will maintain dialogue between affected people and policy makers. This should include research into social policies that are sensitive to the impacts of HIV/AIDS on the coping mechanisms that households employ.
- Home care support programmes and community support structures such as the extended family, are the key to strategies that will ensure care for HIV/AIDS victims without overburdening government and other institutions. However, at present these support structures are overwhelmed and need support themselves. The range of support structures needs to be clearly identified and researched to establish how they can be assisted to ensure that they can continue to provide support. Community burial societies need support to ensure that those who default on their payments do not lose all accumulated benefits.
- Relevant institutions should be given a clear mandate and all the necessary support to implement their activities. This requires full time personnel otherwise AIDS issues will continue to be perceived as secondary issues. Efforts should also be made to monitor AIDS programmes to ensure that all communities are adequately covered and that problem areas are given special attention.
- The government should acknowledge the impacts that HIV/AIDS is having on its service delivery capacities, especially at the grass roots level, and put in place appropriate safety nets. This will help to avoid the problem of developing sound policies that cannot be implemented due to shortages in personnel.
- The various ministries that are directly involved in community development and welfare need to develop robust HIV/AIDS sensitive policies that are informed by the felt needs of the affected households and infected individuals.
- The rights of widows and orphans need to be protected by policy, legislation and administrative action. Integration of existing HIV/AIDS policy with other government and organisational policies to cater for the affected households and infected individuals would be the best framework for supporting the struggle against HIV/AIDS at policy level.
- Measures should be taken to ensure that children in affected households and aids orphans are able to complete their schooling to equip them to be self sufficient and productive members of society.
- Hospitals should be equipped to make rapid and positive diagnosis of HIV infection to minimise the time and expense that individuals and households incur in establishing whether someone is infected. Hospital staff and other medical and para-medical personnel need to be trained and monitored to ensure that they understand and respect professional practice relating to patient confidentiality and the treatment of people with HIV/AIDS.
- Public awareness and information campaigns and counselling sessions should not be limited to infected households but should be extended to other members of the community to avoid stigmatisation.
- Land administrators should be fully informed about the epidemic and various legislations that govern the rights of the affected households. This will help to ensure uniform implementation of measures to support affected households.
- The importance of land to communities calls for concerted efforts to make the public aware of current Land Acts and proposed changes to land policy. Particular attention should be paid to provisions likely to affect households affected by HIV/AIDS. Provisions likely to have negative impacts should be removed or reformulated and those likely to have positive impacts should be strengthened. This should include a review of the likely impacts of the present trend towards concentration and commercialisation of land holding and agriculture on HIV/AIDS affected households and suitable action to secure their livelihoods.
- Mechanisms already being used by communities to make land policies suit their present circumstances should be examined and where possible adopted in current or proposed land policy and legislation. This should include mechanisms to ensure that sharecropping can continue to support the food security of affected households.
- Research is needed on high yielding, nutritive, fast maturing, water efficient and pest and disease resistant varieties of various crops especially vegetables. By minimising labour and irrigation requirements and decreasing the duration of farm operations these crops would improve the affected households' food security and their ability to generate income. Once identified measures should be taken to make these techniques available to HIV/AIDS affected households.
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