Gender-based violence in Lesotho is often discussed in the context of homes, romantic partnerships and public safety. Yet in rural agricultural communities where land, livestock, and labour define survival, another form of violence unfolds quietly, remains unrecorded and unchallenged. It is a violence perpetuated not only by fists but by culture, custom and the systematic dispossession of women who feed the nation.
Across villages and fields, women plant, weed, harvest, and tend animals. They bear the burden of sustaining households, contributing up to 80 per cent of family farm labour, according to a 2025 World Bank review. Yet they own a mere 15 per cent of the land. Their labour feeds Lesotho, but the benefits—ownership, inheritance, decision-making—flow elsewhere. This structural imbalance operates as a daily, unspoken violence that heightens women’s vulnerability and strips them of economic agency.
For many women, this begins in childhood, where boys are groomed as heirs while girls are prepared for caregiving. It continues into adulthood, where widows lose land overnight, daughters are denied inheritance, and sisters are excluded from family decisions—despite laws designed to protect them. In a country where 86 per cent of women report experiencing some form of violence in their lifetime, according to Gender Links (2015), agricultural spaces remain one of the least examined sites of this harm.
In Ha Rankakala, Qacha’s Nek, 34-year-old Mpho Lemena lives this paradox. The youngest daughter in a subsistence farming family, she grew up in her father’s shadow; his helper, his student and his pride. She remembers trailing behind him in the fields, carrying the seed bag, learning how to prune maize stalks, recognising the signs of a sick cow and understanding the changing moods of the land.
“My father used to show me that the seeds a person plants today may feed him or her in the future,” she recalls, her voice tightening as memories resurface. “He enabled me to see how animals and crops can make a living.”
However, when her father died, the affection and teachings she received vanished under the weight of tradition. Suddenly, the same brothers who never set foot in the kraal became the “rightful heirs,” while Mpho, who manages expenses, buys fodder, plants crops, and maintains the homestead, was reduced to a mere helper.
“I always receive a call from home when animals need fodder or when fields require seeds and fertiliser. But during harvesting, there is no call,” she says.
“When the question arises, ' Who will sell the fields and cattle?’ my brothers’ voices echo loudest. Their hands do not feed the cattle, but they reap the fruits.”
The imbalance is so normalised that Mpho’s brothers jokingly rename every productive female cow after her. To them, it is light humour; to her, it is a painful metaphor; she is deemed useful enough to labour and produce, but not worthy enough to own.
Her experience mirrors that of thousands of rural women whose names appear on receipts for seeds and fertilisers but never on land title deeds or livestock sale agreements.
This pattern is replicated across districts, where traditional systems override modern laws, leaving women at the mercy of male relatives in decisions that shape the future of farms and family economics.
These forms of discrimination rarely make their way into police stations or courtrooms, yet they contribute directly to women’s vulnerability.
Experts warn that such injustices breed resentment, helplessness and emotional wounds that are as damaging as physical violence.
In Berea’s Ha Patrick, Makatleho Rakabaele carries a different but equally devastating story. When her husband died, she found herself grieving not only his loss but the sudden collapse of the life they build together.
His relatives arrived within days, claiming all farming equipment, livestock and the family fields, leaving her with no means to feed her children.
“They said I was just a woman for their brother, not the heir of the family,” she recalls, her voice trembling.
“I was trying to heal and think of how to care for my children, but they took everything.”
With the equipment gone and the fields seized, Makatleho had no choice but to abandon farming even though she had managed the farm while her husband was alive. Losing land meant losing economic autonomy, family stability and the ability to keep her children food-secure.
It is a fate experienced by many widows across Lesotho, despite the Land Act of 2010, which promises equal rights to land ownership.
Women like Makatleho retreat from agriculture not out of choice but out of fear and exhaustion. Every lost field is a lost food source. Every taken plough is a stolen opportunity. Every silenced woman is a silenced farm.
Gender specialist Dr Mamoeketsi Ntho, who has studied patterns of violence within agricultural settings, warns that many programmes designed to support farming overlook gender realities.
Mechanisation, she says, often ends up strengthening male control rather than empowering women.
The danger, she argues, lies in the deep-rooted patriarchy driving rural life. Even when women possess the skills, knowledge, and labour capacity, decision-making still defaults to men.
“Farming itself is driven by patriarchy and that increases cases of women’s violations,”
Dr. Ntho adds that while laws exist to protect women, implementation remains weak, charging that many community leaders continue to apply customary norms over statutory law.
"A woman seeking land is often asked about her husband even if she is widowed, single or the primary caretaker."
“Most people lack knowledge, and there is a significant gap in advocacy regarding gender-based violence in communities,” she noted.
She warned that women celebrated the Land Act of 2010 without fully understanding its limits: “Many registered their residential land but forgot agricultural land is also valuable.”
She stressed that community structures; from village councils to chiefs, often reinforce outdated systems that deprive women of their economic rights, noting that chiefs may resist issuing land to women, relatives may seize property from widows, and young women working family fields are excluded from the benefits they help create.
"The consequences ripple far beyond individual families. When women lose land, agricultural output drops. When daughters are discouraged from farming, rural labour shrinks. When widows are dispossessed, entire households become food-insecure," she pointed out.
In a country where women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food, according to the FAO, their exclusion is not only a gender crisis but a national food security threat.
Lesotho has ratified several regional and international frameworks meant to protect women, including the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, which aimed to halve levels of violence by 2015, and the Sexual Offences Act of 2003. But despite policy advancements, violence persists, often unreported, unresolved, or ignored.
According to the Afrobarometer 2022 survey, customary norms continue to subordinate women, overshadowing legal reforms and leaving women trapped in cycles of dependence and exploitation.
Domestic violence remains rampant yet widely unreported, partly because communities do not know how to identify abuse or do not trust institutions meant to handle cases. Some families choose silence to “maintain peace,” while others fear retaliation, stigma or community shame.
In agricultural households, violence is not always physical; it may involve withholding land, confiscating tools, denying women’s labour, taking credit for their work, or excluding them from decisions affecting their livelihoods. This makes agricultural gender-based violence harder to quantify, yet its impact is deeply felt.
“Farming is not just about soil and livestock but our future,” says Makatleho. “If gender-based violence continues, I fear the land will forget about women as the main caretakers.”
Her fear echoes across rural Lesotho. Women like Mpho and Makatleho are the backbone of agricultural production, yet they remain invisible when wealth, ownership, and recognition are distributed. Their hands plant the seeds, but their names disappear at harvest.
As the 16 Days of Activism campaign draws attention to gender-based violence across sectors, Makatleho challenges that Lesotho must confront a quieter crisis taking root in its fields. "The nation cannot achieve food security while its primary producers suffer silent violence. It cannot modernise agriculture while excluding the women who sustain it, and it cannot hope for development while leaving half its citizens vulnerable to economic and emotional harm."
She added, "The fight against gender-based violence, especially in agriculture, cannot be confined to policies and courtrooms. It must reach the kraals, the fields, the chiefs’ gatherings, the family homesteads, and the agricultural projects that shape rural life. It must demand not only protection but recognition. Recognition that the land belongs to women as much as men, and that no society can progress while its food producers remain oppressed."
