Witchcraft, Beer, and Community Spirit

I have been working in a village this week which has given me some interesting insight into the breakdown of community spirit and relationships in this part of Lesotho over the last two decades. This community is rife with rumors of witchcraft and sabotage: from a naked woman urinating on someone's roof and causing all the males in the household to be impotent to a woman spitting into her neighbor's yard and cursing the neighbor's beer business. No one trusts anyone else outside of the family living under their roof; even extended family in the village (most of the village's inhabitants are related to each other).

At first glance you might think that HIV/AIDS and its devastating impact would be the primary cause behind the breakdown of this community but in fact the roots of the problem stem back to socioeconomic and political factors in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Lesotho's political scene was torn between warring parties and the first large scale retrenchment of the mines in South Africa was beginning with many Basotho men returning home unemployed. With a huge increase in the level of poverty and social disparity between people at the community-level, the ongoing political strife in Lesotho (when people were forced to choose between political parties and were beaten up if they did not conform to the chosen party at the community-level), and the return of angry unemployed men from the mines who could no longer provide for their families, the situation was a sociocultural powder keg and the repercussions of its explosion are still being felt in 2006. The communities which are least affected and, rather ironically, who have a greater sense of social cohesion are the ones located higher in the Maluti Mountains and who rely upon the cash cropping of marijuana (matekwane or dagga in this part of the world), and therefore have more resources to share amongst family and community members. Now add the HIV/AIDS to the social landscape and the further breakdown of the family (the last really cohesive social unit which provides a safety net for its members) caused by the epidemic and you can see what a social nightmare Lesotho has on its hands.