Mamatsuri Mathinyane is a 33 year old widow, and she is trying to find a way to feed her five children until the next harvest. She has tried everything to budget the money she has and to find a way to bring in more income, but she knows it may not be enough.
Because she has no plough animals, Mamatsuri hasn’t been able to sow her plots during the current planting season. Instead she has been able to rent half the land to a tenant who will pay her R400 (about $45 US) when the harvest season comes. The harvest though is not until May and Mamatsuri does not know how she will buy food for her family over the five months until then.
Lesotho experienced a poor agricultural season last year as well, and Mamatsuri did not collect a harvest then either. Currently then she has no food stores, and her family’s only income is the settlement money she receives from a neighbour who was found guilty after killing her only horse. This provides just enough to feed her children, but the settlement payments will end next month. That will leave Mamatsuri with no income – and still four months until the harvest.
She does not have many assets left that she could sell. Once, she and her husband had five cows as well as the one horse. After her husband died of tuberculosis four years ago, Mamatsuri was forced to sell two of the cows to cover the cost of the funeral. Over the next few years she found herself having to sell two more cows to buy food and cover other household expenses during difficult times. Now she has just one cow, and she has sent it to a family member’s farm so that it will not be stolen. She has tried as well to earn money by starting a small business brewing local beer, but found that she just couldn’t make a significant profit.
Unfortunately, Mamatsuri’s story is a typical example of how critical food shortages impact thousands of female-headed families, especially in contexts where a wide range of underlying factors make the crisis worse: poverty and already-exhausted savings (including for example livestock), insecurity, a high risk of HIV/AIDS, and years of poor harvests and unpredictable rains that may be linked to a changing climate.
Lesotho is a very small country, and media and humanitarian attention has been slow to arrive - perhaps in part due to the focus on high-profile crises in the Horn of Africa and across the Sahel. While these large crises require a great deal of attention, there is a risk that countries like Lesotho and families like Mamatsuri’s may be overlooked.
CARE has been one of the first agencies to begin responding to this crisis, beginning with the distribution of seeds to vulnerable families so that they are able to plant in the current agricultural season. This is vital as unless farmers have the support they need to plant next year’s harvest, the emergency is likely to deepen and affect an even larger population. In addition to seed distributions, over the coming months CARE plans to deliver a combination of cash vouchers and cash-for-work programmes to enable people to buy food in the market.
In addition to an immediate response though, long-term assistance for recovery and future resilience is also vital. Even when the next harvest season arrives, Mamatsuri will only earn R400 from her tenant, which is only enough to feed her family two meals of maize a day for about three months. With barely enough money to feed her family, Mamatsuri will have to wait to rebuild investments and safety nets such as her cattle and horse. For this reason, CARE works to connect its emergency response existing long-term CARE programming in Lesotho, which includes efforts to improve agricultural production, irrigation projects, community gardens and vegetable cultivation, and other programs such as Village Savings and Loans Associations.
About CARE: Founded in 1945, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE has more than six decades of experience helping people prepare for disasters, providing lifesaving assistance when a crisis hits, and helping communities recover after the emergency has passed. CARE places special focus on women and children, who are often disproportionately affected by disasters. CARE has worked in Lesotho since 1968. Read more about CARE's work in Lesotho and the current food crisis here.
