MASERU King Letsie has signed the controversial Land Bill 2010 into law, a development that sees Lesotho adopting a new land tenure system.
The Bill had been fiercely resisted by the opposition which claimed the proposed law was designed to allow foreigners to take over ownership of Basotho land.
However, the Bill that got the royal assent on Tuesday says a foreign-owned company can only own land in this country as long as a Lesotho citizen has 20 percent shareholding in the business.
The new law replaces the Land Act 1979 which provided that foreign companies could own land if Basotho had 51 percent shareholding in the concerns.
The Land Administration Bill also got King Letsie’s nod on Tuesday.
It seeks, among other things, to manage grazing lands and natural vegetation such as trees, grass and medicinal plants.
The Land Administration Act also empowers local governments to impound stray livestock.
Popular Front for Democracy leader Lekhetho Rakuoane, who quit as an MP last week, said good land management and political will would go a long way in alleviating hunger and poverty in Lesotho.
Rakuoane is one of the only two opposition MPS who did not walk out of parliament in protest against the Land Bill in March.
The opposition had accused Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili’s ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy of railroading the Land Bill through parliament at the behest of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a United States aid agency. They said the MCC had set the enactment of the Land Bill as a prerequisite for a US$362.6 million grant to fund water, health and land reform projects.
The MCC however denied the Bill was of its making, insisting instead that the Lesotho government had specifically undertaken to reform its land tenure system when it submitted its proposal for the grant.
The government, on the other hand, argued the proposed law was meant chiefly to stimulate economic growth.
Rakuoane, in an interview with the Lesotho Times yesterday, urged the government to engage farmers to ensure the proper management of land.
“Without such alliances (with farmers) there will never be a proper way of handling land issues,” he said.
“Intentions may be good but all policies, strategies and plans to use land better will not spring out of the felt needs of the people if such alliances are not formed.”
He said it was going to be difficult to implement the Land Administration Act because proper consultations with the public were never made.
Rakuoane said Lesotho was a nation of small-scale and subsistence farmers whose views on laws governing the use of land should be taken seriously.
About 80 percent of Lesotho’s 1.8 million people live in rural areas where they survive on subsistence farming and livestock rearing.
