Lesotho beyond the elections
Abstract This article examines the mammoth political challenge facing the Basutoland Congress Party‐led government in Lesotho, assessing in particular the regime's capacity to deliver on its key election promises. Thus the main argument is that Lesotho's newly won democracy will mean little or nothing to the people of Lesotho unless it can address their future as a nation within a politically transformed South Africa and their country's seething economic, political and social problems, namely the deepening joblessness, falling agricultural production coupled with malnutrition, stagnant industrial growth, declining living standards, especially among the poorer sections of the population, recurrent political instability and the increasingly inadequate health and education facilities.
Aid to the Southern African periphery: the case of Lesotho
Abstract Lesotho receives a disproportionate volume of aid, most of it disbursed on exceedingly generous terms. In recent years, allocations have escalated and sources diversified. Increasingly, projects are being funded multilaterally with the Lesotho Government contributing a proportion and retaining a large measure of control. Hence, many of the now traditional arguments against aid—the creation of debt, tying of expenditure, manipulation of the economy in the interests of foreign capital—cannot be sustained in the case of Lesotho. Theoretically, the objective of the transfer of capital is the development of the indigenous economy and therefore the reduction of dependence on South Africa. However, an analysis of aid disbursements reveals disturbing trends which seriously question this prospectus. First, aid is allowing the Government to divert domestic revenue to projects of dubious developmental value and to the expansion and entrenchment of the state apparatus. Second, allocations to the agricultural sector, the underdevelopment of which constitutes the most serious obstacle to the manufacture of an independent economic future, are being cut back in favour of ventures where the returns are more visible and immediate. Third, a vast percentage of externally derived capital is rerouted to the South African space-economy via Lesotho through a variety of conduits catalogued in this paper. Thus, in this form, aid serves to tighten dependency but, ironically, it helps to guarantee political independence of the Republic by providing within Lesotho an attractive reservoir of foreign exchange which can be readily tapped by South African companies.
Testosterone levels, handedness and sex ratio at birth.
Geschwind has hypothesized that levels of androgens in utero affect postnatal laterality preferences, high levels being associated with left-handedness of offspring. I have hypothesized that high parental androgen levels at the time of conception are associated with subsequent male births. However, left-handed parents seem to produce an excess of female, not male, offspring. This finding could be reconciled with the two hypotheses if individuals who were exposed to high levels of androgens in utero had low circulating levels in adulthood. Some evidence for this loophole is reviewed here. Lyster & Lloyd (1987, J. theor. Biol. 126, 125) have reported that (consistent with the hypotheses) index left-handed men have an excess of brothers; but, contrary to the hypotheses, index left-handed women have an excess of sisters. Accordingly these authors proposed that left-handedness in females is associated not with high levels of androgen in utero, but with a "sensitivity" to it. If such sensitivity were associated with low androgen levels, it might explain an excess of sisters among the sibs of left-handed women. It is shown here that evidence in agreement with this hypothesis (though not discriminating between it and Geschwind's) suggests that the sex ratios of offspring of LH male x RH female and of RH male x LH female matings, are both low.