‘A concealed economy’: Artisanal diamond mining in Butha-Buthe district, Lesotho

Abstract

This paper examines the livelihoods of Lesotho's Basotho people in the highlands of the country. It focuses on the rural artisanal diamond mining communities in the Butha-Buthe District in the northwest of the country. The paper draws on ethnographic insights and oral sources from the district's villages of Kao and Liqhobong, the epicentre of artisanal diamond mining in the country. It is argued that artisanal diamond mining is an indispensable aspect of a livelihood activity – a blend of agrarian and non-agrarian activities characteristic of Basotho forms of economic organisation in the face of economic hardships across time and space. The paper offers a window into the activities of a historically and ethnographically hidden economy. It demonstrates that artisanal mining is concealed by two meta-narratives. First, it is historically obscured by popular constructions of the Lesotho economy as a ‘labour reserve’ for South African mines. Second, artisanal miners conceal their activities and the existence of diamonds as a means to protect themselves against government and multinational corporations’ aggressions and criminalisation.