MASERU- TLHOHONOLOFATSO, 14, thought she was moving from Thaba-Tseka to Mazenod for a job as a domestic worker. At least that is what her aunt told her family when she pitched the idea.
Tlhohonolofatso, who had just dropped out of primary school, was not thrilled but she knew this was the only way for her to help provide for her family. But when she arrived in Mazenod her employer raped her and declared that she was now her wife. What was supposed to be a means to help feed her siblings back in Thaba-Tseka has turned into a nightmare. Tlhohonolofatso’s case occurred in 2020 but no one is yet to be arrested because the police say investigations are still ongoing. Meanwhile, Tlhohonolofatso has been scarred for life.

In another part of Thaba-Tseka, 16-year-old Lerato’s parents trusted a family friend who said she had found her a job as a domestic worker in Leribe. With her mother a domestic worker, a brother hustling in the South African mines, and the rest of the family unemployed and unable to go to school, Lerato jumped at the opportunity. Little did she know the horror that awaited her. Just days into her work Lerato discovered that her reason for being there was to be married against her will.

The family friend who sold her is currently serving time in prison for human trafficking. The cases of Lerato and Tlhohonolofatso, whose names have been changed to protect their identities, were dealt with this year by the Beautiful Dream Society (BDS), a Christian and Humanitarian anti-trafficking organisation. BDS helps rescue underage girls who are trafficked for domestic work and marriage. The BDS says Lerato is still a domestic worker despite her ordeal. “When we made a follow-up, we were told that she had to go back to work as a domestic worker as her family was still struggling,” says Puleng Maluleka, the BDS’ Anti-Trafficking Shelter coordinator.

“We do not have control over our client’s decisions so the least we could do was to ensure that she worked under good conditions and was not exploited,” Maluleka said. Maluleka says rampant poverty and the rate at which young girls drop out of school are strongly linked to their employment as domestic workers. Most girls in the rural areas, where six in ten Basotho live, don’t go beyond primary school. This is because the government only offers free education up to Grade Seven. “As much as we want to prevent it, it needs to be addressed at the root, not just saying that they should not work,” Maluleka says.

“Their needs are right there in front of them, so this is not something that can be stopped by simply telling them not to work,” she said, adding that “we need to address the reasons why children choose to work and why families allow and even ask their children to work.” Because of poverty, there is always an underage girl ready to be hired for domestic work.  Even those unwilling are forced to work by their families that often don’t have any idea of the dangers that their children face. Organisations like BDS seem to be fighting a losing battle because the victims often move from one abusive employer to the other. For every girl rescued there are hundreds more being hired and abused.

It is a scorching Monday afternoon and a group of girls is milling around Nanny Caregiver Agency’s offices in Maseru. This is the time when most secondary school students are writing their exams but these girls are instead hoping to be hired as domestic workers in Lesotho and South Africa. One of those girls is Puseletso, 14, who has been forced to look for a job because she could not afford to proceed to secondary school. “I’ve always thought of working so I could also help my brother put food on the table,” says Puseletso in a conversation with ten other young girls lined up in the sweltering sun. Puseletso, whose parents are unemployed, has been hunting for a job since she passed Grade 7 in 2021.

She dreams of becoming a doctor but her chances of pursuing her secondary education are bleak. “My brother is the only one with a job,” she says. Moshoeshoe, 16, sobs as she recounts how she had to flee after a male neighbour made several attempts to break into her house. She was staying alone since her mother crossed the borders to be a domestic worker in South Africa. “My grandmother knows and so does my mother but both seemed indifferent to my problem,” Moshoeshoe says. “He only comes at night and has tried to break in several times. The last time he got in, I managed to escape through the window.”

Moshoeshoe says the incidents were reported to the chief but the neighbour has not been held accountable. Moshoeshoe, who is afraid to return home, currently lives with her boyfriend’s family and is seeking work as a domestic worker. Among the ten other girls gathered in the foyer of the Nanny Caregiver Agency is 15-year-old Tšepang, whose parents left her and her siblings for South Africa in 2018. Tšepang completed Grade 7 in 2021 and wants to be a domestic worker so she can raise money for her secondary studies. Adolescent girls often find themselves vulnerable after finishing primary school.

Many of those that make it to secondary drop out in Grade 8 to support themselves and their families. Nanny Caregiver Agency is owned by Matšeliso Ntulo who became a domestic worker at 16. Ntulo understands the harrowing experiences that underage domestic workers have to endure because she is a victim herself. Nanny Caregiver Agency was born out of her drive to ensure that no girl suffers a similar experience.
Ntulo trains the girls, connects them with potential employers and helps them negotiate fair pay.

Ntulo says she turns away under-aged girls who come to her offices every day. “They come to my office almost every day and even camp at the gate,” Ntulo says. “It makes me feel terrible having to turn them away, especially when I see their desperate need for work.” “As the agency, we will not take someone underage. We understand that from 18 they are eligible to work, but below, they are still minors.” The Children’s Protection and Welfare Act 2011 says a child is a person under the age of 18 years. Children between the ages of 13 and 15 may only engage in light work that is unlikely to harm a child’s health or development, the Act says.

It says children above 15 may do more light work but still exclude domestic work due to the nature of the job. Domestic work, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), is one of the worst forms of child labour under Article 3(a)-(c) No. 182, because it not only deprives children of their right to education but also cuts them off from their families, fundamental rights, negatively impacts their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, and robs them of their childhood. According to the 2021 Findings of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Report, by the US Department of Labour’s Bureau of International Labour Affairs, Basotho children, particularly orphans, sometimes voluntarily travel to other countries, including South Africa, for domestic work, only to be detained in prison-like conditions and sexually exploited.

Lesotho has ratified several international treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions on the Prohibition and Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No. 182) and the Minimum Age of Employment Convention (No. 138), the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Welfare and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Despite this, Lesotho’s dualist legal system of a modern parliamentary government and a traditional (customary) system allows children to engage in domestic work, in an informal sector that is difficult to regulate or inspect due to the nature of the work.

Nthabiseng Letsie, the Child Labour Unit coordinator, says the Labour Ministry has been fully aware of the problem of child domestic workers since the 1990s, citing studies that identified domestic work, herding, and commercial sex work as the main areas of exploitation for young girls and boys. Letsie says the Child Labour Unit has had the Action Plan for the Elimination of Child Labour for years but cannot do much because it lacks its own budget.She says the unit was not fully capable of carrying out its mandate six years after inception and eleven years after the Children’s Protection and Welfare Act 2011 was enacted. Asked if she thought the issue of child labour had improved or worsened since the Children’s Protection and Welfare Act 2011 was passed, Letsie could not give a definitive answer.

She says the notable difference is that now people are more aware of what child labour is, and have conversations about it, while before the establishment of Child Labour Unit in 2016, conversations about child labour were negatively received as western concepts. “In this way, we’ve been hiding behind our upbringing, which taught us that boys were supposed to herd (livestock) and girls were supposed to be domestic workers,” Letsie says.
“But that has changed significantly because we can now have decent conversations about when a child can start working and how serious child labour is.” “But things haven’t changed much because child labour hasn’t stopped. It’s almost as if the more one raises awareness about it, the more opportunity it creates for employers to look for children and how they can hide it.”

Tšepang, Puseletso, and other adolescent girls aged between 13 and 17 years cited a lack of access to free secondary education, absent or unemployed parents, lack of information and economic deprivation as motivators for pursuing domestic work. Some have been supported up to a point by their older siblings, but still have had to drop out. The girls stated that they found the steps to acquiring a grant as well as being a part of social programmes to be the most useful, taking it upon themselves to follow the proper procedures to receive the necessary social assistance. “Before this interview, I did not know that I could go to the chief in my area for guidance as a starting point with regard to social assistance.

“I believe that will change my life and enable me to go to school. It is just that I do not have a birth certificate yet,” says ’Mathakane, a 14-year-old double orphan. Interviews with the girls at the Nanny Agency also revealed that many of them do not have all of the necessary documentation that they can use to apply for social grants. The Ministry of Social Development has the Department of Social Assistance with programmes such as the Child Grant Programme, Public Assistance, and School Bursary. Nonetheless, a child grant is the smallest grant in comparison to other grants, being around half or less of the elderly pensions’ grant of M850 per month.
Child grants, calculated based on how many children are in each household, are normally paid every three months.

The Director of Child Protective Services, Mookho Motheo, says the Social Development Ministry is aware that giving out grants alone is not a solution. Rather an intervention as a response to alleviate poverty, such as community development, a programme that aims to assist in livelihood sustainability through vulnerability assessments, can work. Motheo says the majority of “illnesses in society are attributed to dysfunctional families”.
The ministry collaborates with Non-Profit Organisations such as Sepheo sa Motimposo, which works with street children, and Sisters of Good Shepherd, which is a skills training centre for teenage mothers.
However, Motheo says they still face challenges, adding that even if they can provide assistance to teenagers, some of them still drop out of school.

“We concluded that even if we offer them different grants, cash grants or public assistance in kind, there will be problems as long as there is no aspect of empowering families and youth about being responsible citizens and about their rights,” Motheo says. “That is why we are considering beginning a programme that focuses mostly on family development, stemming from what we are now drafting as the Response Plan to violence against children,” she says.

Motheo says the lack of resources and the privacy of domestic work make it difficult for the ministry to conduct child labour inspections, identify adolescent girls in such circumstances and assist them with the programmes that they have. In its 2021 Report titled ‘Worse Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labour,’ the US Department of Labour recommended that Lesotho should ensure that there is a policy for the elimination of child labour to replace the expired National Action Plan for the Elimination of Child Labour. This, the report says, will address educational and logistical gaps resulting in reduced opportunities for secondary education, including secondary school fees.

*The names of minors have been changed for ethical reasons.

Supported by Media Monitoring Africa MMA and UNICEF as part of the Isu Elihle Awards Initiative

Nicole Tau