As well as domestic outlets, South African radio and TV stations can be received. Paramount chiefs retain large degree of autonomy. Government of Lesotho. UN news about Lesotho. BBC Weather: Lesotho. The Kingdom of Lesotho Capital: Maseru. Image source, Getty Images. Although men still dominate cross-border labor migration, more women are working in South Africa, mostly as domestics, because they are widows or their husbands are unemployed.
Migration to South Africa began in the second half of the 17th century when traders from the Dutch East India Company settled in the Cape and started using slaves from South and southeast Asia mainly from India but also from present-day Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia and southeast Africa Madagascar and Mozambique as farm laborers and, to a lesser extent, as domestic servants. Because of growing resentment toward Indian workers, the 63, indentured Chinese workers who mined gold in Transvaal between and were under more restrictive contracts and generally were forced to return to their homeland.
Others worked in agriculture and smaller numbers in manufacturing, domestic service, transportation, and construction. Mozambique, Lesotho, Botswana, and Eswatini were the primary sources of miners, and Malawi and Zimbabwe were periodic suppliers.
The exclusionary Aliens Control Act limited labor recruitment to the highly skilled as defined by the ruling white minority, while bilateral labor agreements provided exemptions that enabled the influential mining industry and, to a lesser extent, commercial farms, to hire temporary, low-paid workers from neighboring states.
Illegal African migrants were often tacitly allowed to work for low pay in other sectors but were always under threat of deportation. A new wave of Asian immigrants has also arrived over the last two decades, many operating small retail businesses. In the post-apartheid period, increasing numbers of highly skilled white workers emigrated, citing dissatisfaction with the political situation, crime, poor services, and a reduced quality of life.
The Immigration Act and later amendments were intended to facilitate the temporary migration of skilled foreign labor to fill labor shortages, but instead the legislation continues to create regulatory obstacles.
Although the education system has improved and brain drain has slowed in the wake of the global financial crisis, South Africa continues to face skills shortages in several key sectors, such as health care and technology. Refugees have included an estimated , Mozambicans during its s civil war and, more recently, several thousand Somalis, Congolese, and Ethiopians. Nearly all of the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans who have applied for asylum in South Africa have been categorized as economic migrants and denied refuge.
Contraceptive prevalence rate Small, mountainous, and completely landlocked by South Africa, Lesotho depends on a narrow economic base of textile manufacturing, agriculture, remittances, and regional customs revenue. Agriculture is vulnerable to weather and climate variability.
Households depend heavily on remittances from family members working in South Africa in mines, on farms, and as domestic workers, though mining employment has declined substantially since the s. Lesotho also gains royalties from the South African Government for water transferred to South Africa from a dam and reservoir system in Lesotho.
However, the government continues to strengthen its tax system to reduce dependency on customs duties and other transfers. Lesotho's largest private employer is the textile and garment industry - approximately 36, Basotho, mainly women, work in factories producing garments for export to South Africa and the US.
Lesotho managed steady GDP growth at an average of 4. Economic growth has decelerated in recent years, slowing to an estimated 0. Unemployment, poverty, and inequality - among the highest in the world - remain a challenge. Even though the country's modern infrastructure supports a relatively efficient distribution of goods to major urban centers throughout the region, unstable electricity supplies retard growth.
Eskom, the state-run power company, is building three new power stations and is installing new power demand management programs to improve power grid reliability but has been plagued with accusations of mismanagement and corruption and faces an increasingly high debt burden.
South Africa's economic policy has focused on controlling inflation while empowering a broader economic base; however, the country faces structural constraints that also limit economic growth, such as skills shortages, declining global competitiveness, and frequent work stoppages due to strike action. The government faces growing pressure from urban constituencies to improve the delivery of basic services to low-income areas, to increase job growth, and to provide university level-education at affordable prices.
Population below poverty line Inflation rate consumer prices 5. Labor force , est. Unemployment rate Distribution of family income - Gini index Budget revenues: 1. Participants learned about new technologies, as well as how to plan and finance elections. The Secretariat is developing an information and price-sharing database for essential medicines. South Africa will be one of the early beneficiaries. In November , the Commonwealth helped a senior official from the South African Department of Trade and Industry attend a Commonwealth consultation on trade held in Seychelles.
South Africa awards scholarships for postgraduate study to citizens of other Commonwealth countries under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. Site search.
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