Community wins 10-year dam compensation fight

The Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) has lost its fight to avoid paying long-overdue compensation to the Bobete community in Thaba-Tseka. On 7 November, the Court of Appeal dismissed LHDA’s challenge and upheld a High Court order compelling it to pay. GroundUp notes that the ruling forces the LHDA to release a ‘second and final tranche’ of compensation, owed since 2013 to the U Khopo Maliba-Matšo Society, which means ‘You are cruel, Maliba-Matšo river’. The river is the waterway to the dam. The group of more than 600 villagers had their livelihoods disrupted by the construction of the Katse Dam under the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). Chief Justice Sakoane ruled that the LHDA cannot rely on internal policies or technical reports to override its constitutional and statutory duty to compensate communities affected by dam construction and diminished river flows. That obligation, the court held, arises from the Constitution, the LHWP Treaty, and the LHDA Order, and is not a matter of bureaucratic discretion.

Villagers in Bobete lost access to vital communal resources that include riverine ecosystems, firewood, fish, wild vegetable and medicinal plants, and grazing land after the construction of the Katse and Mohale dams. The LHDA paid a first tranche of compensation for ‘presumed losses’ in 2003/4. Its own policy required a second tranche after a 10-year review in 2013. But the LHDA unilaterally stopped the 2013 payment, citing a consultant’s monitoring report that claimed there was ‘no evidence’ of compensable losses. The court found this defence unlawful and fundamentally misguided since a policy cannot replace constitutional rights. LHDA now has 90 days to pay the Bobete community what they have been owed for more than a decade. The amount to be paid is yet to be known, says the GroundUp report.

Full GroundUp report