When you don't produce your own human rights

So one day you are consuming lots of nice things. Some of them you might call necessities - like health care. The only problem is, you are not producing any of these nice things yourself. Not only are not producing any of them - you are not making anything anyone else wants to swap for all the nice things you are consuming.

What does that mean? It means you are consuming things other people are giving to you. Otherwise put, you are consuming the product of other people's hard work. You really want these things. You might even feel that you have a right to them - like health. But you are still not producing any of these things you feel you have a right to yourself.

Then suddenly, you are told you can no longer have these things. Other people will no longer work for you. It's tough but you've gotta cut back a bit.

This is exactly what is happening in Lesotho at the moment. Lesotho is given a lot of money by South Africa through the regional customs union, SACU. The money is then used to purchase products - some of them necessities - many of which are imported from South Africa. That might include sending patients to South Africa for treatment, or giving a road building contract to a South African firm. These are examples of South Africans working for us. We pay them with their own money, not money resulting from things we've made and sold to them. That means that, taken as a group, South Africans have been working for free. Very kind.

Now, suddenly, due to the economic situation, we get far few resources from SACU. So we can afford to buy far fewer things from South Africans. So South Africans are working less, for themselves and for other people (us lot in Lesotho). After all, one of the main things a recession is, is people producing fewer things - taking more leisure and consuming less. And that's exactly what is happening.

Unfortunately, in Lesotho, we don't have much choice -- we're consuming things that other people make, and we're consuming their effort and efficiency but giving nothing in return. If they take more leisure, we consume less. Unless, that is, we are able to work more to make up the gap. It's gonna be tough but some of those human rights and necessities we get given might have to go unless we here have enough respect for ourselves to produce all those human rights for ourselves.