Lesotho: 89.9 million maloti in compensation ordered for 20 communities, thirteen years after payments stopped

The Lesotho High Court ordered the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) on October 20, 2026, to pay 89.9 million maloti to twenty community associations, most of which are from the Thaba-Tseka district, according to the South African media outlet GroundUp. The public authority has 90 days to pay, meaning by mid-January 2027. The maloti is pegged at parity with the South African rand.

These sums are owed under the first phase of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, the development that holds water from the Lesotho mountains behind the Katse and Mohale dams to transport it to South Africa. The affected villages lost grazing land, river ecosystems, and daily access to firewood, fish, wild vegetables, and medicinal plants. A first installment was paid to them in 2003 and 2004; a second was supposed to follow after the ten-year review in 2013. The LHDA stopped paying that year.

Thirteen years of legal proceedings

It took the courts to unlock the money. In 2020, the U Khopo Maliba-Matšo Society, which brings together about 600 villagers from Bobete, took the case to the High Court. On March 19, 2025, the court ordered the LHDA to compensate these residents. On November 7, 2025, the Court of Appeal rejected the authority's appeal and gave it 90 days to pay: the suspension of payments, decided without consulting the communities, was irregular and illegal, according to GroundUp, which noted in February 2026 that this deadline had not been met.

The amount was finally negotiated out of court before being approved by acting judge Tšebang Putsoane. Individual payments range from 848,000 maloti to 16.2 million, and the total has increased by 8% since 2013. The associations' lawyer, Rapapa Sepiriti, told GroundUp that the LHDA had requested additional time to review the claims.

What remains of the dispute

A report by the Lesotho Ombudsman published in March 2026 estimated the arrears for phase 1 at more than 142 million maloti at the end of 2025. In July 2025, more than 3,000 people and 889 businesses had taken the case to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in favor of the LHDA in May 2026. In September 2025, eighteen rural communities, approximately 1,600 villagers accompanied by the Seinoli Legal Centre and Accountability Counsel, filed a complaint with the African Development Bank, which lent 1.3 billion rand to the project's South African operator.

Behind the numbers lies an old question: who benefits from African water, and at what price for those who lived off the land it now covers. According to GroundUp, some families reportedly received only 78 cents per square meter.