◼ POLITICS36
PHOTOGRAPH BY WALDO SWIEGERS FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEKis small but significant for the impoverished
nation. It dates back to the 1850s, when migrant
workers returned to Lesotho from South Africa,
which encompasses the tiny country, with Merino
sheep. Today, Lesotho is the world’s second-biggest
mohair supplier; it controlled 17% of the global sup-
ply in 2017. The sheep are an ever-present sight, as
are Angora goats, whose soft coats are used to make
mohair. Herds graze on the roadside in Maseru, and
shearers set up makeshift stalls on the sidewalk,
where farmers bring their flocks.
Aside from wool and mohair, Lesotho has little in
the way of industry. There are a few Chinese-owned
textile plants, and the state exports water to South
Africa. Per capita gross domestic product is about
$1,200, but farmers can earn just $265 per year.
For four decades before the government
awarded the wool trade to Shi, farmers typically
took their fibers to South Africa to be auctioned
off and were usually paid in about six weeks.
The group that represents farmers, the Lesotho
National Wool and Mohair Growers Association,
says it wasn’t consulted by the government before
it awarded the monopoly. Lesotho’s debt-to-GDP
ratio is projected to be 49.5% for the current fiscal
year, up from an estimated 38.8% in 2018.
In a grassy valley, a tall 38-year-old farmer
named Leketla Seqhee looks over his herd of 37
sheep and seven Angora goats. He still employs
shepherds to tend them, but others have fired
theirs. He’s struggled to pay his children’s school
fees. “They have cheated us, they didn’t pay us,”
he says in Sesotho, the dominant language, of the
Lesotho Wool Centre. The farmers’ problems have
been caused by “these harsh laws by our govern-
ment. We struggled a lot. We are still struggling.”
Little is known about Shi—who goes by Stone
Shi, a play on the meaning of his surname—and
how he won the monopoly. After being turned
away by Moteane, he partnered with the Lmwmga,
the farmers’ group, to build a warehouse. Lmwmga
says it gets no benefit from the brokerage business
and didn’t agree to the monopoly. “We haven’t
got any money from mohair. Zero,” says Mothibeli
Makhetha, a farmer and a Lmwmga officeholder.
“We are angry with the government because it is
the one that pushed us to work with Stone Shi,
even though we are not on good terms with him.”
Communications Minister Thesele Maseribane,
who also leads a party in Lesotho’s ruling coalition,
says Shi is one of the few foreign investors in the
country and needs to be “protected.” He also says
that having the wool sold by a company based in
Lesotho would be “good policy” because it would
lead to more tax revenue and greater employment.Shi’s Lesotho Wool Centre, a few miles from
Seqhee’s farm, consists of a 108,000-square-foot
warehouse eerily empty but for a few bales of
wool in one corner and a pile of mohair bales in
another. Little equipment is visible, and there are
few workers. Shi initially agreed to an interview,
but when the day arrived, a representative said
he was out of the country. Shi didn’t answer calls
to his mobile phone and didn’t reply to questions
sent by text message.
John Koenane, the company’s head of informa-
tion technology, answered questions instead. “We
have paid most of the farmers,” said Koenane,
adding that $25 million has been paid out for last
year’s harvest. That compares with normal annual
income of 800 million to 1 billion maloti ($54.4 mil-
lion to $68 million). During the interview, an assis-
tant asked Koenane what to tell a farmer who found
no money in his account. He said the farmer should
check back in a week.
The payments have been delayed, Koenane says,
because samples of wool and mohair had to be sent● Proportion of the
world’s mohair supplied
by Lesotho17%