17th April every year is marked as the international day of peasants. It was established in 1996 by the international peasant’s movement La Via Campesina to commemorate the April 17th massacre of 19 landless Brazilian peasants. This day provides an opportunity to celebrate the solidarity and resistance of peasant movements worldwide. As a rural women movement we commemorate the day by sharing our struggles and writing our demands.
As the Rural Women’s Assembly we say we are the guardians of land, seed, love and oceans. This is because we take them as the things that make us who we are, as they contribute to our daily lives. We say we are the guardians of land with clean water because we need them to produce our food. We are guardians of seed which has been passed on to us from generations to generations, and these seeds have become part of our identity.
The struggle for land especially for rural women seems to be something that is traditional and has turned into a norm. Women in my country for a long time have not been able to have access to land except when they are married, which for ages couldn’t be in their names but in the husband’s name and when the husband dies it is passed on to the first boy child. Even though this has been resolved women can now have access if they are fortunate enough to buy land. But for a widow to have ownership of her husband’s land she needs approval from the husband\’s family side which becomes a struggle, as the death of their son is always in the hands of the wife.
In Lesotho most of our rural areas are mountainous and arable. Our rural women are subsistence farmers; they produce food for their families. But you would find that the land they farm on is not theirs, it\’s in their husband\’s name and when the husband passes on they do not have access to the land or they may have access to it and not ownership. This hinders their work as farmers because the one who decides what should be produced on the land is the husband. Now most of our land is used for growing cannabis for exportation and rural women have to struggle to buy maize meal for their children and it is so expensive.
Through these struggles the farmer’s seed system is monopolized. Our traditional seeds are not considered as quality seeds. You cannot find them in the market as much as you can find the so-called improved seeds. Even the country\’s program that helps farmers with farming inputs only provides the improved seeds. Rural women in Lesotho are mobilizing for the recognition of their own traditional seeds by the government as they are not expensive, are available, easy to grow and climate resistant.
Peasant’s struggles are important and need more people to join the movements that are taking their matters forward. We as Rural Women in Lesotho say we cannot give up until every rural woman has enough land to produce with access to clean water and every household has its own seed bank.
