Maseru and Johannesburg, 27 October 2026 – Today the High Court of Lesotho hears Seinoli Trust v Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, a review of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority’s (LHDA) refusal to release baseline information on communities affected by Phase I of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). The application is brought by Seinoli, with the support of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC).
The case concerns a promise made forty years ago. Under Article 7(18) of the 1986 Treaty on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project between the Kingdom of Lesotho and the Republic of South Africa, the LHDA must ensure that people affected by the project are able to maintain a standard of living “not inferior to that obtaining at the time of first disturbance“. To make that obligation measurable, the LHDA was required to establish a baseline: a record of how affected households lived before the project reached them, against which their circumstances today can be assessed.
Seinoli grounds its right to the information in section 14 of the Constitution of Lesotho, which protects the freedom to receive information without interference, and in international law. It argues that the LHDA’s refusal to share the information is unlawful, and asks the court, among others, to review and set aside the LHDA’s decision of 22 June 2023 and to direct the LHDA to provide the information requested.
Seinoli’s Programs Manager, Lepeli Moeketsi, stated that:
“For forty years, the families who made way for this project have been told that they would be no worse off. The LHDA was required to measure whether that is true, and it did. Those measurements describe our communities’ fields, homes, livestock and livelihoods. They cannot belong to the authority alone. We are asking for the information, so that people can finally see whether the promise made to them was kept.”SALC’s International Justice Cluster Lead, Dr Atilla Kisla, added:
“A public authority that measures people’s lives in order to protect them cannot then tell those same people that the measurements are its property. If the record shows that the promise was kept, publishing it settles the question. If it does not, the people it concerns are entitled to know. Lesotho does not yet have an access to information act, but its Constitution already guarantees the freedom to receive information, and today the court is asked to give that guarantee meaning.”
The case matters beyond Lesotho. Water from the LHWP reaches Gauteng, and Phase II, centred on the Polihali Dam, is due to begin delivering water in 2028 or 2029. The court’s ruling on access to information could become a landmark case for every individual, family and community whose life is reshaped by a project of this scale. It may also help shape how Lesotho gives practical effect to the right to access information.