Forty per cent of South Africa's approximately 750,000 miners are foreign migrants and the majority of them come from Lesotho. More than half of Lesotho's male working population are registered as migrant workers in South Africa and many of these men are married. The majority spend an average of fifteen working years away from home and nearly a third spend between seventeen and twenty-five years of their lives in the mines. But many leave and never return. They either die in the mines, are killed amidst the violence that erupts in the camps, or they simply start new families in the neighboring areas.
Miners live in poverty in crowded singles hostels removed from family, culture, and community.
Long separations strain marriages, leaving both men and women more open to extramarital relations. With so many men outside of the country, Lesotho now has a population made up of women, children, the elderly and a few men, often ill or incapacitated as a result of their prior employment in the mines. The Government of Lesotho has become dependent on the easy and steady revenue received through the remittances of the migrant mine workers. Their absence also reduces the pressure on the government to seriously address the issue of job creation at home. Lesotho's dependence on the income from migrant labour undermines its drive to develop alternative economic solutions.