On Wednesday, the People’s Matrix, the primary LGBTQ rights organisation in Lesotho, denied receiving the eight million dollars in US funding that US President Donald Trump alleged.
In his Tuesday speech to the US Congress, Trump highlighted a previous US aid initiative that spent “eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho,” a country he said “nobody has ever heard of.”
“We are not receiving grants from the US,” Tampose Mothopeng, a spokesperson for People’s Matrix, told AFP.
According to him, “we have no idea of the allocation of eight million dollars. We do not know who received or is going to receive that money.
“We do not have such money or a contract that would even reach a quarter of half of that money,” he said.
Financial support for LGBTQ rights in Lesotho, a country of 2.3 million people, was not listed on the US government’s foreign assistance webpage.
Instead, it showed that in 2024, the nation had spent approximately 120 million dollars on “health and population” programmes, including $43.5 million to combat HIV/AIDS.
With nearly one in four persons living with HIV, the small mountainous nation that is encircled by South Africa has one of the highest rates of the disease worldwide.
The US embassy in Lesotho reports that since 2006, the US has invested over $630 million in anti-HIV/AIDS initiatives in the country.
After US foreign aid was cut off, more than 30 non-governmental groups issued a warning in mid-February that the country’s HIV programmes were in danger of failing.
Trump’s insult against Lesotho left the country’s citizens perplexed when they awoke Wednesday morning.
“Do you know what Kingdom in the Sky is? Journalist and activist Kananelo Boloetse wrote on social networking site X, “I guess not, too busy golfing to notice.
“Lesotho’s the only country in the world entirely above 1,000 metres elevation, higher than your approval ratings ever got. We’re here, we’re proud, and we’re not your punchline,” he added.
