Dump Site Fire Leaves Maseru Residents in Choking Smoke for Days

The Tšosane dumpsite in Maseru, Lesotho, has been ablaze since Saturday night. Wastepickers, however, continue to scrounge a living at the site.

• Residents near Maseru’s Tšosane dumpsite have been choking on smoke since Saturday night.
• The community won a court settlement in February 2023, requiring Maseru City Council to relocate the dump to Tšoeneng, but no progress has been made.
• Local Government Minister Lebona Lephema told Parliament that R400-million has been allocated for a new landfill, but residents say they have heard similar promises before.

Maseru residents living near the Tšosane dumpsite have been choked by smoke from a fire that has been ablaze since Saturday night.

Mapakalitha Maishi, a Ha Tšosane resident, told GroundUp on Wednesday that she has had to send her six children away because they were coughing and choking on the smoke at night. She has remained, sleeping alone in the house to guard it, inhaling smoke for days now. She says she’ll go to the doctor when the fire is out.

The Tšosane dumpsite, in a disused roadworks quarry just a few kilometres outside the city, is a major waste disposal site for household refuse, retail waste and industrial by-products from textile factories.

Mabitle Teisi, who moved to Ha Tšosane in 1986, says the community tried but failed to stop the dumpsite from being established. Now, residents live with the consequences.

Resident Kefiloe Rammea, who has an asthmatic grandmother, says they tried sealing their doors and windows with rags, but his gran had to move to another village. His vegetable garden and his fruit trees, which had just blossomed, are black and wilted from the smoke.

The preschool has had to close. A local church had to cancel Sunday’s service.

Mabitle Teisi says the community tried but failed to stop the dumpsite from being established.

For years, Ha Tšosane residents have tried to close the dump.

The village committee took the Maseru City Council to court in 2022 to demand that the dumpsite be removed. The case was settled out of court. GroundUp saw the settlement document. Signed in February 2023, the council promises to relocate the dump to Tšoeneng.

As there was no progress, residents protested by blocking the dumpsite gates last year, but they were dispersed by the police and the military.

In April 2024, the community formally petitioned Parliament, citing deaths from respiratory complications, borehole contamination, constant fires, and infestations of rats and cockroaches.

A Petition Committee report tabled in March 2025 acknowledged that the site was hazardous and that the City had repeatedly rejected community pleas. Lawmakers urged relocation, warning the site posed a “serious threat to lives and the environment”.

The Ministry of Local Government, according to the same report, admitted that the site was never environmentally acceptable. It promised a new landfill at Tšoeneng – plans first drafted in 2005 but stalled ever since.

The ministry now says a R400-million phased project is being designed, including lined cells for hazardous waste, a recycling station, and “sustainable” waste management. A private company has also offered to manage part of the waste by recycling.

But residents have heard these promises before. Relocation has featured in national budgets, including the recent 2025/26 budget speech.

Villagers refer to the site as “the slow death sentence”.

Mapakalitha Maishi said, “When my daughter started choking, I sat with her outside trying to get fresh air, but that could not help as the smoke was everywhere.”

On Monday, local government minister Lebona Lephema explained in Parliament that after the blaze broke out, City officials, police, and the Lesotho Defence Force rushed to the site to contain the flames and successfully protected power lines running above the dumpsite.

Lephema speculated that the fire may have been started deliberately by an angry villager after winds had blown waste into the nearby homes the previous day.

He faced questions from MPs about the government’s failure to relocate the site despite R20-million being allocated for the project.

He insisted the government was working to close Tšosane and to open the new landfill at Tšoeneng. He described study tours to Zimbabwe and Korea, and consultations with Pomona Waste Management, a Zimbabwean company, which sent engineers to assess both sites earlier this year. A consultant is now being sought to finalise the relocation.

But MPs Tšeliso Nkoefoshe and Mahali Phamotse slammed Lephema for delays, “unnecessary foreign trips”, and what they called recycled feasibility studies that have brought no relief for the Tšosane community.

Lephema defended the process, saying “we were not satisfied with the previous studies”.

As an interim measure, he said, face masks were being distributed to residents.

However, only two of the six residents interviewed by GroundUp received masks.

Pressure is mounting outside Parliament. On Tuesday, the Lesotho Council of Non-Governmental Organisations issued a statement condemning the situation as a violation of human rights. Executive director Sekonyela Mapetja said the dumpsite’s proximity endangered children, the elderly, and those with medical conditions.

Goldman Mustard Inc., which represented residents in the 2022 lawsuit, wrote to the Attorney General demanding an urgent community meeting by 12 September 2025. The lawyers said the government must update residents on “progressive steps towards settling the case by rehabilitating the dumpsite”.

On Tuesday, MCC issued a public notice saying the dumpsite remains operational and users should continue bringing their waste to it. On Thursday, it announced the closure of the road passing by the dumpsite until the fire is extinguished.

The promise of relocation remains on paper, while the dumpsite burns on.

For Maishi, the wait feels endless. “My ribcage is tired of coughing,” she said. “So far, the government has made no meaningful intervention for us.”

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