'Money in them mountains'

Gather around, everyone; it's trivia time with Uncle Peter.

Today's not terribly important question: How many sovereign states are completely surrounded by one other country? The answer, of course, is three: San Marino (Italy), the Vatican (also Italy) and Lesotho.

(A place with the delightful name of Nagorno-Karabakh is tucked inside Azerbaijan and claims to be independent but no one in the world takes them seriously, least of all the Azerbaijanis.)

San Marino and Vatican City are not, of course, real countries, so that makes Lesotho the world's only real country completely surrounded by another country.

Under a daft political system called "apartheid", we once had lots of bits of "country" that were also completely surrounded by one country. Think, for instance of Lebowa, Venda, KaNgwane and parts of Bophuthatswana. They were sprinkled all over the place, all of them neatly surrounded by South Africa so that the baas-es in Pretoria could keep an eye on the native rulers. I suppose most of KwaZulu would also have qualified for this list but there were so many bits to that homeland that no one was ever quite sure where they all were exactly.

As far as I remember, QwaQwa wasn't entirely surrounded by South Africa - it shared a bit of border with Lesotho - which must have upset the people of Lesotho because, under apartheid, their country would have lost its only real claim to fame. Ciskei and Transkei were things called "exclaves" -- which meant that they were bordered by just one country but had direct access to the sea - a bit like Monaco.

While I'm on the subject of landlocked countries, consider, if you will, Lichtenstein and Uzbekistan. These countries are what the clever people at Wikipedia call doubly landlocked states - if you fancy a dip in the sea and you happen to be an Uzbek or a Litchi, you have to cross at least two other countries to get your toes wet.

Lesotho is a funny little country; one tends to forget that it's there until it does something wrong. Which is what happened the weekend before last, when the prime minister fled to SA because the army, he said, had staged a coup. The army denied doing any such thing but it soon became clear that whatever the naughty military was up to it was something very close to a coup d'etat.

The people who run the Southern African Development Community were delighted that something bad was going on in Lesotho because it gave them the chance to do something concrete for a change. Their response to whatever was happening in Lesotho was swift and decisive - sending off a "facilitator" and an "observer team" to Maseru. This came as a huge relief to all of us because, whenever there is trouble anywhere, all you need do is throw a facilitator and an observer team or two at the problem. (I must admit to having been mightily impressed when the SADC announced that its facilitator/observer chaps were going to remove Lesotho's "parliamentary prorogation". I have not the foggiest idea what a prorogation is but anyone who can use such big words and get away with it must know what he's doing.)

While the military, police, prime minister, cabinet, king and parliament all squabbled over who should be running the place, one has to worry about the ordinary people of Lesotho and that country's economy. Believe it or not, Lesotho does have an economy. Of sorts. And because I am worried about the poor suffering people of the mountain kingdom I'm using this valuable space to promote the fact that the nice people of Lesotho would very much like you to invest your money there.

According to the website of the Lesotho National Development Corporation, there are heaps of things you can put your money into and they all have to do with tourism. Lesotho would very much like anyone with the financial wherewithal to build chalets, start a tour-operating business and put up a ski resort or two.

I'm feeling so generous towards my neighbours that I've even done a bit of pro bono copywriting for them. Here are a couple of slogans that the people of Lesotho might want to use, for free: "Come to Lesotho and make mountains of money". Or "Investors in Lesotho shoot the lights out".

So off you go then: pile all your spare cash into Lesotho. Except you might want to wait a bit for the top brass to calm down and put away their handbags.