{"id":210141,"date":"2025-10-17T07:59:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T05:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-kao-mine-needs-m250-million-bailout\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T07:59:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T05:59:50","slug":"lesotho-kao-mine-needs-m250-million-bailout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/lesotho-kao-mine-needs-m250-million-bailout\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesotho: Kao Mine Needs M250 Million Bailout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"14\"><em>. . . as stalemate with RSL puts 1 800 jobs on the line<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"25\">The\u00a0Storm Mountain Diamonds (SMD), one of Lesotho&#8217;s four major diamond producers, urgently needs at least M250 million to stay afloat, the <em>Lesotho Times<\/em> has learnt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"27\">SMD (Pty) Ltd operates the Kao Diamond Mine in the Butha-Buthe district, which is jointly owned by Namakwa Diamonds Limited (75%) and the government of Lesotho (25%).<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"20\">According to SMD&#8217;s management, the company is in dire financial straits and needs a huge capital injection to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202510160669.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Lesotho\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/lesotho\/\">Lesotho<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>. . . as stalemate with RSL puts 1 800 jobs on the line The\u00a0Storm Mountain Diamonds (SMD), one of Lesotho&#8217;s four major diamond producers, urgently needs at least M250 million to stay afloat, the Lesotho Times has learnt. SMD (Pty) Ltd operates the Kao Diamond Mine in the Butha-Buthe district, which is jointly owned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":210142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1406],"tags":[258,256,11791,22303,4717,1407,52594,5118,257,254],"class_list":["post-210141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lesotho","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-bailout","tag-kao","tag-lesotho","tag-lesotho-news","tag-m250","tag-million","tag-news","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}