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Lesotho
Lesotho is a mountainous, landlocked country with few natural resources apart from its water supply. Although Lesotho is extremely dependent on its only immediate neighbor, South Africa, for everything from food to energy to employment for thousands of its citizens, it resisted becoming part of South Africa, largely due to a fierce nationalism that dates back to the formation of the BASUTOLAND kingdom in the early nineteenth century. Since achieving independence in 1966, Lesotho has suffered from political instability and oppression. Its relations with South Africa were strained during much of the Apartheid era, but the two countries’ current governments are now on friendly terms. Their fates became even more closely linked in 1998 with the opening of Lesotho’s Katse Dam, the first phase of a massive hydroelectric project intended to bolster Lesotho’s ailing economy by making the country self-sufficient in electrical power and by selling water to South Africa.
Precolonial History
The earliest inhabitants of what is now Lesotho were the San, whose presence in southern Africa dates back at least two thousand years. These nomadic, foraging peoples were later joined by Bantu-speaking peoples, who migrated into southern Africa as early as 300 C.E.., bringing agriculture, animal husbandry, and iron-working techniques. By the sixteenth century, both groups lived in the Caledon River valley, along modern Lesotho’s northern border. The San traded and even intermarried with the Bantu peoples, but by the nineteenth century, land-hungry Bantu-speakers had driven the last of the foraging societies from the area. They had also developed a distinct language, Sotho.The Sotho-speakers developed a collective identity and centralized political organization in the 1820s, when the mfecane, the massive warfare and territorial expansion campaign of the Zulu people, drove hundreds of Sotho clans north. The chief of the Sotho Kwena clan, Moshoeshoe, relocated his people to the plateau of Thaba-Bosiu, in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains. From there they were able to fend off attacks from the many hostile groups that passed through the region between 1824 and 1831. Moshoeshoe allowed peaceful refugees and even former enemies to settle among his people in exchange for their allegiance. In this way the young Sotho leader expanded his small chiefdom of a few hundred people into a substantial kingdom that, after the mfecane, covered all of modern Lesotho and part of what later became the Afrikaner-controlled Orange Free State. The kingdom became known as Basutoland and its people as the Basotho.Moshoeshoe was a shrewd politician, and from his earliest contact with white settlers he understood that they could be pitted against rival clans and even against one another. He invited French missionaries into his kingdom in 1833, seeking their advice and diplomacy in dealing with aggression from bands of mixed-race Kora people, who had acquired horses and guns from European settlers in the Cape Coast colony (now part of South Africa). Later, when the first Afrikaners began entering Basutoland during their Great Trek inland to escape British rule, the presence of the missionaries helped prevent a major armed conflict.Fascinated by European culture, Moshoeshoe took to wearing European attire, attending church services, and practicing horseback riding and marksmanship. He won the respect of British administrators in the Cape Colony, and in the 1840s and 1850s he negotiated several treaties with the British that were intended to guarantee his kingdom’s independence and prevent further Afrikaner encroachments. But after the creation of the Orange Free State in 1854, tensions between the Afrikaner and the Basotho escalated. Open warfare began in 1865, and the better-armed Afrikaners quickly assumed the upper hand. Moshoeshoe turned for help to his old friends, the British, who declared Basutoland a British protectorate in 1868.Colonial Basutoland
Moshoeshoe died in 1870, and a year later the British added Basutoland into their Cape Colony. They foresaw that Moshoeshoe’s death would create a power vacuum in Basutoland. His successor, Letsie, commonly known not as the king but as the “paramount chief,” proved to be a weak ruler, and several lower-ranking Basotho chiefs mounted open rebellions against the Cape Colony government over the next decade. In 1880, after the colonial administration tried to take Basotho firearms and auction Basotho land to white settlers, widespread resistance led to a Basotho uprising. Eventually the Cape government admitted defeat, and in 1884 the British reassumed authority over Basutoland.The British, through their high commissioner in South Africa, administered Basutoland with an unusually free hand. Under what came to be known as the system of indirect rule, traditional Basotho political structures and laws remained largely intact. The British interfered in few matters apart from taxes and trade policy. They agreed to a Basotho rule that no whites could acquire land in Basutoland, and they backed down from an effort to annex the kingdom into the newly formed Union of South Africa in 1910.Under colonial rule, Basutoland changed from a relatively self-sufficient agrarian region that exported maize, wool, and sorghum into a labor reserve for South Africa. By the 1930s, more than half of adult Sotho men worked on ranches and in mines in South Africa, where they earned only subsistence wages. The situation was no better at home, where the redrawing of colonial boundaries had made many of Basutoland’s pastures and farmlands part of South Africa. The remaining agricultural land could scarcely meet the demands of a growing population. Most farmers in Basutoland were too poor to adopt more efficient farming techniques, and so they could produce little more than what they needed for survival, at best. Many land-poor households came to rely on the income from migrant laborers, which they used to buy food imported from South Africa.After World War II (1939–1945), Basutoland’s long history of fierce nationalism came together around two leaders and their political parties: Ntsu Mokhehle’s Basutoland (or Basotho) Congress Party (BCP) and Chief Leabua Jonathan’s Basutoland National Party (BNP). Both parties called for reforms to limit the powers of clan chiefs, and both drafted constitutions in anticipation of eventual independence. But while the BCP allied itself with South African nationalist groups such as Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), the BNP carefully established relations with South Africa’s white government. As a result, the BNP became the only party allowed to campaign among migrant Sotho workers in South Africa. This tipped the scales in favor of the BNP in the 1965 elections that were a prelude to independence. The following year, on October 4, the British granted Basutoland full independence, making BNP leader Chief Jonathan the country’s first prime minister.Independent Lesotho
The new nation, renamed Lesotho, was perhaps the most underdeveloped country in all of southern Africa. Unemployment was high, and the impoverished agricultural sector suffered from periodic droughts as well as the ongoing problems of land scarcity and soil exhaustion. The new government’s clear inability to address the country’s many pressing needs contributed to the political strife that began almost immediately after British withdrawal. The primary tensions lay between members of the traditional hierarchy—the king, the royal family, and the chiefs—and representatives of the government bureaucracy. King Moshoeshoe II began campaigning for power greater than the mostly ceremonial responsibilities given him by the constitution. Chief Jonathan responded by placing the king under house arrest, restoring his freedom and royal status in 1967 only after the king signed an agreement to stay out of political activity. Other traditional leaders and BNP opponents suffered similar fates.Lesotho citizens showed their dissatisfaction with the BNP-dominated government by voting for the BCP in 1970. Chief Jonathan immediately voided the election results and declared a state of emergency. He also suspended the constitution and ordered the military to suppress all public demonstrations against the government. Many opposition politicians fled the country; others were arrested, and in some cases murdered. For the next sixteen years Lesotho was essentially a police state.Chief Jonathan’s friendly relations with South Africa deteriorated in the 1970s. His main political rival, Ntsu Mokhehle, had received asylum in South Africa, where he and other opposition leaders organized the paramilitary Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA), a group that staged dozens of raids, assassinations, and other terrorist activities from 1979 to 1985. Meanwhile, Chief Jonathan was harboring members of the banned African National Congress, a policy that led to several violent attacks on Lesotho by South African commandos.In January 1986, South Africa imposed an economic blockade on Lesotho. Twelve days later, rebel Lesotho troops led by Major General Justin Lekhanya overthrew Chief Jonathan’s government and replaced it with a military council. The new regime repaired relations with South Africa by agreeing to stop sheltering ANC members. South Africa, in turn, pledged to end support for the LLA. But Lekhanya’s domestic policies proved just as repressive as his predecessor’s. In response to Moshoeshoe II’s renewed campaign to expand his own political role, General Lekhanya initially granted the king greater legislative and executive powers, but then in 1990 dethroned the king and sent him into exile. In 1991 Lekhanya was himself overthrown by military officers, who then undertook political reforms. In 1993 the military government partially restored Lesotho’s constitution and held the country’s first general elections since 1970. Ntsu Mokhehle’s Basutoland Congress Party won every seat in the General Assembly, and Mokhehle was named prime minister.Mokhehle’s government did little to reduce political violence. Despite the restoration of representational government, Lesotho’s police and military units continued to act as rogue factions, making random arrests, violently suppressing strikes and protests, and allegedly assassinating dissident journalists and politicians. In 1992 Amnesty International cited the Lesotho police and military for human rights abuses. In 1994 Moshoeshoe II’s son and successor, King Letsie III, claimed to be responding to popular dissatisfaction with Mokhehle’s leadership when he dissolved the National Assembly and tried to seize control of the country. But both his own people and the international community condemned this action, and within a matter of weeks he restored power to Mokhehle’s government.In 1997 Prime Minister Mokhehle split from the Basutoland Congress Party and formed a new party, the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). Mokhehle resigned as head of the LCD in early 1998 and was replaced by deputy prime minister Pakalitha Mosisili. In elections held later that year, the LCD won seventy-nine of the eighty parliamentary seats, and Mosisili was elected prime minister.Opposition groups charged that the elections were rigged, and an external audit produced evidence of electoral fraud. Widespread public unrest followed, including strikes and an army uprising. Fearing a coup, Mosisili invited the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to intervene militarily to restore order. In September 1998 a combined force of about 1,000 South African and Botswanan soldiers entered MASERU.Although SADC forces expected to encounter little opposition to their presence, mutinous elements in the Lesotho Defence Force and some residents of Maseru, the capital, treated the soldiers as invaders. Opponents of Mosisili’s government, including members of Lesotho’s army, called for a campaign of national resistance against the SADC forces. In October a settlement between the LCD and opposition parties set terms for democratic elections within eighteen months. The soldiers from South Africa and Botswana withdrew late in 1998, but much of Maseru had been looted and burned during the episode. Reforms to the constitution followed, however, and orderly parliamentary elections took place in 2002.The first proportional representation parliament was convened in July 2003, taking the lead in addressing the country’s socioeconomic problems, while the king performed honorific duties. In 2005 the first municipal elections were held, but voter turnout was only thirty percent, with most people feeling the elections were meaningless in the face of poverty and HIV/AIDS.More political turmoil broke out in 2007 when Tom Thabane broke with the ruling party, forcing Prime Minister Mosisili to call a snap election. The ruling party maintained power, but with lower majority, and ministers were attacked. Once Mosisili agreed to arbitration, politics cooled.Since independence Lesotho has remained poor and highly dependent on foreign donors as well as on South Africa. Despite historically troubled relations between the two countries, Lesotho was a major labor source for South Africa’s mining industry and agriculture well into the 1990s. Cattle grazing and subsistence agriculture dominate Lesotho’s domestic economy, but growth in these areas is limited by the fact that only 10.7 percent of Lesotho is suitable for farming. A small manufacturing sector has emerged, based on the clothing-assembly, jute, canning, and leather industries.In 2005, poverty began to increase due to agricultural decline, erosion of land coupled with severe drought, consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, retrenchment of workers in South African gold mines, and the closing of many textile and clothing factories because of competition from China. In a few years, with advertising that encouraged African clothing as an ethical choice, the textile industry resurged. After the worst drought in thirty years, 20 percent of the population faced food shortages in 2007; the following year was even worse. More than 70 percent of the country’s food supply was imported, and costs rose so high that many people could afford neither food nor fuel, which rose by 50 percent and 100 percent, respectively.HIV/AIDS continued to ravage the country, with one of the world’s highest prevalency rates, 23.2 percent, with more than 100,000 children orphaned and life expectancy reduced to 35 years. Lesotho has a chronic shortage of nurses and doctors, so even campaigns offering HIV testing and counseling have not counteracted the pandemic. Several factors contribute to the spread of the disease, including the shared use of knives in circumcision rituals, the fact that up to 60,000 men spend months away working in South African mines, and the belief that sex with a virgin cures HIV.In the 1990s Lesotho pinned its hopes for economic growth on the costly and controversial Lesotho Highlands Water Project. The Katse Dam, the project’s first phase, entered service in 1998. When complete, the project will include a network of dams and tunnels linking the Orange River in southern Lesotho to reservoirs in South Africa, providing water for the city of Johannesburg. It will produce not only electrical power but income for Lesotho from the sale of water, but critics have pointed out that it will also destroy significant wildlife habitat and displace many farmers. Several multinational companies were convicted of giving bribes in 2004, after the conviction of Masupha Sole, CEO of the project, in 2002. In 2008, the feasibility study of the second phase of the project was finally completed, after years of delay.See also Bantu: Dispersion and Settlement.
Lesotho
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