The name Lesotho translates to “land of the Sesotho speakers”. Lesotho was formed in 1824 by King Moshoeshoe I.
Moshoeshoe (born c. 1786, near the upper Caledon River, northern Basutoland [now in Lesotho]—died March 11, 1870, Thaba Bosiu, Basutoland) was the founder and first paramount chief of the Sotho (Basuto, Basotho) nation.
Also known as Moshesh, Mosheshwe or Mshweshwe.
His name was allegedly changed from Lepoqo after a successful raid in which he had sheared the beards of his victims – the word ‘Moshoeshoe’ represented the sound of the shearing.
In 1820 Moshoeshoe succeeded his father, Mokhacane, as the chief of the Bamokoteli.
His first settlement was at Butha Buthe, but he later built his stronghold at Thaba Bosiu (Mountain of the Night).
He united various groups of refugees during the Shaka wars, a period known as the ‘mfecane’ or difaqane (1813-1830), into the Basotho nation.
From his capital at Thaba Bosiu , he warded off attacks from many enemies, including Shaka’s Zulus and Mzilikazi’s Ndebele.
In 1833 he encouraged missionaries from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society to come to his kingdom, and so brought the Basotho in contact with Christianity.
Moshoeshoe himself is said to have converted to the faith at the end of his life (at age 80).
From 1836 he came into contact with the Voortrekkers who settled in what is today known as the Free State, and then reached several territorial agreements with the British, who had taken over possession of the Free State territory in 1848.
Border disputes nevertheless led to battles between the Basotho and British forces in 1851 and 1852, both of which were won by the Basotho.
In 1854 the Orange Free State (OFS) became an independent Boer republic.
As with the British, border conflict broke out soon afterwards.
After a Basotho defeat in 1868, Moshoeshoe asked the British for protection.
Basotholand became British territory, but Moshoeshoe still managed to preserve his kingdom and his people’s existence.
After the British signed the Treaty of Aliwal North with the OFS, the border dispute was settled. Moshoeshoe died in 1870 and a year later Basotholand was integrated with the Cape Colony. However, in 1884, it became a separate British Protectorate.
In 1966, Basotholand gained its independence and was renamed Lesotho.
A great-great-grandson of Moshoeshoe, Archbishop Emmanuel Mbathoana (1904-1966), became the first Black bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Southern Africa.
He was the archbishop of Basotholand from 1952.
Another great-great-grandson, Moshoeshoe II, became the king of Lesotho after independence.
The Sotho people, also known as the Basotho, or South Sotho in South Africa, are an ethnic group who live in Lesotho and South Africa.
There are two distinct groups of Sotho people.
The southern Sotho make up approximately 99 percent of Lesotho’s population, while the Northern Sotho, also known as the Pedi people, make up the second largest ethnic group in South Africa.
The Sotho language, seSotho, is a Bantu language closely related to seTswana.
Sotho utilizes click consonants in some words, while sePedi and seTswana do not have clicks. Sotho is spoken in the Kingdom of Lesotho and in South Africa. It is concentrated in the Free State, Gauteng and Eastern Cape Provinces, with small groups of speakers in Namibia and Zambia.
Sotho is 1 of the 11 official languages recognized by the South African Constitution and 7.9% of the South African population uses it as their home language.
As of 1995, approximately 5.6 million people identify as southern or northern Sotho in South Africa, with approximately 1.9 people identifying as southern Sotho in Lesotho.
In South Africa, the Sotho people primarily live in the Orange Free State, Gauteng, and the Eastern Cape provinces.
Namibia and Zambia also both have small populations of Sotho people.
Who Exactly are These Sotho People?
The Sotho people are native to modern Lesotho and South Africa.
Bantu-speaking people settled in the region by 500 CE and are believed to have separated from the Tswana people by the 14th century.
Beginning in the early 19th century, the Sotho people faced several challenges, including Zulu hegemony, inland migration by the Dutch colonists in South Africa, who are known as Boers, and new waves of British colonists into South Africa.
A series of wars with the Zulu people in southern Africa—collectively referred to as Mfecane—led to the migration of the southern Sotho people, who were seeking refuge, into the mountains of modern-day Lesotho.
The wars occurred following the rise of Shaka’s military kingdom, leading to demographic, social, and political changes in southern and central Africa, providing space for colonial expansion.
There was a great deal of suffering and death during these wars.
Within the four major groupings of the Bantu-speaking peoples such as the Nguni, Sotho, Tsonga and Venda, the Sotho group was in turn divided into arguably three subgroups like the western Sotho (Batswana), northern Sotho (Bapedi) and southern Sotho (Basotho).
All these subgroups could arguably be referred to as Basotho if you take the meaning of the word, sootho ‘brown’ which refers to ba sootho ‘the dark brown ones’ owing to the colour of their skin into consideration.
The term Basotho could have its origin in reference to Bapedi whom the Amaswazi called the Abashuntu in mockery around the 1400s.
The Swazi referred to the Bapedi as such because they wore breechcloth made of animal skins and tied in knots to cover their private parts – derivative of the verb uku shunta, “to make a knot”.
Even though the Swazi were mocking them, the Bapedi adopted the term with pride and later by other tribes similarly clothed.
Another school of thought believe the Basotho originates from the word, lesôtô, refers to ‘a leg of a tanned skin used to tie the thari on the back of a woman and was also worn by the Basotho men as a short loin garment, tsheha, to cover their private parts.
The proponents of this theory maintain that: “the prefix le- in lesôtô indicates that the latter refers to an object, it was necessary to change lesôtô to mosôtô so that the prefix Mo- should indicate human beings.
The word originally pronounced Mosôtô came to be used and pronounced as Mòsóthó in the singular form and Basóthó in the plural”.
Another argument also trace the origin of the Basotho from Mathulare, daughter of the Bafokeng chief, who was married to chief Tabane of the Bakgatla.
According to this theory, Mathulare became the mother of the founders of five great tribes, namely: The Bapeli, Makgolokwe, Maphuthing, Batlokwa and the Basia and these became the first to bear the name of Basotho.
The last assertion is a mythical one. It maintains that the first Sotho people emerged from the ground (just like the ancestors of the Akan tribes of modern Ghana) centuries before Difaqane at a place called Ntsoanatsatsi which is situated in the eastern (Bochabela) parts of the Free State between Vrede and Frankfort.
In the 1820s, refugees from the Zulu expansion under Shaka came into contact with the Basotho people residing on the highveld.
In 1823, pressure caused one group of Basotho, the Kololo, to migrate north.
They moved past the Okavango Swamp and across the Zambezi into Barotseland, which is now part of Zambia.
In 1845, the Kololo conquered Barotseland.
At about the same time, the Boers began to encroach upon Basotho territory.
After the Cape Colony was ceded to Britain at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, farmers who opted to leave the former Dutch colony were called the voortrekkers (“pioneers”) and moved inland where they eventually established independent polities.
At the time of these developments, Moshoeshoe I gained control of the Basotho kingdoms of the southern highveld.
Universally praised as a skilled diplomat and strategist, he moulded the disparate refugee groups escaping the Difaqane into a cohesive nation.
His leadership allowed his small nation to survive the obstacles that destroyed other indigenous South African kingdoms during the 19th century, such as the Zulu hegemony, the inward expansion of the voortrekkers and the plans of imperial Britain.
In 1822, Moshoeshoe established the capital at Butha-Buthe, an easily defensible mountain in the northern Drakensberg mountain range, thus laying the foundations of the eventual Kingdom of Lesotho. His capital was later moved to Thaba Bosiu.
To deal with the encroaching voortrekker groups, Moshoeshoe encouraged French missionary activity in his kingdom. Missionaries sent by the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society provided the King with foreign affairs counsel and helped to facilitate the purchase of modern weapons.
Aside from acting as state ministers, missionaries (primarily Casalis and Arbousset) played a vital role in delineating Sesotho orthography and printing Sesotho language materials between 1837 and 1855. The first Sesotho translation of the Bible appeared in 1878.
In 1868, after losing the western lowlands to the Boers during the Free State–Basotho Wars, Moshoeshoe successfully appealed to Queen Victoria to proclaim Lesotho (then known as Basutoland) a protectorate of Britain.
Accordingly, the British administration was established in Maseru, the site of Lesotho’s current capital. Local chieftains retained power over internal affairs, while Britain was responsible for foreign affairs and the defense of the protectorate.
In 1869, the British sponsored a process to demarcate the borders of Basutoland. While many clans had territory within Basutoland, large numbers of Sesotho speakers resided in areas allocated to the Orange Free State, the sovereign voortrekker republic that bordered the Basotho kingdom.
Cannibalism?
The practice of cannibalism increased among the Basotho during the times of lifaqane (literally “need for sustenance” or “we want”) when there were many refugee tribes fleeing wars started by the Zulu King Shaka.
According to missionary Ellenberger, tribes who practiced cannibalism were the Bakhatla of Tabane, specifically those who were ruled by the Chief Rakotsoane at Sefikeng.
The district of Mangane, now known as Bloemfontein, was described as ‘infested with cannibals’ by the end of 1822.
A cave at Mohale’s Hoek had a brotherhood of 27 cannibals who were under the leadership of Motleyoa.
Other areas known to have cannibals included the river banks of Cornelius Spruit, where there were several villages of cannibals.
According to the Basotho, cannibals are regarded as people having evil supernatural powers comparable with Satan or spirits of the dead that oppose the good spirits and Basotho ancestors.
Their tradition states that the great Bakuena chief, Mohlomi, prophesied the coming of the lifaqane and cannibalism on his death bed with the words, “After my death, a cloud of red dust will come out of the east and consume our tribes.
The father will eat his children. I greet you all, and depart to where our fathers rest.”
The Basotho cannibals believed that their human victims would appease the gods.
Missionaries who arrived in 1883 estimated that there were between 7,000 and 8,000 Basotho practicing cannibalism between the Orange River, the Drakensberg and the Vaal river.
Moeshoeshoe and his people experienced an attack by cannibals as they moved from Butha Buthe to Thaba Bosiu seeking safety from King Shaka’s wars in 1824.
During the attack, the cannibals captured and ate Moshoeshoe’s grandfather, Peete.
Although cannibals were the cause of his grandfather’s death, Moeshoeshoe chose not to punish captured cannibals. Instead, he decided to aid them in their rehabilitation into society by giving them food and cattle.
From 1822 to 1828, there were about 300,000 victims of cannibalism.
The practice stopped shortly after the arrival of Christian missionaries as cannibalism was not tolerated in the Christian lifestyle.
The Cannibal Trail just outside Clarens in the eastern Free State runs between the Rooiberge and Witteberg mountains, where cannibals used to reside.
Britain’s protection ensured that repeated attempts by the Orange Free State, and later the Republic of South Africa, to absorb part or all of Basutoland were unsuccessful.
In 1966, Basutoland gained its independence from Britain, becoming the Kingdom of Lesotho.
Sesotho is widely spoken throughout the sub-continent due to internal migration.
To enter the cash economy, Basotho men often migrated to large cities in South Africa to find employment in the mining industry.
Migrant workers from the Free State and Lesotho thus helped to spread Sesotho to the urban areas of South Africa.
It is generally agreed that migrant work harmed the family life of most Sesotho speakers because adults (primarily men) were required to leave their families behind in impoverished communities while they were employed in distant cities.
Attempts by the apartheid government to force Sesotho speakers to relocate to designated homelands had little effect on their settlement patterns.
Large numbers of workers continued to leave the traditional areas of Black settlement.
Women gravitated towards employment as agricultural or domestic workers while men typically found employment in the mining sector.
