1

LESOTHO AND THE

STRUGGLE FOR AZANIA

The Origins and History of the African National Congress, Pan Africanist Congress,

South African Communist Party and Basutoland Congress Party

1780 - 1994

Bernard Leeman

2015

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PREFACE This work is a revised and slightly updated edition of my Doctor of

Philosophy degree in History, awarded magna cum laude at Bremen

University, Germany, in 1985. Its title was Africanist political movements

in Lesotho and Azania (South Africa) 1780-1984: The origins and history

of the Basutoland Congress Party of Lesotho and the Pan Africanist

Congress of Azania. From 1992 to 2012 I wrote other books and university

papers in Sesotho and English concentrating on the period 1952-1959 when

the African National Congress split on class lines and was in state of near

civil war. Following Nelson Mandelas death in 2013, the South African Communist Party announced that he had been a member of that partys central committee since the 1950s, an admission that now fully explains how the SACP was able to take over the ANC in 1955 and drag the

liberation movements into the Cold War, thus seriously compromising their

cause and arguably delaying freedom, probably by decades. Secondly,

when I wrote my thesis in 1984, I could not believe that Ntsu Mokhehle

could have been so simple minded to have abandoned the principles and

friendships of a lifetime to become a pathetic dupe of the South African

security services. I have therefore updated my work to include both aspects.

My research was originally inspired by the 1970 coup dtat in Lesotho, which prevented the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP), winners

of the general election, from becoming the government of Lesotho for

twenty three years; and wrecking the Basothos admirable ancient democratic tradition. During its years of exile, the BCP was considerably

assisted by its fellow exiled Africanist ally, the Pan Africanist Congress of

Azania (South Africa) with which it had a long standing shared origin and

history. In 1993 the BCP won every parliamentary seat in the Lesotho

national elections. Conversely, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), which

had eclisped the popularity of the African National Congress (ANC) from

1960 to 1964 and seriously challenged it up until 1986, received a derisory

1.2% of the vote in South Africas first truly democratic national elections of 1994, and has had less and less in subsequent elections.

I am from a Tanzanian settler family of Ulster Scots South African parents. My father came to Tanzania as a soldier in the First World War

and established the coffee industry around Mbinga. I was raised in Songea

and Cape Town, studied African History and Afrikaans at the School of

Oriental and African Studies, London University, and Obafemi Awolowo

University, Nigeria, before returning to Tanzania in August 1968. I was

thereafter heavily involved in political and military operations in South

Africa and (from 1970) Lesotho. I joined the ANC but was expelled in

1974 by Joe Slovo, the Communist leader, for supporting a non-racial

constitution in place of the elitist undemocratic race based system foisted

on the party at Kliptown in 1955. Inevitably I joined the Pan Africanist

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Congress, whose raison detre had been the pre 1955 democratic anti race-based constitution.

I enrolled at Leicester University, England, for a research degree on

the Basutoland Congress Party. I was unfunded but started a

correspondence college that enabled me to go to Lusaka, Zambia, in

February-March 1976 to undertake formal interviews with the exiled BCP

leaders, Ntsu Mokhehle (1918 1999, the future prime minister of Lesotho), Ntsukunyane Mphanya (future minister of agriculture, BCP

secretary-general and party leader in 2003), Koenyama Chakela (secretary-

general, assassinated 1982), and Gauda Khasu (national chairman).

Correspondence followed with Mokhehle and Mphanya and I was able to

visit them thereafter without formality, and inspect BCP records. From

1975 until 1977 I was a member of the reserve of the British Armys Special Air Regiment (21

st SAS, Artists Rifles) based at Sloane Square,

London, and also served in the Royal Artillery (Sussex Yeomanry) in

Brighton. Working undercover for the PAC and BCP, I served as a major

in the Lesotho Paramilitary Force (LPF) as assistant to Major-General

Metsing Lekhanya from May to September 1977. I also undertook research

in the Archives in Maseru and interviewed several prominent members of

the Basotho National Party (BNP) and LPF. I left Lesotho and interviewed

several other BCP officials and members, including the high command of

the Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA), and the Pan Africanist Congress

(PAC) leader, Potlako Leballo (died 1986) who was also commander of the

Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). From June 1978 until March

1979 I worked closely with Moses Qhobela Molapo, the BCP London

representative (died 14 October, 2014), future Lesotho foreign minister,

deputy prime minister, and BCP president (1997), and Ntsukunyane

Mphanya when he visited England. In 1979 I financed the escape of the

Lesotho Liberation Army from Itumbi Camp, Chunya, Tanzania to start the

guerrilla war in Lesotho.

From March 1979 until May 1981 I was in Africa, twice staying with

Mokhehle in Lusaka and interviewing many more BCP personnel in

Gaborone, Botswana and Harare, Zimbabwe. From October l980 onwards I

became increasingly involved with the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania

and then broke off relations with the BCP when I realised they were

working with the South African security services and former senior

American CIA operatives. From 1980 onwards I was either housing,

staying with or in constant touch with Potlako Leballo until his death in

January 1986, working to encourage a national rising in South Africa to

mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre, an episode I

discussed in my 2010 work Mandela and Sisulu, Equivocation, Treachery

and the Road to Sharpeville. In 1985 Leballo and I convinced Major-

General Lekhanya that the only way he could save his career was by

overthrowing the regime of Leabua Jonathan and restore democracy,

measures he only half implemented.

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After Leballos death in January 1986 until 1994 I worked with PAC activists opposed to the degeneration of the illegally appointed PAC

leadership clique into venal and eventually psychotic murderous mystical

fascism, as well as the process of dialogue, dtente and the 1994

settlement. I refused to return to South Africa and Lesotho but still have homes in Marangu, Tanzania and Mekele, Ethiopia.

I received no financial assistance of any sort for my research, which

was severely hampered by my exile by the Pretoria regime. I had therefore

to use false documents to travel clandestinely in South Africa and Lesotho

from June 1970 until December 1991 when President De Klerk rescinded

my exile.

I presented my PhD thesis in Politics at Leicester University in 1981

but my supervisor, Professor J. E. Jack Spence, did not read it for over two years. When I finally received a message that he must get round to reading it sometime I resigned from Leicester University and transferred to Bremen University, Germany, in early 1984 where my thesis was

accepted as a History doctorate. I am eternally grateful to the late Professor

Imanuel Geiss, whose advice ultimately brought me to Bremen; and my

other supervisor, the late Professor Michaela von Freyhold. I should also

like to thank Professor Marlies Krueger, Professor Karl Wohlmut,

Professor Helmut Bley (of Hannover University), Mrs Frank, Mrs Geiss

and Wolfgang Proske for the extremely pleasant time I spent in Bremen.

I hope my work is of some interest, being one of few accounts of long

involvement in political and military affairs in a militant lower class

township and rural based movement to the left of the African National

Congress and South African Communist Party in the final days of the Cold

War.

Bernard Leeman

February 2015

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BACKGROUND

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a rectangular mountainous chunk of

land, less than 12,000 square miles in area, totally surrounded by the

Republic of South Africa. Only 13% of the country is fit for

cultivation and lies mainly in the eastern lowland strip where the bulk

of Lesotho's population of one million is concentrated. It has

diamonds, much water and livestock, an invigorating climate and

spectacular scenery. Land is held communally but, before 1994, sixty

per cent of Lesotho's labour force was employed in South Africa as

low paid migrant workers and, like the Scottish highlands two

hundred years ago, wealthy entrepreneurs still wish to see it

depopulated so it can be transformed into commercial farmland and

private playgrounds.

The people of Lesotho are Basotho and speak Sesotho, a Bantu

language. Sesotho has two orthographies, developed respectively in

Lesotho and South Africa by French and English speaking

missionaries. The English orthography is sometimes used in Lesotho,

as in the colonial name "Basutoland". Aspects of the French-based

orthography, used almost exclusively in this thesis, which may cause

difficulty, are listed below.

E placed before another vowel as in EA (of) is pronounced Y (ea =

ya).

Example:- Kereke ea Moshoeshoe = the Church of Moshoeshoe.

L before I or U is pronounced D. Examples: Kolisang/Kodisang),

Libopuoa/Dibopuoa, Liau/Diau, Ramoreboli/Ramorebodi,

Mofeli/Mofedi, Lifaqane/Difaqane, Mopeli/Mopedi,

Ramoneheleli/Ramoneheledi, Qaling/Qading/ Lesinlinyana/

Lesindinyana

M and N respectively represent MM and NN. The apostrophe

sometimes causes confusion, making a reader believe a quotation has

commenced. Examples:- Maseribane, Mantsebo, Mamocha,

Mota, Makoloi, Neko.

O in front of another vowel is pronounced W. Examples: Koenyama

(Kwenyama) Moshoeshoe (Mwshweshwe), Moeletsi oa Basotho

(Mweletsi wa Basotho), Matooane (Matiwane), Libopuoa

(Dibopuwa).

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PH and TH are both aspirated. Examples:- Mphanya, Thaba, Theko,

Phuthiatsana

Q represents a click sound similar to the imitation of a horse's hoof

beat when trotting. Examples:- Qeme, Qaling, Qhobela, Qacha's

Nek, Quthing.

TS - the diacritic represents an aspirated sound. Examples:- Tsiu,

Pela-tsoeu, Tsitsong.

NG is pronounced as in singing. Examples:- Ngoana (child),

Ngwato, Nguni.

HL and KH are common double consonants in Sesotho. The former

is pronounced as the Welsh LL (International phonetic symbol ),

while KH is rendered as ch in loch or the German ach. Examples:

Mokhehle, Hlenyane Mkhabela, Shakhane, Khaketla, Hlabisa, Khabo,

Hlubi, Hlakola.

Some Nguni words appear in this thesis which contain the click

sounds of C and X. The former - used in Ceteswayo - is a click

resembling the sound used indicating disapproval or sympathy (tut-

tut). X, as in Xhosa, is a side click similar to the sound used when

urging a horse to go faster.

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ABBREVIATIONS

AAPC All-African Peoples' Conference

AME African Methodist Episcopal Church

ANC African National Congress of South Africa

ANC (AN) African National Congress of South Africa (African

Nationalist)

APLA Azanian People's Liberation Army

AZAPO Azanian People's Organisation

BAC Basutoland African Congress (later BCP)

BACTU Basutoland Congress of Trade Unions

BCMA Black Consciousness Movement of Azania

BCP Basutoland Congress Party (now Basotholand

Congress Party)

BFL Basutoland Federation of Labour

BFP Basutoland Freedom Party

BNP Basotho National Party

BOSS Bureau of State Security (South Africa)

BPC Black People's Convention

CCM . Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Revolutionary Party of

Tanzania)

CDP Christian Democratic Party (Germany and Basutoland)

CIO Central Intelligence Organisation (Zimbabwe)

COD Congress of Democrats (South Africa)

CPSA Communist Party of South Africa (SACP after 1953)

DONS Department of National Security (South Africa)

HMSO Her Majesty's Stationary Office (London)

ICU Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (South

Africa)

ILO International Labour Organisation

LCP Lesotho Communist Party

LCW Lesotho General Council of Workers

LEC Lesotho Evangelical Church

LLA Lesotho Liberation Army

LNDC Lesotho National Development Corporation

MFP Marematlou Freedom Party

MTP Marema Tlou Party

NUL National University of Lesotho

OAU-ALC Organisation of African Unity - African Liberation

Committee

OMI Order of Mary Immaculate

PAC Pan Africanist Congress of Azania

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PEMS Paris Evangelical Missionary Society

PMU Police Mobile Unit

SAC P South African Communist Party

SACPO South African Coloured People's Organisation

SACTU South African Congress of Trade Unions

SAIC South African Indian Congress

SARYCO South African Revolutionary Youth Council

SAS Special Air Service Regiment

SB Secret Intelligence Service (Britain)

SWAPO South west African People' s Organisation

UBLS University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBS

after 1975)

UDF United Democratic Front (South Africa)

UMSA Unity Movement of South Africa

UNIA Universal Negro Improvement Association

ZANLA Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army

ZANU (PF) Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front)

ZAPU Zimbabwe African People's Union

ZIPRA Zimbabwe People' s Revolutionary Army

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GLOSSARY

Azania African nationalist name for South Africa

Boer (A) Afrikaner farmer. The word was and is widely

used contemptuously by Africans to describe

Afrikaners generally

Boss Boy African foreman on the mines

Commando Afrikaner cavalry militia

Donga (S) Ravine caused by erosion

Headman Lowest traditional rank of chief

Irnpi (N) - Zulu army regiment

Induna (N) Zulu regimental commander and also an

African appointed by whites to maintain

discipline among African miners

Initiation Lodge Circumcision school

Kaffir (A) Derogatory word for Africans odopetd from

Arabic for for infidel/unbeliever

Kloof (A) Ravine

Knobkerrie Battle club

Koeoko) (S) The Unknown (spectre bringing terror ). Name

used in 1970's and 80's to describe secret

police activities in Lesotho

Laager (A) Circle of wagons drawn up for defence

Lekhotla (S) Court, league, political party, army, association

Lekker lewe (A) "The good life"

Lifaqane (S) The period of African civil war circa 1802-

1830

Location Reserved area for African workers on edge of

urban areas

Maloti/Maluti (S) Mountains of Lesotho

Mealie Maize

Mfecane (N) The Nguni word for Lifaqane

Morgen (A) Afrikaner land measurement

Morgue Building in which dead bodies are kept for

identification

Pitso (S) Traditional meeting convened in order to hear

all views on any subject

Rand (A) (1) South African currency (2) alternative name

for the

Witwatersrand mining and urban area

Razzamatazz Euphoric display usually associated with

American political conventions

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Reef English word for the Rand

Reserve Rural areas for African occupation

Rondavel (A) Round hut

Russians A word used to describe anarchistic Basotho

miners on the Rand

Swart gevaar (A) The Black Peril

Trek (A) A migration by Afrikaner farmers in search of

land

Tsotsi African township thug

Veld (A) Wide open rural landscape in the Orange Free

State and Transvaal that is neither cultivated

nor true forest

A = Afrikaans

S = Sesotho

N = Nguni

Names are sometimes spent in two or more ways, for example:-

Lutuli/Luthuli, Magoti/Magothi, Lekhotla/Legotla, Khama/Kgama,

Leabua/Leabuoa, Kolisang/Kodisang, Basuto/Basotho,

Mothopeng/Mothupeng, Moshoeshoe/Moshesh/Mweshweshwe

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CHAPTER ONE

The Kingdom of Lesotho and its Relations with

European Peoples 1780-1910

"St Paul adapted and implemented Jesus

Christ's teaching; likewise, Lenin those of Karl

Marx. The equivalents for the Basotho were

Mohlomi and his disciples, Sebetoane and

Moshoeshoe."

Ntsu Mokhehle

Interview, March 1980

In the first half of the 19th century, the African population in

Southern Africa made rapid progress in establishing new, larger,

political units. In the second half of the century, these new

expansionary states were brought under foreign rule, mostly by

military conquest. The psychological shock of European occupation

and settlement convinced a number of African leaders that their

future lay with identification with the European world and rejection

of their political heritage, equitable society, and communal culture.

The African National Congress, founded in 1912, adhered to a

philosophy of elitism combined with Adam Smiths Christian

mercantile liberal capitalist dream. The Communist Party of South

Africa (CPSA), founded in 1921, was also elitist, modelling itself

slavishly on the Soviet system. In the 1940s, partly in recognition of

the political bankruptcy of the ANC and CPSA, a new generation of

African leaders theorised that most of their people preferred to relate

to the idea of re-establishing their own state, instead of working for a

place in the inequitable, individualistically acquisitive, white settler

or British imperial framework. The 1940s generation of Anton

Lembede, A. P. Mda, Mangaliso Sobukwe, G. Pitje, Ntsu Mokhehle

and Potlako Leballo followed similar paths, entering the privileged,

westernised, African elite and then dismissing it to identify with their

peasant origins, in which they found a wisdom and socio-economic

framework that seemed superior to that of their European occupiers.

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All these men owed their political philosophy to early exposure to

oral traditions of older men who had participated in the 19th century

states. In time, they came to view South Africa with the same attitude

of the older generation-a forced labour system, or Boer slave-labour

hell, an aberration, a temporary nightmare that had delayed the

development of the 19th century states into a single nation. Most

important of all they became convinced that their salvation lay

through the resurrection of an oppressed, united African nation, rather

than in participation as fourth-class citizens in white-initiated

structures. In exile, the belief in the past and Africanist ideology,

led Leballo to study revolutionary rural activity in Maoist China and

Mokhehle to delve into Mohlomis life and teaching. In both cases,

they sought to revitalise the rural dynamism which had launched the

19th century states and which could still, in their view, bring down

the external forces that had overwhelmed their society. Ultimately

they failed, partly because local and international economic pressures

were too powerful and the African population was quite conservative,

mostly reconciled to making small gains within South Africas

growing consumer society than adopting policies that had

impoverished and divided newly independent African states to the

north.

Despite the 1994 triumph and continued electroral success of the

ANC and its clandestine ally, the Communist Party, Africanist

fundamentalism, associated with the PAC and BCP, remains a

powerful undercurrent in South Africa, and is a growing, often

nihilistic, force elsewhere on the continent as marginalised, mostly

brutal young male militants, often identifying with and funded by

extreme forms of Christianity, Islam, and criminal cartels, challenge

the post colonial structure.

The Early History of the Sotho

This work argues that much of present South Africas problems

(particularly the economic emasculation of Lesotho), lie in the second

half of 19th

century when several large expansionary southern African

states were destroyed by European conquest and the former ruling

class won over to European economic ideology.

South African history concentrates mostly on interaction between

the Afrikaners, English, Xhosa and Zulu. Clasic texts such as Eric

Walkers History of Southern Africa, was a history of Afrikaner-

British relations. The Oxford History of South Africa was extremely

vague and uninformative, partly because it was aimed at

13

circumventing South African censorship. Many later books

concentrated on the career of Nelson Mandela, totally ignoring the

class conflicts that split the ANC in the 1950s and bedevilled the

liberation movement thereafter, issues addressed by Peter Dreyer and

Richard Gibson but thoroughly suppressed by the anti-apartheid

cottage industry. Tom Lodges Black Politics in South Africa and

related writings were purely dreadful, relying on South African police

records, adulating upper class westernised Africans and displaying

contempt for those from the lower end of the socio-economic

spectrum. Fortunately analysts such as Price and Dan Omeara have

produced convincing works concerning the reasons for eventual rapid

political change in South Africa, which had little to do with any of the

political parties discussed here. As for Lesotho, the country is usually

treated separately from South Africa although until the 1980s it

played a major role in the liberation struggle. I am probably alone in

discussing Southern African politics from the viewpoint of Lesotho

and the Basotho but I hope my work here will justify its importance.

Lesotho today is usually regarded as an aids-stricken

impoverished basket case with a dysfunctional political system.

However, in the 19th

century it was, numerically, the largest of the

states of the Sotho, the linguistic name given to the eight million

members of a Bantu-speaking people who inhabit a crescent-shaped

territory commencing in south-western Zambia and sweeping down

through Botswana (encompassing small adjacent areas of the Caprivi

Strip and Zimbabwe) through South Africa and Lesotho, to areas of

the Transkei. 1

Given urbanisation, intermarriage and the reaction to apartheid

using tribalism to divide the African population, tribal identify in

southern Africa is weakening but Lesotho itself remains

overwhelmingly homogenous. In the 19th

century Lesotho was, with

the Zulu kingdom, one of the two dominant African states in the area

south of the Limpopo River and was the only state in Africa to

repulse white armies and save its heartland from white settlement,

although ironically and totally against Basotho tradition, from a post

1994 viewpoint, incorporation may have ultimately been a blessing

and not led to economic and poluctial maginalisation.

Like any other people, the Sotho have a diverse ancestry. The

ancestors of the predominant group, ancestral Sotho, appear to have

begun their occupation of the high veld in about the 16th century

AD., absorbing or ousting the various Khoisan and other groups they

encountered. From about the 8th century AD., African peoples in the

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high veld had been engaged in iron-working. The Sotho not only

continued this practice, but established a reputation as miners,

innovators and metal-workers. They were also deeply involved in the

export of hides and skins to the east coast and favoured concentrated,

permanent settlements, rather than scattered, temporary farmsteads.

Their political organisation was essentially decentralised,

communities frequently splitting when disagreement or opportunity

for expansion occurred.3 Although engaged in trade - especially iron

goods - the Sotho were an agricultural people and their political

organisation was developed around the problems encountered in

farming. Nevertheless, Sotho society was advanced enough to allow

for considerable and sudden innovation. When faced with

unparalleled disaster in the first half of the 19th century, society did

not disintegrate but, instead, united into a larger whole, expanding

rather than splitting. Executive authority in Sotho society was

exercised by a chief or chieftainess. The various groups - Basotho,

Batlokoa, Bapedi, Batswana, Lobedu, Phalaborwa, Birwa, and others

- have a number of royal families, dating back several centuries, but

some of them are related. 4

The Sotho living in the area of modern Lesotho were ruled

mostly by chiefs of the Bakoena (Bakwena), being the descendants of

a Sotho leader named Koena (Kwena), who lived eleven generations

before 1800.5 On the death of a chief, his followers would choose a

successor from his many relatives and offspring, since polygamous

marriages had given them a wide choice of candidates. It was usual

for the late chief's senior son to be chosen, thus preventing succession

disputes, but often he would be deposed (but not lose his title)

whereupon he, or unsuccessful, disgruntled candidates would hive off

to form a new community with a small collection of followers. 6

Before the Lifaqane (the word used by the Sotho to describe the

apocalyptic events which overwhelmed a large part of Africa in the

first years of the 19th century), the role of the chief was to execute, to

the best of his ability, the wishes of his people. He was, in particular,

responsible for the allocation of land.7 Land was held communally.

Private ownership did not exist, nor was it even considered. The

chief, having consulted his advisers, could grant usufructuary rights,

but never ownership, to his followers. An individual was only

accepted in a community if he owed allegiance to a chief. 8

Before the beginning of the 19th century, political, economic and

social pressures were negligible9 and the Sotho communities, being

almost completely self-sufficient in a moderately-populated land, 10

15

had little need for anything but light political control. A chief's

powers, therefore, depended entirely on his success as a provider and

adjudicator for his people. An unsuccessful or unpopular chief would

soon lose his followers. Several Sotho proverbs summarise

commoners views of their chiefs in the days before colonial rule

A chief is a hornless cow and A chief is a chief only through the

grace of the people. Moshoeshoe, the founder of the Lesotho

kingdom, once observed that, in his opinion, a chief was like being a

sack into which any filth could be shovelled,11 because he was forced,

through custom, to listen to every complaint, however trivial which

the most objectionable of his subjects might care to present to him.

This custom was one that ensured that favouritism, self-indulgence

and other misdeeds of the Sotho chiefs could be checked; its name

was the pitso. The pitso was a regularly-convened, public gathering,

where anyone could speak openly, without fear of reprisal on any

subject. The same process applied in the chief's court (lekhotla),

where all witnesses would speak without any fear.12 In both cases, the

chief would have the final word, which wisely should reflect popular

opinion but could satisfy the people if he gave a convincing argument

to back his decision. Two Sotho sayings summarise this executive

rule of the chief Morena ha a fose (The chief is never wrong) and

Morena ha a tentsoe (The chief cannot be blamed).13

An essential part of Sotho life was the recognition that an

individual had no right to anything that might be denied his neighbour

and, although a chief took his share of trading profits, booty, surplus

food and fines for his work of dividing the same among his followers,

it was understood that these should be dispersed among his followers

during times of hardship.14 The material possessions of the chief were

the same as theirs. Although capable of striking ruthlessly when

enraged or whenever necessary,15 the chief was far from being any

sort of absolute monarch, even during the crises of the Lifaqane when

only drastic and immediate measures could ensure the survival of a

people.

The senior son of a chief did not automatically become chief

upon his father's death, even if the chief had designated him the

successor.16 As children, chiefs' sons would be encouraged to attend

the lekhotla and pitso and would be watched and advised by adults,

when playing at being chiefs among their fellows.17 Ability, not

primogeniture, was often a deciding factor when installing a new

chief.18 In the Sotho view, a chief had to be a good fighter, an

16

impartial judge, a provider and a person who could inspire communal

effort, as well as direct it.19

A chief had to come from one of the Sotho royal houses, such

as the Bakoena. Within each royal house, there were a number of

different clans, enjoying varying degrees of respect. It is evident that

a powerful individual could eclipse, as Moshoeshoe did, the prestige

and following accumulated by a senior clan, such as the Bamonaheng

of Mohlomi, substituting his own clan as the dominant one within the

royal house.20 Moreover, a strong-minded individual, albeit from the

aristocracy, could overcome, through force of character, any

disadvantages accruing from any disapproved liaison between his

parents. In Sotho tradition, a royal widow would be taken in by her

husbands brothers and any children resulting from this arrangement

would be regarded as belonging to her late husband. A chiefs heir

would normally be the eldest son of his great wife, who would not

necessarily be the first wife he married. Peete, Moshoeshoe's

grandfather, was not forceful enough to overcome his embarrassing

parentage, but Moshoeshoe himself (if the Hlubi story below is

correct) and Shaka Zulu certainly did. 21

Besides the bonds of chieftaincy, the Sotho were also united by

their experiences in the centuries old initiation lodges.22 Young men

and women were respectively drafted into a mophato and a lebollo.

They would remain there for about six months. It is not yet possible

to learn their exact instruction (although missionaries have recorded

parts), but the boys received a physically demanding education while,

at the same time, being instructed in what was expected of them by

their society and their ancestors as Sotho. The language of the lodges

was an old form of Sotho and the initiates left the lodges (which were

fired at their departure) with a sound knowledge of the Sotho ideas of

how their society should best be protected and preserved.23 For

example, a boy would learn, "A man is not a man if he lets his

property be taken from him without a fight." Moreover, irrespective

of rank within the community, an initiation lodge fellow would never

hesitate to correct his age-set companion when he felt that he was

going astray from what a true Sotho should be.24 Moshoeshoe himself

was under constant pressure from his age-set when giving

concessions to the missionaries. 25

The Sotho were very conscious of their ancestors, whom they did

not worship but held in the highest respect. All Sotho felt they were

ultimately answerable to their ancestors and would one day stand

before them and account for their lives. The ancestors provided a link

17

with the known and unknown worlds, and the Sotho avoided

activities that might have offended their ancestors during their earthly

existence. Children would be carefully named and a woman dropping

a water pot might exclaim "Ramoneheleli!" meaning that she was

apologising to her deceased ancestor, Ramoneheleli, who would have

been annoyed by her act in his lifetime. At the deepest level of the

involvement of the ancestors in Sotho life, the analysis enters

political and theological argument.

Nationalists felt an obligation to their ancestors. Leballo, in

particular, could sway an audience against compromise by reminding

it of the ancestors, to whom certain policies would have been

anathema. Sotho also objected to Catholic missionaries replacing

respect for Sotho ancestors with veneration of Christian saints who,

naturally, appeared to the Sotho as white people's ancestors. Free

from Christian meddling and denigration, the role of the more

prominent ancestors in Sotho society would best be compared to that

of the prophets in Middle Eastern communities.26

Southern Africa has always been a fertile area for African

prophets.27 The power of their visions and teachings have been

considerably diluted through disparaging European commentaries,28

the lack of knowledge of writing among their African contemporaries

and the destruction of much of African society through the myriad of

political, social, religious and economic pressures of the last two

centuries. In addition, western and Soviet educated Africans tended

to despise religious sects of Zion and Ethiopian persuasion, both

close to traditional African culture. Although attempts are being

made by historians and others to collect surviving fragments of oral

traditions concerning the prophets from their descendants and the

Guardians of the initiation lodges,29 it will never be possible to gain

anything more than a shadow of the accumulated collective wisdom

of the Sotho, nor even the teachings of a single prophet.

Mohlomi and the Mekoatleng kingdom

Despite the dearth of evidence, it is beyond doubt that one Sotho

prophet, Mohlomi-Matsie, son of Monyane, a chief of the Bakoena

ruling house, played an important role in the later establishment of

the Lesotho kingdom,30 particularly in his innovation of using

polygyny to extend his influence over a large area.

Some fragmentary writings exist on Mohlomi's life. Missionary

writers, surprisingly, gave intimate details of insignificant parts of his

life, while ignoring those aspects that impressed the Sotho.31 This

18

can partly be explained by the similarity of his message to that of

Christ and also to the contemporary European view of Africans -

paternalistic sympathy for a people who needed to be saved.

Mohlomi died in about 1815 32 after a long and successful career as

what has been accepted as the classic example of a Sotho chief. He

said that when he was about 13 years old and attending the mophato,

the roof of his hut was lifted off and he was carried into the sky by a

giant bird. There, strange sky-beings taught him to rule his future

followers through peace and justice. The story has been dismissed

unjustly as one which has almost certainly been coloured by

Christianity,33 but the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS)

missionaries, Casalis and Arbousset, heard the tale in 1833, before

their ministries began. 34

Mohlomi was a prophet with supernatural skills. He foretold his

father's death and had the power to cure leprosy. He ate little and

drank only water or milk. He also preferred the company of children.

He succeeded his incapable brother, Nkopane, as chief of the

Bamonaheng and then became a wanderer, practising his skills as a

healer, visionary and sage. He was said to have possessed the power

to travel mysteriously and to make rain. He declared that there must

be a powerful creator and that conscience is the true guide of man.

He stayed among the Batswana (ma-na-ntja - the eaters of dogs),

where he accumulated large packs of dogs and married, leaving a son,

Moriri. Then he passed to the land of the ma-ya-batho (the eaters of

men) or the Bamahlabaneng, people of Venda origin, in the northern

Transvaal.35 As time passed, his persuasive oratory and wisdom

gained him frequent invitations to act as an arbitrator. He became an

outstanding judge in the lekhotla, and his impartiality is summarised

in a saying attributed to him that all were equal in the sight of the law:

The law does not know a poor man. Capitalising on his reputation,

Mohlomi extended his political authority through numerous dynastic

marriages, being the first Sotho leader to practise polygyny on a wide

scale. By the time of his death, he had visited and married in every

part of Africa from the Zambezi southwards, and his influence was

acknowledged throughout that area. His headquarters were at

Mekoatleng (modern Mopeli's Spruit) near the north-western corner

of modern Lesotho. His reputation was such that no one questioned

his authority, despite his lengthy absences. Political organisation in

his day was locally controlled, non-materialistic, communal and

largely non-competitive, so it is not an easy task to ascertain the

dimensions of the area he ruled. Nor, from the Sotho point of view,

19

is it important, since the criterion of the idea of a great leader among

the Sotho is at variance with European thinking. While the former is

again more concerned with the prophet and provider tradition, the

latter looks for evidence of a centralised bureaucracy, standing

armies, treaties and other results of pressures that had not at that time

afflicted the Sotho. Yet, Mohlomi's work is important in that he gave

the idea of empire to both his disciples, Sebetoane Maselloane (his

relative) and Moshoeshoe, which gives credence to the widespread

Sotho belief that Mohlomi, through his polygynous marriages and

many skills, at the very least commanded high respect throughout the

area of the present Orange Free State, if not direct control.

Moshoeshoe, who freely admitted that he was deeply influenced by

Mohlomi, was thinking in terms of a very large political unit from an

early age, long before his position as a minor chief was even

established. His own Lesotho kingdom should really be regarded not

so much as an expanded Butha-Buthe chieftaincy, but more as a

successor to the Mekoatleng kingdom of Mohlomi.38

There is another aspect of Mohlomi's life that has been engulfed by

Christian missionary teaching and has only been kept alive by the

initiation lodges and those associated with Lekhotla la Bafo.

Mohlomi was either philosophically inclined or divinely inspired. On

his deathbed, he told his wife:

"'Maliepollo, my wife, the spirits have spoken to

me who am about to die. Great trouble will come

upon this land of ours. Therefore, when I am no

more, and the time of matseliso [mourning] is

over, go thou hence, and it has been told me that

the wisdom I have sought in vain will be revealed

to thee, who art a woman."39

It is unlikely that this could be anything else but a reference to

the coming of the Lifaqane and Christianity. None of Mohlomi's

children carried on his work. Of his senior sons, Monyane and

Khoyane were killed, while Tlali and Mapheelle (Nkopane) proved to

be incapable. A missionary report states that Mohlomi killed another

son, named Nketsi, but traditionalists dispute such a son's existence,

let alone his death at the hands of Mohlomi.40

The first missionaries were invited to Lesotho for political, not

religious reasons. They did not encounter any African religious

leader interested in serious theological dialogue, for the Basotho

20

immediately realised that the missionaries would not tolerate any sign

of syncretism. Moshoeshoe believed that the Prophetess Mantsoupa,

who was inspired by a supernatural presence she would only identify

as he or him41 was closer to God than the missionaries. It was not

until African society began to disintegrate that mass conversions

began. Although Christianity is now the majority religion in

Southern Africa, it remains to be seen if the work of the Africanist

churches will eventually attract Africans from the upper echrelons of

society. At present few from this class, if any, are attracted to

traditionalist syncretic semi pagan churches. Lower class believers

draw inspiration from the prophets and African Zionist and

Rastafarian interpretions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Churchs

traditions such as the Kebra Nagast, which have grown out of ancient

pre-586 BC First Temple Judiasm and an African church established

long before parts of Europe became Christian. The effect on political

development - as attested in other parts of the world where lower

class fundamentalist Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish

movements have been active - would be considerable.42 but the

African Christian middle and upper classes that control modern

political parties remain a major ultra conservative element within the

Roman Catholic and Anglican faiths.

Moshoeshoe and the Lifaqane

In the last years of his long life, Mohlomi came into close contact

with a young, volatile and almost insanely ambitious son of

Mokhachane, a chief owing allegiance to him. This was Lepoqo,43

later named Moshoeshoe. A Lekhotla la Bafo tradition states that

Moshoeshoes mother was a Hlubi girl of great beauty, captured

during a raid. She had been discovered alone in a forest. Fears that

she was a spirit prompted some of Mokhachanes men to suggest

killing her, but other advice prevailed and she became a concubine

for Mokhachane. Her son was Moshoeshoe and the tradition states

that Kholu, Mokhachanes senior wife, was presented with the baby

and told to raise it as her own, since, at that time, she had no sons.

The Hlubi girl eventually became a junior wife. Professor Leonard

Thompson, who states that three informants told him Moshoeshoe's

mother was a coloured (mixed race) girl,44 did not encounter the Hlubi

story. The song, Kholu refuses to nurse Moshoeshoe, recalls

Kholu's protests when ordered to raise the boy.

21

When Moshoeshoe was sent to Mohlomi at Ngoliloe, he was at

the very least suffering from mental strain. He had killed four of his

followers for being slow in carrying out his instructions and a fifth for

milking one of his cows without his permission.45 Moshoeshoe

stated years later: When I was a young man, I had a great desire to

become a chief. I longed that my chieftainship should grow and rise

and, with this wish, I went to Mohlomi whose chieftainship had been

a great success .......I asked him to advise me how I could become a

chief. Could it be by a charm?46 Ntsu Mokhehle, Lesotho's prime

minister and researcher on Mohlomi's life, asserts that it was not so

much for advice that Moshoeshoe visited Mohlomi but more for

treatment.47

Mohlomi took great pains with the young man, being struck by

his extraordinary intelligence and dynamism, predicting that he would

become a great leader. My son," he said, "if you could forsake

everything, I would take you with me wherever I go; but it may not

be. One day you will rule men; learn then to know them; and, when

you judge, let your judgements be just.48 He taught him that his

own power had come through the respect he had gained by excelling

in professions revered by the Basotho. These skills had brought him

wealth, which he had used significantly through his numerous

marriages. He advised Moshoeshoe to despise arbitrary methods of

judgement, such as witchcraft and divining, and told him to protect

victims of such practices.49

Moshoeshoe later developed into a formidable soldier and

commander and his subjects were terrified of his temper.

Nevertheless, it is evident that his policies and character were

governed by Mohlomis advice to use peaceful methods wherever

possible. By following such advice, it is clear that he was able to

establish himself as chief among chiefs, partly because he could

control himself and be magnanimous, but it may have been

detrimental in his dealings with the Afrikaners. However, it is

questionable if his authority could have been enforced in

uncompromising aggression against the white settlers, for he had not

consolidated his power in Lesotho when they arrived and the

behaviour of his son, Molapo, and grandson, Jonathan Molapo,

indicated that the Basotho would not have stood united in 1836, but

made alliances to prevent Moshoeshoe's emerging supremacy.

It is probable that Moshoeshoe learned two vital lessons from

Mohlomi. His relationship with the prophet was that of a dynamic

young son of a chief desperately looking for answers to questions that

22

were literally driving him mad. He emerged from his days with

Mohlomi with an apparently clear vision of how to achieve the power

he sought. His future military commander, Makoanyane, testified

that Moshoeshoe was thinking in terms of great power from The Start

of his career. You are my right-hand man, he told Makoanyane.

Together we will found a new empire. Let us

first render ourselves popular by mighty deeds and,

afterwards, we will speak of peace and clemency. In

the disputes of others, let us always put ourselves on

the side of the strongest. If we would become rich in

men and cattle, we cannot help making enemies; but

they will not roar forever. 50

This, therefore, was the first lesson - to found a new empire

(and this reference may suggest that he regarded Mohlomi's state as

an empire), he needed wealth, for that was the only way in which he

could attract followers, since he did not share Mohlomi's power of

rain-making or skill as a physician. Moshoeshoe gained early pre-

eminence as a successful cattle-raider. Cattle-raiding and stock theft

were methods of establishing the fighting and leadership abilities of

warriors, as well as accumulating wealth. Moshoeshoe's success

attracted followers and he established his first independent settlement

in about 1820/21, in the region of Butha-Buthe. Ultimately, he

consolidated his position by numerous polygynous marriages,

appointing his sons as administrators. Mohlomi had been unusual,

for polygyny was not common. Moshoeshoe was responsible for its

widespread introduction to bolster centralised political authority.

Before Moshoeshoe had managed to extend his authority to any

significant degree his and every other Sotho group on the high veld,

as prophesied by Mohlomi on his deathbed, had been consumed by a

red cloud that had arisen in the East.51 The Lifaqane swept away

the world they had known.

The Lifaqane

Towards the end of the 18th century, the northern Nguni-

speaking peoples of the south-east African coastal strip began a series

of small wars and cattle raids among themselves. The cause appears

to have been a rapidly-rising population, nourished by maize, finding

it increasingly difficult to maintain peaceful relations in an area where

political organisation could best be described as a large number of

23

expanding circles in a confined space. The Nguni's predilection for

cattle as a mark of wealth, and their custom of shifting subsistence

agriculture, had already exacerbated the situation before famine

finally swept across the country in 1802. Hungry people, driven

desperate by want, flung themselves upon their more prosperous

neighbours and full-scale fighting engulfed the land.

For 16 years, a number of confederations strove for supremacy,

until 1818, when Shaka Zulu, leader of a section of the broken

Mthethwa confederation, turned upon his Ndwandwe pursuers at the

Mhlatuze River and destroyed them. From then onwards, the

Mfecane (the Nguni word for Lifaqane) developed from a localised

conflict into a continental war, as landless hordes erupted from

Nguniland in search of security and sustenance. The next few years

witnessed unparalleled slaughter, destruction and famine, as refugee

hosts and invaded peoples fought for supremacy and survival in every

region from the Cape Frontier to Lake Victoria Nyanza. By the time

the conflicts had abated the interaction between the invaders and

invaded had produced large states in areas which had previously

known only small, disunited political groupings. These states can be

divided into invader states, based on the Zulu model, and

coalescent states, formed by peoples afflicted by the invasions. In

both cases, disparate peoples, even former enemies, were united into

a single state. The Zulu-type states sought cultural cohesion through

implementation of the Dingiswayo-Shaka political and military

innovations, which tended to eliminate conquered royal clans and

subject conquerors and conquered, male and female, to enlistment

into a single, united, centralised, national army. Promotion to the

hierarchy in these militaristic states depended solely on merit not

birth. The other states, although influenced by the Zulu model, were

more inclined towards the adaptation of their own institutions to meet

the changing circumstances. The Basotho state of Moshoeshoe

belongs to this latter category.52

Moshoeshoes ambitious Mokoteli Butha-Buthe chieftainship

was suddenly transformed from an aggressive expansionary state-let

into a vulnerable hill-top settlement lying close to the Drakensberg

passes, the only outlet for many of the refugees from Nguniland. At

first, he attempted to hold his position as the Hlubi, Tlokoa and

Ngwane refugee hordes fought for domination of his area, while

keeping an uneasy eye on the Ndebele kingdom of Mzilikazi, an ex-

Zulu commander, newly established north of the Vaal river.53

24

Moshoeshoe used diplomacy, alliance and force in order to

survive but, by June 1824, although he had succeeded in uniting some

small chieftaincies under his authority, (including his fathers), a

Batlokoa siege had rendered him destitute.

A relative, None of the Ntsane, invited the Mokoteli to move

south to occupy a mountain in his neighbourhood. Mohale,

Moshoeshoe's brother, reported that the mountain could easily be

defended and that None was willing to share his peoples good

harvest. In June 1824, the Mokoteli set out south, hugging the

mountain edge to escape the attention of the Tlokoa. Peete,

Moshoeshoes grandfather, was one of several stragglers who were

lost to cannibals during the march. The refugees reached the

mountain, which they named Thaba Bosiu The Mountain of the

Night. It had a deceptive appearance and was not immediately

recognisable as a strong position. Yet it indeed proved to be just that,

and also possessed springs on its plateau.54

Moshoeshoe soon incorporated the Ntsane, after fighting erupted

over thefts by the destitute Mokoteli. The refugees were now in

control of a mountain stronghold, backed by the maloti (mountains)

and facing west to the fertile plains of the present Orange Free State.

In the south, Moshoeshoe annexed a small Phuthi group under

Moorosi, who employed San (Bushmen) and lived by cattle raiding.

Moshoeshoe gained control of the area in the west, which became

known after Afrikaner conquest as the granary of the Orange Free

State, 55 and then used the Phuthi to guide his warriors through to

Thembuland on cattle raids. The grain and cattle surplus gave him

the means to attract a large number of followers and acquire more

wives. Thus, after a perilous trek from Butha-Buthe, Moshoeshoe

recommenced the process of expanding his chieftaincy towards

empire.

The Ngwane, Tlokoa and Ndebele still threatened the stability of

the new kingdom, as did the powerful but distant Zulu state of Shaka.

Moshoeshoe paid nyehelo (tribute) to the Zulu and Ngwane but

eventually clashed with the latter, repulsing them below Thaba Bosiu.

An Ndebele attack convinced the Ngwane that the area was unsafe.

They moved to the Transkei, where two British attacks destroyed

them. Their leader, Matooane (Matiwane) was at first given

sanctuary by Moshoeshoe, but then returned to his Nguniland home

where Dingane, the new Zulu leader, murdered him.

Rivalry continued between Lesotho and the Tlokoa state of

Sekonyela and was not finally resolved until 1863, when Moshoeshoe

25

defeated and annexed Sekonyela's people. In the case of the Ndebele,

based in the Transvaal, they succeeded in reaching the summit of

Thaba Bosiu in an attack in 1831, before being repulsed.

Moshoeshoe defused a dangerous situation by placating the infuriated

besiegers with a gift of cattle.56

Important innovations were introduced by the Basotho warriors

following attacks by the Kora, a branch of the Khoi, an African

people whose pastoral culture had been shattered by Afrikaner

aggression, alcohol and smallpox between 1652 and 1713.57 The

Kora, like most of the Khoi, had adopted Afrikaner ways and roved in

small bands on horseback and with firearms. They lived a life of

banditry, avoided battles and struck at the weakest, most lucrative

targets. Nevertheless, they were not always successful and they lost

horses to the Basotho at Qaling, Maseru. Other losses followed and

the Basotho also began to collect firearms. Some had been obtained

from the Cape, where many Basotho had worked for the 1820

English-speaking settlers. Other weapons were captured from the

Kora themselves. Moorosi sent a San to instruct the Basotho in

horsemanship and the process began of transforming the Basotho

army from a spear and club-carrying infantry into a gun-bearing

cavalry. More horses and guns were acquired through trade and

counter raids.58 The Cape settlers set a precedent, later adopted on

the diamond fields, of paying the Basotho workers in guns. The

Basotho also developed a new type of horse. The Basuto Pony was

a nimble but enduring animal, which flourished on poor pasture and

was suited to both mountain and veld campaigning. 59

Although individual Basotho gained reputations for

marksmanship, a dearth of munitions and lack of access to good

gunpowder severely limited the effectiveness of the Basotho forces

against European enemies. The Basotho did make gunpowder, but it

was extremely weak and only effective at close range. For that

reason, they were unable to challenge Afrikaner firepower in the vital

years of conflict over land.

The transformation of the Basotho army severely curtailed Kora

bandit activities. Knecht, their most dangerous leader, was killed in

an internal squabble in October 1833. In l836, Moshoeshoe himself

led the decisive attack that destroyed a hostile Kora-Xhosa alliance

and terminated the Kora military threat. Despite this, further

problems had already been caused by the association of the Kora with

European missionaries, who supported underhand land dealings

against Moshoeshoe.60

26

Relations with the Europeans

Moshoeshoe invited European missionaries to Lesotho in 1832.

While brooding over the Kora problem, he met an itinerant ex-slave

and gun-runner named Adam Krotz. Krotz sold Moshoeshoe three

guns and informed him that missionaries were unusual and could help

bring peace.

The idea of having near him permanently wise

men, friends of peace, disposed to do all in their

power to aid him in his distress, pleased him

greatly. He wanted to have some at once. Do

you know any, said he to me, who would be

disposed to come? I replied that such men

sometimes came our way. Oh! I beseech you to

tell the first you meet to hasten here. I will give

them the best possible welcome. I will do

everything they advise me to do.61

Krotz passed the request to the Philippolis missionary, Kolbe,

who forwarded it to Dr. John Philip, Superintendent of the London

Missionary Society (LMS) in South Africa.

Three French missionaries, sent out by the Paris Evangelical

Missionary Society (PEMS) but diverted from their original

Transvaal objective, arrived in Lesotho in June 1833.62 All three men,

Casalis, Gosselin and Arbousset, left their mark. Gosselin was a

mason, who had a hand in every construction built by the

missionaries in Lesotho for the next 40 years; Arbousset was an

explorer, retracing and recording the Lifaqane journeys; but the most

influential of the three was Jean-Eugene Casalis, who became

Moshoeshoe's close adviser and secretary. Until his departure in

1856, at the age of 44, Casalis stood by the chief whenever

consultations with whites took place. Agreements supposedly made

between Moshoeshoe and the whites without Casalis testifying to

their veracity cannot be counted as correctly negotiated. Casalis tried

to identify himself with the new kingdom: We become Basutos.

From today onwards, our destinies and those of the tribe are

identical. 63 He had enormous respect for Moshoeshoe and his advice

was taken very seriously. Moshoeshoe's invitation to the missionaries

had a political motivation. He needed an adviser who knew whites

but who would give him unbiased information and guidance. In this,

27

Casalis gave him excellent service. He was young, enthusiastic and

dedicated and, even when he realised that the apparent fervour of

interest in his Christian message was not the overriding factor in

Moshoeshoe's mind, he kept his word and identified with Lesotho's

interests as best he could.

In religious matters, Casalis refused to compromise.64 He knew

of Mohlomi and some aspects of Basotho thought65 but he never

entertained any notions of syncretism. Whereas, in pagan Europe,

missionaries had compromised and produced spectacular religious

and cultural results (such as in pre-Viking Ireland) the missionaries

never accepted any of the Basotho ideas, informing them that

adherence to Basotho traditions would lead to eternal damnation, a

condition which made a powerful impression on Basotho

imagination. The early missionaries worked in self-confident pagan

African states and made little headway until society broke up under

military and economic pressure. Their unflinching adherence to

orthodoxy may or may not have played a significant part in

persuading Africans, in the days of disintegration, that their support

of paganism had caused their downfall. What is certain is that this

unbending orthodoxy and rejection of African traditional society had

a crippling effect on the psyche of the thousands of Africans who

embraced Christianity. Moreover, the missionaries implanted a firm

belief among Africans that white society was essentially benign and

that the local settlers were oddities, whose extremes would eventually

be curbed by the British. The illusion of hope engendered by the

missionaries and impartial administrators, such as Maitland,

weakened African responses to the local aggression against them by

Afrikaner and British settlers.

Casalis acted honourably throughout his life and his memory is

today highly respected by African nationalists. In contrast, the

English Wesleyan missionaries who accompanied a large migration to

Moshoeshoe's territory later in 1833, are remembered with contempt,

as they treated Moshoeshoe as a fool and bedevilled the land disputes.

Moshoeshoe was a leader of a powerful state, and had only reached

that position through gaining wealth and followers while, at the same

time, avoiding confrontation until he was powerful enough to deal

effectively with it.

At the end of 1833, seven thousand Rolong, a Sotho people led

by Moroka, arrived at Thaba Nchu, the home of Moseme, a chief who

owed allegiance to Moshoeshoe. These Rolong were accompanied by

two groups, numbering about a thousand, of Griqua and Bastards

28

(people of Afrikaner and Khoi parentage). The leader of the first

group was Barend Barends. A small group of Kora, led by Jan

Kaptein, arrived simultaneously at Mekoatleng. All these groups

were in search of better-watered territory and were all under

Wesleyan influence. On arrival, Moroka sent representatives to

Moshoeshoe, asking for permission to settle. A large pitso took place

and eventually, despite opposition, Moshoeshoe agreed.66 Moroka

presented Moshoeshoe with the customary peho. Peho was a gift of

cattle which recognised the right to land of the people whose chief

ruled it. Moshoeshoe presented one of the beasts to Moseme,

confirming that he was the Basotho leaders representative at Thaba

Nchu. The Wesleyan missionaries acknowledged that the territory in

which Moroka settled was part of Lesotho, and Casalis confirmed that

Moseme had been instructed by Moshoeshoe to be his ear and eye

over Moroka.67

By the time of the missionaries' arrival in 1833, Moshoeshoe was

about 47 years old. He had spent the previous 12 years fighting and

outwitting powerful rivals. His state was prosperous, well-armed and

expansionary. However, land was still held in trust for his people and

he had never possessed tribal authority to give it to others. From the

time of the arrival of the English missionaries lost land has

remained an emotive political issue in Southern Africa. This writer

was startled when an off-hand remark to the PAC leader, Leballo,

during a telephone conversation prompted an immediate correction

concerning the amount of land lost to Lesotho through the Wesleyan

missionary purchases.68 On 7th December, 1833, the English

missionaries Archbell, Edwards and Jenkins drew up a document

stating that they had been sold nearly 2000 square miles around

Thaba Nchu by Moshoeshoe and Moseme for seven young oxen, one

heifer, two sheep and one goat.69 A second document, drawn up and

signed the same day by mark by Moshoeshoe, Moseme and Moroka,

stated that the same area had been sold to Archbell in his capacity as

representative of the Wesleyan Conference for nine cattle and

seventeen sheep and goats.70 Sanders attempts to excuse the

Wesleyan action, stating that it was Archbell's attempt to impose a

fixed European settlement on a fluid African situation. He adds that

the Wesleyans were not, of course, speculators eager for profits or

farmers greedy for pasture. Their basic concern was the welfare of

their mission. 71

More sales followed. Jenkins, the missionary at Mpokane with

Jan Kaptein, bought about 1000 square miles from Molapo in

29

February 1834 for two oxen and five cows.72 In 1836 Kaptein was

killed by a lion and his successor, Gert Taaibosch, moved his

followers away to Merumetso, without attempting to define the nature

of his occupation.73 The Griqua moved from Thaba Nchu to

Lesooane and claimed that they had bought the area for sheep and

oxen, while the Bastards (now calling themselves Newlanders)

bought about 800 square miles for eight head of cattle, 34 sheep

and five goats, after the Wesleyan missionaries had obtained the

marks of Moshoeshoe and Sekonyela in July 1834. A further sale

took place in 1836, when Platberg was taken over by Coloureds. 74

The Wesleyans did not attempt to make serious use of the

documents recording these sales when the British eventually

intervened in escalating land disputes.75 James Cameron, the

missionary at Platberg in 1840 who became Wesleyan District

chairman in 1843, wrote to his superior, William Shaw, saying,

Look at the price given for the country and reflect on the opinion,

which the Wesleyan Missionary Committee and the religious public

at home are likely to form respecting it.76 Nevertheless, the action of

the missionaries set a precedent across the Orange. The Wesleyans

may have believed that Moshoeshoe did not fully understand what he

was agreeing to and they also knew that the land they had bought

had been acquired for a mere trifle.77 But, most of all, they thought

they had got away with it. As soon as Moshoeshoe's mark was on the

sale, they believed that they were de jure owners of the land. When

Cameron and others realised that the missionary sales were dubious

transactions, they were still unable to admit they were part of Lesotho

and therefore answerable to Moshoeshoe. Taking advantage of

Lesothos disputes with the Afrikaners of the Great Trek who used

similar, if not identical, methods to acquire land, the Wesleyans

fought for what they thought were their rights, even though from a

purely legal or ethical aspect they had no case.

30

Whites at the Cape and the Great Trek

The Great Trek was the second of the two population movements

that radically altered the nature of Southern African society. By

1836, the year of the trek, Moshoeshoe had created a state larger than

modern Lesotho, having appeased the Ndebele, outlasted the Ngwane

and reached a modus vivendi with Sekonyela of the Tlokoa, who

never managed to rival Moshoeshoes wealth and was eventually

overcome and his people incorporated. Moshoeshoe had assembled

under his authority several groups, large and small, of Nguni, Sotho

and other refugees. In return for allegiance, they were granted land,

cattle and protection. Smaller units were absorbed into his direct

following, while larger units retained their own chiefs. Moshoeshoe

conducted internal affairs in the commonly accepted way by frequent

consultation with vassal rulers and the mass of commoners at

regularly convened national and local pitsos. This frequent

consultation, though complicating every major political decision,

strengthened Moshoeshoes position as a chief through the grace of

the people, his own place in the Bakoena royal genealogy being

singularly insignificant. As time went by, he strengthened the

position of his own Mokoteli by polygyny and placing. The Griqua

and Kora threat had been neutralised and, if the sales to the

Wesleyans were unknown to him, the situation would certainly have

been speedily resolved, once it had become an issue.

In 1652, the Dutch East India Company had established a

refreshment station at the Cape, under Commander Jan van Riebeeck,

in order to service its fleet passing to and from the East. By the time

of the landing, western European business interests had already

evolved and adopted the concept of achieving rapid and spectacular

economic growth through the utilisation on a massive scale of poorly-

paid or slave African labour. This system had been inspired by the

desire by western Europeans to acquire further super profits78 after the

discovery and plunder of the New World Aztec and Inca Empires.

The New World possessed immense agricultural resources,

particularly in the tropical area where plantations eventually

flourished. Unable to get the required labour from European and

American Indian sources, the Spanish Government launched the

trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1517, to bring African labour to the

plantations and mines of the New World. Other nations, including

the Dutch, fought for control, not only in the Americas, but also in the

East Indies, India and the Far East, when the Cape route was

discovered at the end of the 15th century. When the Dutch founded

31

their refreshment station at the Cape, they had already been engaged

in fifty years of fighting the Portuguese to wrest control of the Spice

Islands, establish the Dutch East Indies Company as the major carrier

between Japan and Arabia and link up with other Dutch commercial

companies which had seized the major slaving stations in west

Africa, as well as an area of north-east Brazil. The Dutch were, by

the 1640s, offering French and English-held areas of the Caribbean a

package that included technical assistance in setting up sugar estates,

a supply of slaves from Africa, and carrying services to take off the

sugar that might be produced.79

The Company personnel at the Cape station, therefore, had a

background in which slavery, disadvantageous trade agreements

backed by cynicism, and frequent violence, were commonplace.

Their trading practices were alien to a continent where external trade

was hardly new. From the Guinea coast in Phoenician times, to

Sofala in Islamic, pre-Portuguese days, trade had been mutually

beneficial.80 It lacked the rapacity and contempt the Dutch brought in

their dealings with the Khoisan, after the departure of van Riebeeck

in 1662. Van Riebeeck had failed to maintain good trading relations

with the Khoi, partly because of the activities of his interpreter, a

Gorinhaikona who had been banished from the people with whom the

Dutch wished to trade, but more because the Khoi discovered that the

Dutch were paying them with very low value, although initially

attractive, trade goods.81 The result was the establishment of

freeburghers (ex-employees of the Company) as market gardeners

subject to suffocating restrictions. Naturally, they quickly rejected

Company control and moved into the Cape interior, adopting cattle

ranching as a way of life and using enslaved Khoi to work the

enormous farms they acquired through force, dishonest treaties and

the destruction of the Khoi, through smallpox and alcohol.82 Their

way of life was feudalism in its most degenerate form, but was not

based on any inherited, medieval, European notions of social and

political organisation, but on the slave-master relationship established

in the commercial agricultural enterprises in the New World. By

1707, there were 1,623 freeburghers of German, Dutch, French and

Khoi origin. No significant white immigration occurred again until

1820.83 This small settler group evolved into the Afrikaner people

and their basic economic strategy remained that of the late 17th

century - the establishment of large farms, owned by single families,

who used slaves to work them.84

32

After breaking away from company control in the Cape, the

Afrikaners had become cattle farmers on a large scale. The Company

theoretically leased land to them, but found it difficult to collect the

annual quit-rent on each holding, let alone control the size of the

farms. Soon, a society developed in which Afrikaners regarded their

males as men at the age of sixteen, entitled to individual holdings of

at least six thousand acres.85 Their farming was inefficient and

manual work was accomplished by slaves, the Afrikaners acting as

overseers. Their concept of a state could best be described as a

society of landlords in which membership was exclusively confined

to Afrikaners, whose theology included the belief that they, though

not their Coloured children, were the Elect of God, the Chosen

People.86

The British annexation of the Cape in 1814/15 led to conflict

between the new administration and the Afrikaners, mainly over the

issue of equality before the law of all peoples resident in the Cape.

Missionary activity and the abolition of slavery in 1833 exacerbated

relations, but it is likely that the Great Trek of 1836 would have

occurred anyway, since the advancing Xhosa in the Eastern Cape

barred expansion in that direction. Initial probes revealed that there

was apparently vacant land for Afrikaner settlement north of the

Orange River, north of the Vaal River and in Natal. Between

November 1835 and 1837, about 14,000 Afrikaners left the Cape,

against British instructions, in search of land in the South African

interior.87 The coalescing political process that Moshoeshoe was

encouraging through alliance, persuasion, marriage and occasional

force was, therefore, presented with a gigantic, indigestible lump of

Afrikaner Christian Nationalism, a creed and way of life which drew

strength from exclusiveness, whereas the strength of the Lifaqane

states had come through innovation, adaptation and intermarriage.

The options open to Africans in contact with the full force of

Afrikaner expansion were stark, although none realised the threat

immediately. The Afrikaner way of life, often cited erroneously as

some sort of unique development, was basically a slave-master

society, based on the plantations of the New World and even mirrored

in the establishment of European settlement in Australia from 1788

onwards with convict labour to service wealthy landlords.

In Southern Africa, Africans - Khoisan or Bantu - absorbed by

the Afrikaner community were used as labourers with no rights, while

those who were not absorbed were tolerated so long as they did not

constitute a military or economic threat or argue over the possession

33

of land. It was a creed of such obduracy that every political process

of coalescence engendered by the Lifaqane was rejected (if it was

even considered) on the principle that the perpetrators were not only

inferior and not the Elect of God, but probably because the Afrikaners

questioned whether Africans were fully human.

The full force of the Great Trek by-passed Lesotho, as the

Afrikaners headed for the relatively deserted areas of Natal and the

Transvaal, which marked the borderlands of the militaristic Zulu and

Ndebele states. However, subsequent reinforcements from the Cape

had already created friction with the Basotho by the time most

Afrikaners had returned to the Trans-Orange, after their abandonment

of the Natal settlement in 1843. Moshoeshoe had been deeply

impressed by Afrikaner military successes against Mzilikazis

Ndebele and Dingane's Zulu and had even discussed military

assistance for the advance against the Ndebele before land disputes

broke out.88 He had been told by Casalis that the Afrikaners had left

the Cape over the issue of slaves,89 whom they had not wished to

emancipate, but he also knew that belligerence might be disastrous.

These frightening newcomers had retrieved Dingane's cattle from

Sekonyela by a simple trick with handcuffs; they had fought off the

Ndebele with a mere 40 guns and then routed them with 135 men.

Most alarming of all, a force of only 4,000 Afrikaners had broken

Zulu power, killing over 3,000 warriors. 90

It was, therefore, understandable that Moshoeshoe exercised

caution when he was confronted with land disputes with the

Afrikaners. Afrikaners were given permission to use land on a

temporary basis, as they had in the past. However, the Afrikaners

were attracted to the extremely fertile area around the Caledon

Valley, which was also free from horse-sickness.91 Control of this

area gave Moshoeshoe his grain surplus. Blatantly ignoring

Moshoeshoes warnings, verbal and written, that he regarded their

stay as temporary, Afrikaners began treating Basotho territory as their

own, erecting permanent buildings and unanimously declaring, when

pressed, that Moshoeshoe had granted them the land for themselves.

Since the Basotho held land communally, this right of private

ownership was impossible to grant. Casalis, without whom

Moshoeshoe refused to conduct any business with whites,

summarised the Afrikaner attitude thus: They had humbly asked for

temporary rights while they were still few in number. They only

denied this when they thought themselves strong enough to throw off

the mask.92

34

Infinitely wiser than his panic-stricken contemporary, Dingane,

who had butchered Retiefs party and then seen his army destroyed at

Blood (Ncome) River ten months later, Moshoeshoe decided against

using force as his primary weapon.93 Employing the strategy he is

reputed to have used against the Ngwane, whereby he allied himself

with the remoter but more formidable power of Shaka Zulu,

Moshoeshoe sought a British alliance to settle the land dispute.

This move was founded on the premise that the British, by

claiming that the migrant Afrikaners were still their subjects94, would

soon extend their jurisdiction and restraint over them. Moshoeshoe

regarded the Afrikaners as children running away from their father95

and so he negotiated with father to resolve the problem of

Afrikaner incursions on his territory. Some space for manoeuvre was

apparent, due to the division among the trekkers into loyalist and

republican groups, reflecting respectively pre-Trek and Great

Trekkers. What Moshoeshoe at first failed to comprehend was that

British annexations were usually actuated by evidence of tangible

profit or pressing strategic considerations,96 not by a duty to control

their subjects or an overriding zest to acquire territory wherever

possible.

The chief British interest was India, where lay their most

important commercial concerns. South Africa was attractive for its

strategic Cape harbours, not for its cantankerous Afrikaner

population. The Great Trek had been undertaken in defiance of

British instructions but, because of financial considerations and

disinterest in the apparently poor interior, the British were at first

most reluctant to do anything more than declare the Afrikaners still

answerable to British law.97 When the Afrikaners emerged on the

Natal coast, the British, fearful that their route to India would be

endangered through Afrikaner alliances with rivals, acted swiftly,

annexing the area in 1843. 98 Then, fearing that the turmoil caused by

the Trek in the interior would spill over to affect the coast, they

granted Moshoeshoe's request for an alliance in order to stabilise the

interior. The Trans-Orange was not of sufficient economic or

strategic importance to warrant annexation, but the British were

determined to make a lasting settlement between the disputing

Afrikaner-Basotho factions. Regrettably, their intentions were

compromised by an unwillingness to commit more than a minimal

expenditure to this task. 99

Lesotho and the British 1843-1854

35

Between 1843 and 1854, the year of the Bloemfontein

Convention, which gave independence to the Afrikaner Orange Free

State Republic, Moshoeshoe dealt directly or indirectly with a number

of British officials, some of them peripatetic, namely: two residents,

seven governors, six colonial secretaries, one special commissioner

and two assistant commissioners.100 His own terms were

straightforward. He would be the Queens ally if the British would

speedily settle the land dispute with their intruding Afrikaner subjects

and accord protection against them.101 The British response was of

such a perfidious nature that the frequent British observation of

Moshoeshoe's deviousness102 can only be rejected as pure hypocrisy.

One major factor plagued the settlement. This was British reluctance

to establish a presence north of the Orange River independent of

either loyalist or republican goodwill.

A haphazard attempt to make a settlement in 1843 failed, but was

followed by the Maitland Treaty of 1845, which Moshoeshoe

regarded as the final agreement on the problem. A small triangle of

land west of modern Lady Grey was allocated to white farmers in

return for quit rents to be divided between Moshoeshoe and a British

Resident. Unknown to Moshoeshoe, the Treaty was never sent to Sir

Peregrine Maitland for ratification, because of the interference of the

first British resident in the Trans-Orange, Major Henry Warden.103

Further problems, caused by Warden, led to intervention by Sir Harry

Smith, the new South African commissioner. The Basotho were

preoccupied with Tlokoa-Kora aggression and were forced to accept

the Warden Line boundary when Warden threatened war. Smith

then appointed Moroka, the Thaba Nchu Wesleyan as Great Chief

of the Basotho in place of Moshoeshoe, since he suspected justifiably

that Moshoeshoe was aiding the Xhosa uprising in the Eastern Cape.

Warden attacked Moshoeshoe but was defeated at Viervoet in June

1841.104

The British home government, disturbed by the financial

demands of the Xhosa war, accepted the recommendations of two

assistant commissioners who reasoned that if the Afrikaners in the

Transvaal could be won over by British recognition of their

independence, a major destabilising influence would then be removed

from the affairs of the Orange River Sovereignty (ORS). In addition,

it was possible that such a move would strengthen the Afrikaner

loyalist elements in the ORS and isolate the Winburg-based

republicans.105 In January 1852, the Sand River Convention

recognised the Afrikaner South African Republic (ZAR) of the

36

Transvaal, but did nothing to solve affairs in the ORS. Warden,

exacerbating a volatile situation, armed Moshoeshoes Griqua

enemies before assistant commissioner Owen dismissed him. Green,

Warden's successor, enriched himself through land speculation.106

By 1852, Moshoeshoe evidently had no illusions left about white

intentions at local level, whatever the policy of the Home

Government. He had at last realised that the disputes over land were

part of a far wider struggle in which black and white were engaged

for dominance over the whole sub-continent. The realisation that

whites did not just steal cattle, but entire countries proved to be a

turning point in Moshoeshoe's dealings with his African neighbours.

Since he was anxious to avoid conflict with whites, it is impossible to

gauge the extent of his involvement with Xhosa resistance, but he

was in contact with African leaders all over Southern Africa and had

begun advocating common cause against white encroachment.107 To

Sekonyela, leader of the Batlokoa, his old enemy, he said:

"We are both black and of one nation-it is our

duty and interest to sympathise with each other-to

lay aside all hostile feeling and henceforth be

united, and only keep a jealous eye on enemies of

another colour." 108

When Sekonyela refused to unite through persuasion (being

either short-sighted or plainly cynical), Moshoeshoe attacked, only to

incur the hostility of Pretorius, who crossed the Vaal to be hailed by

the Afrikaners as the man who would teach the Basotho a lesson.109

Fighting was averted, but Sir George Cathcart, Smith's successor,

having snuffed out the last embers of Xhosa resistance, attacked

Moshoeshoe before the Basotho could comply with an ultimatum to

hand over a large amount of livestock. The Basotho checked

Cathcart at the Battle of Berea on 20th December, 1852, but lost

much of their stock. The more realistic among them felt that, once

the imperial troops were in correct formation, the Basotho would not

be able to repel them.110 There was fear that the Basotho would have

to take to th