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Beyond luscious hills, neat fields of vegetables, and Lesotho’s achingly beautiful landscape lies the story of a little-known 19th-century founder king who forged alliances to maintain peace but humbled each attacker.
The sound of Famo music based on the accordion is insistent. The music wafts from some yellow-striped taxis and shops dotting Maputsoe’s CBD in Lesotho’s Leribe district. Tau ea Mats’ekha, Famo genre’s old apostles, blessed music lovers with Ha Peete now playing in some nearby car. Many of Tau’s gems would make a stiff John shake it like a Helen or a Jacob. How low can power-hungry elders stoop? Strangely, Tau received negligible airplay in neighbouring South Africa.
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Back there, music stations shun sounds from the region but bristle with music from the States. A fellow Southern African once cried cultural imperialism, the Mail & Guardian reported. Local DJs choose oblivion. Meanwhile, talk radio tackles everything but the core. Logic is relegated, and social ills are barely mentioned, let alone addressed. Just tune in. Xenophobic politicians stoke fires. Extreme fringes do so on social media networks. Don’t log on. For its part, Johannesburg’s weather is stuck between iffy and miserable even in the middle of summer. For days on end, shy sunshine contested with cats and dogs, monkey weddings and a bit of drizzle.
Now, in Lesotho, generous servings of Vitamin D are free for all. This time, I’m here with two friends – a South Asian farmer now based in the scorching Namibia and an artist from the wintry North Europe, in a part where mountains are rare. The pair, visiting the country for the first time, gush as the road weaves through a mix of picture-perfect vistas, vast plains, rugged topography, and awe-inspiring sights. Also enchanted is Zula Zula Adventure’s Jerry Ngobese, who likens his time here to “being one with nature” and, on occasion, seeing “mountains touching the clouds”. Just one gripe though, the Mountain Kingdom is not a place to visit in a hurry, he warns with a smile.
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Strictly for geography nerds
Strictly for geography nerds: the country has the highest lowest point on earth. That’s right. It sits entirely above 1,000m (elevation). The highest, nearly 3,500m, is the snow-capped Thabana Ntlenyana to the east. Thaba Bosiu, the cradle of Lesotho, a short drive from Maseru, sits at 1,800 m yet is in the Lowlands.
“The highlights for me are the destinations and the drive there,” says Ngobese, who ordinarily leads tours across the subcontinent. “The views are spectacular and uplifting to the point of being spiritual. I love the fact that the people are real, no pretence. I can’t get enough of the streams and rivers, the cliffs, the countryside feel and the vistas. In Lesotho, you’re bound to drive on some roads that cut through the mountains. It’s such a great feeling.”
Neat fields upon neat fields of vegetables claim the terrain along the A1, one of the country’s arteries. The road traces the Mohokare River, hemming Lesotho’s north on its journey to Atlantic-bound Senqu, also known as!Gariep and iGqili. This is the river with many names. The Dutch still re-named it Oranje for their royal family. The Brits renamed it Orange. The Boers – predominantly Dutch scions and Huguenot descendants – would, in the twilight years of apartheid, found a town named Orania. It was a nod to a segregated past.
Cut to this moment along the national road. Luscious hills come in and out of frame as do cattle, horses, ponies and vehicles. Contrast these scenes with the swathes of land, flanking regional and national roads and across the land of Madiba, that stand forlorn, showing little by way of life. Tell that to Donald, also yearning for an awful past.
Enter the global maelstrom, thanks to the awful 79-year-old sheriff’s tariff machinations. Leribe district’s jean-making Maputsoe is deflated. The textile sector creates jobs and generates forex, but its environmental impact is adverse. The sector guzzles water and pollutes rivers, compromising health for animals and humans. Joblessness has deteriorated by seven percentage points in five years to a scary 30%, now officially a national disaster. The United States is the nation’s top export destination for garments. SACU, a customs union, prolongs colonial-era economic stunting. Alas, we’re not here for economics but to forage history and heritage.
Leribe
Let’s start here, in Leribe, a place immortalised in Bhudaza’s timeless Bo-Mapefane (the jazz artist’s ode to his clan). Fields and traffic share the delectable landscape with green ridges, networks of water bodies and sandstone houses reflecting indigenous masonry.
The district’s Menkhoaneng was the birthplace of would-be monarch Moshoeshoe, the eldest son of Princess Kholu and Chief Mokhachane oa Peete of Bakoena ba Mokoteli. Today, Menkhoaneng marks the start of the annual Moshoeshoe Walk, a three-day pilgrimage that ends at Thaba Bosiu, across the Phuthiatsana River. It retraces the footsteps of the exodus led by the founder king in July 1824. The walk has, since 2007, become an annual pilgrimage, gathering throngs of participants. It today ranks as the biggest hike in Africa, says heritage walk founder Thabo Maretlane, recalling that the first edition attracted 40 people, including expats from the Netherlands and SA. Wits-trained Nqobile Mkhatshwa, who answers to the hills of eSwatini and Joburg’s concrete jungle, swears by the journey. There’s no better way to meld hiking, history and the beauty of Lesotho, she says, readying for her fourth round. “The soil we walk on carries so much history, and the walk is a special way to access that, and to experience the stunning views that nourish the spirit. The walk is also a fun getaway, good for the mind and helps people reconnect with nature and with other people.”
While on the A1 road to Maseru, I see, in the deep recesses of my mind, the build-up to the scrap between the Anglo and Basotho and hear the exasperated Moshoeshoe warning colonists: “Do not tell me about war”. While war folklore in these climes abounds with Basotho triumphs, Britain treats the 1850s with silence. Prince Letsie I – who’d ascend to the throne upon his father’s demise – and generals like Makoanyane oa Ntseke served with distinction. Pity, the dogs of war and marauding gangs were too arrogant – they kept coming. Basotho kept crushing them. Prince Molapo, among other monarch’s sons, fought valiantly.
Thaba Bosiu
On arrival at Thaba Bosiu, we feast on magical sights. Fog and mist now add their flavour to the frame as the sun plays second fiddle to the drizzle. Towering there is the iconic conical Mt Qiloane. “That’s the copy of Qiloane,” chuckles Moiloa Rantauleng, noting the image of the national flag-adorning mokorotlo – Lesotho’s national hat.
Rantauleng, a curator at the Thaba Bosiu museum, at the foot of the eponymous plateau, turns out to be a forager for heritage stories as he tracks the nation’s centuries-long journey. Under the tutelage of Chief Mohlomi, Moshoeshoe learned to embrace and defend peace. Thus, the hegira to this plateau – identified for its size, safety and wells, which ensured water security – was in pursuit of peace, as his fortress near Menkhoaneng had become prone to raids. Moshoeshoe’s 4,000-strong Bakoena ba Mokoteli arrived here one night in July after a walk that had taken nine days. Next, though exhausted and still saddled with livestock, they soon ascended to the top. Incredibly, that group, Bakoena, had braved treacherous cliffs, cannibals, rivers and snow, Rantauleng says in a voice that spells overcoming. “So, see, you haven’t been to Lesotho until you come to Thaba Bosiu. This is the foundation.”
As part of the foundation, Moshoeshoe, despite ongoing attacks, now fostered peace. His legacy is coded in Lesotho’s motto (Khotso, Pula, Nala (Sesotho for Peace, Rain, Prosperity)) and the greeting, popularised by Chief Mohlomi, Moshoeshoe’s mentor, is Khotso.
Activists fleeing persecution in SA deemed Lesotho a sanctuary. But, in the 1980s, Pretoria, under the pretext of searching for political opponents, freedom fighters in exile, spilt blood in Maseru via cross-border massacres. Pretoria is also fingered for facilitating regime change in that period, replacing an unelected politician with a soldier.
Moshoeshoe’s peers included Queen MmaNthatisi and King Hintsa (killed by the Brits in 1835 after supposed peace talks). There was also King Sebetoane oa Mongoane, who had led the Bafokeng on a northbound migration to Zambezi to avoid being “eaten” (or murdered). That’s how they ended up naming the wondrous waterfall Mosi-oa-Tunya (Sesotho for “smoke that thunders”). While colonial violence on the subcontinent had begun in the 1600s, the 19th century reared its ugliest head. This was when King William IV and, later, Queen Victoria were pillaging brutally. The region suffered the destruction of polities, land dispossession, human trafficking, and theft of cultural objects. In a show of disdain, Brits called kings chiefs and co-opted wrongful heirs. It exiled and deposed another monarch. It killed others, like Hintsa. Though newish, being a few decades old, Basotho went on to crush old redcoats – beating them in each of the two battles that they fought, explains Rantauleng, a sexagenarian in a beige hat.
The Battle of Berea
The second and last one, the Battle of Berea, was an ambush, insists the museum curator. It’s a notable coincidence that a Ntsu Mokhehle-led party was formed on the 100th anniversary of Berea. But, a coup powered by Nazi-leaning Pretoria’s John Vorster forced Mokhehle, winner of the 1970 polls, into exile. Chief Leabua Jonathan, another pliant ruler, ushered in terror. Such was the start of a two-decade tyranny that hurt the founder’s legacy.
While peaceful, the Basotho, as a newborn nation, only humbled invaders. In what appears to be a case study in magnanimity, Morena e Moholo, as Moshoeshoe was also known, a staunch pacifist, tended to placate losers.
“Why do you think the British want 1851 or 1852 remembered? They’re embarrassed. They cook crises, promise to teach ‘insolent’ Basotho a lesson, then ambush them, kill women and children. The British pretended to talk peace while planning to attack,” says Rantauleng. The story, unfamiliar outside Lesotho, brings to mind the Italians’ gamble-turned-fumble in Ethiopia. “Morena Moshoeshoe was a diplomat. He was a man of peace. So it didn’t matter to him who won because wars brought death. Wars always bring death. He forged alliances to water peace. That’s why he led Bakoena ba Mokoteli to Thaba Bosiu. It was to avoid conflict and loss of lives. That’s why he built alliances with King Shaka, with Queen Victoria.”
However, the road to alliances could be a bloody-and-bumpy affair. For one, ahead of Berea, Moshoeshoe had, as the Financial Mail recalled, warned the redcoats: “A dog when beaten (would) show its teeth”. Alas, bullying and logic don’t meet. In contrast, razor-sharp Moshoeshoe took no prisoners. “He cut the English forces to ribbons… and while [George Cathcart, Victoria’s representative] was in a state of bewilderment and humiliation, sued for peace!” wrote Robert Sobukwe, a pan-Africanist freedom fighter, to pal Benjamin Pogrund, listing an episode of magnanimity from Chartchai Chionoi, a boxing champ who was beating Walter McGowan for the second time, in September 1967. Chionoi then went “to McGowan’s corner – and they say McGowan was in tears – and knelt before him,” Sobukwe wrote, in a letter republished by The Guardian when Israel attacked Palestine, admiring the grand gesture.
Summiting Thaba Bosiu is tiring but emotionally fulfilling. Famo star Thope tse Khang’s invoking of Nkhono Mantsopa, a Moshoeshoe-era prophetess, is a solemn call to commune with the founder monarch. The song plays in my head on my way to the top. The ruins of Moshoeshoe’s sandstone house watch the present. It’s peaceful. The founder would nod. Khotso. The mood on the plateau brings to mind Sipho Hotstix Mabuse’s beautiful and elegiac tribute to Thaba Bosiu – the cradle of the nation. Sweet birdsong never fails to colour the moment of reflection from up here.
