Lesotho should once again be part of South Africa

ONE would believe that any black government, especially one that calls itself revolutionary, would unite the people of this land by reversing the colonial anomalies and divisions created by colonialism at any cost.

Before 1652, this country had about five main tribal groups. The biggest was the Nguni, consisting of Swazis, Xhosas and Zulus.

The second biggest tribal group was the Sotho consisting of the Pedi, Tswana and the Basotho, whose location stretched from Johannesburg to the Orange River (Free State).

The other groups were the Venda and Tsonga and the smaller groups of Khoisan people.

The Dutch ruled the Cape from 1652. The British took over from them in 1795.

The Dutch became dissatisfied with British rule and decided to go out of the British sovereignty.

They envisaged their own independent state elsewhere. They then crossed the Orange River to Basotho land between 1835-1842.

On their arrival, skirmishes broke out between them and the Basotho. King Moshoeshoe appealed to George Napier, the British commissioner in the Cape, to intervene.

Instead of intervening, Harry Smith (the husband to Lady Smith) annexed the land between the Vaal River and Orange River by what was known as the British Orange River Sovereignty of 1848.

This enraged Andries Pretorius who had eyed the land of Basotho for an independent Boer state.

He negotiated with Moshoeshoe to join hands and tried to unite the black chiefs in the interior against the British. The colonial office in London sensed a great danger if the Boers formed alliances with the black tribes in the interior of the country since their domination of black tribes depended only on superior weapons they had.

The British were afraid that if black people formed alliances with the Boers, they could have access to the same weapons and that would be the end of British colonial rule. The British could not take such a risk and had to do something urgently.

After being defeated by Basotho in two wars – the Battle of Viervoet in 1851 and the war on the Berea plateau in 1852 – the British gave the land between the Vaal River and Orange River to the Boers through the Sand River Convention of 1851 and Orange River convention of 1854 and named it the Orange Free State.

This made Basotho foreigners in their own land. The conditions of the Sand River Convention included the following: the Boers must not form any alliance with the Basotho or any other black chiefs; they must not trade in arms and ammunition with the Basotho; and the British promised not to co-operate with the Basotho. The British promised to sell arms and ammunition to the Boers only. The Basotho were then attacked with arms sold to the Boers by the British. Moshoeshoe appealed for British help but his appeal fell on deaf ears until 1868 when all the land of the Basotho was seized and their resistance finally broken.

After discovering diamonds in Kimberley, the British needed mine workers. Britain instructed Philip Wodehouse in the Cape to confine Basotho to a small mountainous and resource-less Lesotho where they would not be able to sustain themselves economically.

This would enable the Europeans to make them labourers in the new mining industry. They would also be used to meet the other labour requirements of Europeans.

Wodehouse later declared himself the protector of Basotho with the intention of making them a labour resource for Europeans in the land that would be Europe in Africa called South Africa.

He then created what is now called Lesotho.

Lesotho was not created by the Basotho. It was a colonial confinement created by the British as their labour reserve and a grave yard for their Basotho labour force.

It was not made to sustain its citizens economically because that would be counterproductive to the objectives of its creation.

“Britain created Lesotho to sustain European labour force requirements