Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960

2. Transcripts of the Past: The BaSotho under Colonial Rule

25 2 Transcripts of the Past The BaSotho under Colonial Rule A snake in the house. After a series of wars against their aggressive Boer neighbors, to whom the BaSotho had gradually lost most of their arable land, Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe requested and received British colonial protection . In 1868 Lesotho was annexed to the British Crown, and in 1871 it was turned over to the Cape Colony, which had just received the status of Responsible Government from Great Britain. Moshoeshoe had hoped for protection rather than a loss of sovereignty under colonial rule, and he never anticipated that after his death in 1870 his son and heir, Letsie, would be faced with colonial overrule from the white Cape Colony settler government. Because of this unanticipated twist of affairs, the fate of the country was to hinge on Letsie’s ability to negotiate power through every means at his disposal, from diplomacy to warfare. The colonial presence in Lesotho constituted, in the BaSotho discourse on colonialism , “a snake in the house,” while the collective Western interpretation of the BaSotho experience of colonial rule defined this experience as one of “benign neglect” through a system of indirect rule. The myth of Basutoland is this myth of benign neglect, but a close reconstruction of the colonial period from both colonial sources and African sources, written and oral, reveals continual struggles over power at various levels and rule by force and the threat of force. The BaSotho have always faced dilemmas of accommodation and resistance to agents of white rule. When Moshoeshoe first requested British protection against the Boers, he was trying to choose the lesser of two evils: indirect British colonial rule in preference to total dispossession by the Boers of the Orange Free State. From that time forward the BaSotho were constrained in their ability to resist colonial oppression by the British because they feared a worse fate at the hands of the Boers. For over a hundred years, then, the BaSotho accommodated themselves to one form of political oppression at home in preference to what was perceived to be the potential for worse oppression, which would come with direct South African rule. The constant negotiation of power at any given level of politics in colonial Lesotho was contingent on the dispensation of power at other levels, creating a complex interplay of power relations between the British and successive Paramount Chiefs, between Paramount Chiefs and their subordinate chiefs, and between the chiefs and their people. The dynamics of struggle over power in these various relationships was revealed historically during moments of overt conflict and turmoil, so it is these moments that provide the focal points for this study. Toward this end three specific periods of conflict in the nineteenth century are examined : 1879–1880, which encompassed Moorosi’s rebellion; 1880–84, or the Gun War and its immediate aftermath; and the so-called civil war between chiefs Masopha and Lerotholi in 1898. These wars involved conflict between opposing BaSotho parties and might therefore be mistakenly characterized as civil wars. In fact, however, all of these conflicts arose out of the direct interference of the colonial rulers, who used direct threats to coerce certain portions of the BaSotho population to support the colonial order in opposition to a group of rebels. In each case BaSotho initially resisted colonial interference but in the end chose to retain the British colonial connection out of fear of the strength of the Boers across the border. The historical narrative continues in a chapter on political and administrative developments of the early twentieth century that reveal BaSotho perceptions and discourses on international dimensions of power and the internal dispensation of power and authority. Colonialism became more oppressive as the British succeeded in introducing measures that centralized power in the hands of the Paramount Chief and fewer subordinate chiefs, allowing for growing exploitation and abuse of office . Struggles for power at multiple levels became evident in the disputes over succession to the paramountcy in 1939 and 1940, which brought about the long reign of the Queen Regent, ’Mantsebo, during the minority of the young male heir to the Paramount Chieftaincy. The 26 Transcripts of the Past remainder of the book explores political dynamics and power struggles that manifested themselves in the turmoil that subsequently erupted in the form of the widespread incidence of “medicine murders” in the 1940s and 1950s, revealing cracks in the British ideology of...