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

3. Prelude to Rebellion: Pitsos, Magistrates, and the Imposition of Colonial Rule

40 3 Prelude to Rebellion Pitsos, Magistrates, and the Imposition of Colonial Rule The transfer of Lesotho, now called Basutoland, from British imperial hands into the care of the government of the Cape Colony signaled only minor changes in the new colonial administration in 1872. The Governor’s Agent, responsible to the governor of the Cape Colony, consolidated colonial authority with the creation of administrative districts placed under the authority of District Magistrates, who in turn oversaw the collection of colonial taxes and the preservation of law and order through the chiefs, police, and a layered court system. But there had been sporadic wars between the BaSotho and their European neighbors for three decades, and it is not surprising that an attitude of defiance toward European rulers persisted in spite of the voluntary act of requesting British protection that had initiated that rule. From the outset, even as BaSotho chiefs, now charged with maintaining order and collecting taxes in cash and kind, complied with practices of indirect rule, subcurrents of discontent persisted. The colonial records show a varied awareness on the part of colonial officials to the signs and signals of BaSotho resistance to their authority, which were couched in careful and polite discourse and rhetoric accompanied by silent discursive acts of insolence. The mountain areas between Lesotho, the Transkei, and Natal remained distant from colonial oversight and provided the opportunity for BaSotho to cultivate plans of resistance with their African neighbors to the south and east. When war broke out in the eastern Cape Colony in August 1877, Col. Charles D. Griffith, Governor’s Agent in Basutoland, left to lead the colonial troops in the struggle involving the AmaXhosa. Émile Rolland, son of one of the first French missionaries to Lesotho and who was fluent in SeSotho and well acquainted with BaSotho politics , became Acting Governor’s Agent. In September 1878 he reported to the Secretary for Native Affairs on a “riotous meeting” during which Nehemiah Sekhonyana Moshoeshoe and two others were said to have used “treasonable or seditious expressions,” Rolland noting that “the meeting was a very noisy and tumultuous one and the general tone of it was disloyal.”1 The headman contested the authority of the Governor’s Agent to allocate land, insisting, “I recognize no one but Letsie” and “the country belongs to Letsie and not to Mr. Griffith.” The tone was contemptuous: “You hear, Basutos, that Lemousi says he has not been located [assigned the land] by Letsie but by the Makhoa.” After pointing out that the term makhooa was “a contemptuous term meaning the white man” or, more literally, “white people,” Rolland ended his report with a broader interpretation of political dynamics at the time: “I felt morally certain that a treasonable agitation was on foot, in which a number of the younger chiefs were taking part, presumably to cooperate with the Pondas and Zulus in case of a rising,” but he believed that “Letsie was too deficient in courage to promote any open acts of hostility.”2 The incident became a part of the historical record only because of the sensitivity of this observer and suggests that rebellion was always brewing beneath a surface of complacency. Rolland was not complacent; he held a public inquiry into the incident at Lemousi’s village and reported that the young chiefs, Nehemiah and his compatriots, expressed strong denials of disloyalty. These were couched in vague and ambiguous language, however, and Rolland wrote that “the language used, though purposely made vague, was intended to arouse a feeling against the Government.” Rolland believed that the BaSotho chiefs retained “sentimental regrets for the loss of their independence” and were influenced by the anticolonial resistance efforts of their neighbors.3 The British were testing their authority by usurping the rights of chiefs to allocate land, adjudicate disputes, and collect punitive fines in court cases. Nearby and at the same time it was the attempt of a British official to extend British authority over judicial procedures that eventually sparked trouble in the BaPhuthi chiefdom of Moorosi, in the southernmost district of the country. Moorosi had offered his allegiance to Moshoeshoe in the 1820s, and, with his approval, his territory had been incorporated into the boundaries of the country in 1872. Eventually, a controversy Prelude to Rebellion 41 concerning Moorosi’s son Lehana, referred to as “Doda” in the colonial documentation, triggered rebellion. The story began in 1877, when the...