A history of how Basotho lost their land

MASERU – THE conversations around boundaries between Lesotho and South Africa ought to start, first, by agreeing on what happened leading to Basotho’s loss of land in the nineteenth century.

This would be a useful basis for assessments aimed at determining whether there is any need for discussion on these issues between Lesotho and South Africa.

In discussing this emotive issue we have to identify groups who raise questions of Lesotho boundaries and point to their respective motives.

This is important because journalists’ or journalistic shorthand associates all Basotho with positions that make some Basotho uncomfortable.

When these issues are raised there will also be need to first agree on the purpose for raising and discussing them.

As always happens, there are disputes, even among Basotho, regarding the question of quite what happened leading to Basotho’s loss of territory to the British in the nineteenth century.

This is an important question to ask, and try to answer, because such an answer might go a long way to inform judgments about the justifiability or not for need for discussion between governments of the two countries.

The point of this article is not to elevate one argument over the many that are already being discussed by others but to give another perspective that might edify this critical national debate.

A reading of Basotho history shows that all land that Basotho lost was lost by either treaties Basotho signed under British pressure, or war and conquest. No land was signed away by Moshoeshoe I for personal gain, as happened in some chiefdoms.

Some of the land Basotho lost initially to the British in ways described below, until 1854, when it was inherited by the Free State, who alienated more of Basotho’s land afterwards.

Even in boundary disputes of the period after 1854, Basotho sought, or agreed to, British mediation, and expected the British to act fairly but the British, by their own admission, were quite biased towards the Free Staters in their awards.

All that land became part of the Union of South Africa (1910), the Apartheid white minority-ruled Republic of South Africa (1948) and subsequently the majority-ruled Republic of South Africa (1994).

The chronology of events presented below might be one of the many that can provide a start to understanding how Basotho lost their land to the British and, then, to the Free State, and governments that followed.

•  1830s: serious settlers’ grab of Basotho’s land began. From this time, British subjects known as Voortrekkers, arrived in the Mohokare valley, and began grabbing Basotho’s land with the aid of the British.

•  1843: The Napier Treaty signed by Moshoeshoe I on 5 October, 1843 shaved off Basotho territory to the west and north. Moshoeshoe I signed this Treaty motivated by a desire to win British protection from the Voortrekkers. This protection was absolutely necessary for the survival of his Chiefdom and, he thought, its territory. The territory lost through this Treaty became British territory.

•  1845: Moshoeshoe I signed the Maitland Treaty in which he demanded, and the British promised, removal of the Boers from Basotho’s territory they had occupied. In fact, however, the Treaty was never presented for signature of the British High Commissioner in the Cape Colony, and the British never alerted Moshoeshoe I of this. Without the British High Commissioner’s signature, the Treaty was null and void. The territory from which the British had promised to remove the Boers remained British territory, and was later inherited by the Free State. British treachery here included their recognition of independence of chiefs who acknowledged Moshoeshoe I’s authority, with a view to enable them to sign land and boundaries treaties independently of Moshoeshoe I.

•  1848: British High Commissioner Harry Smith annexed territory between Senqu and Lekoa rivers, thereby turning all territory in between the two rivers into British territory known as Orange River Sovereignty. A large part of territory that became British territory in this way was Basotho’s land. A British official was sent to work on finer details of this annexation as regarded boundary between Orange River Sovereignty and Lesotho. With information from the settlers alone, he declared, as he determined the boundary: “…in my opinion, the Boers have more right to the land than Moshoeshoe…”

•  1849: Warden Line, the agent of the British in Free State, unilaterally decreed a boundary between Basotho and the Free Staters. This boundary “…detached from Lesotho all land which…” the British and the Free Staters considered as land of the Free Staters, regardless of Basotho’s claims, and regardless of how many Basotho lived there before whites came.

• 1854: The British withdrew their rule over the Orange River Sovereignty, handing over to government of the newly-created Orange Free State all territory they (British) had taken from Basotho and repudiating all their Treaties with Basotho. In these ways, the British left the Free Staters to take more Basotho’s territory using British-supplied superior arms that the British denied Basotho but allowed the Free Staters.

•  1858: Following Basotho’s defeat of the Orange Free State that year, British High Commissioner George Grey, accepted the Free State’s ex parte explanation of the war, agreed to Free State’s suggestion not to appoint a British Commission to look into boundary disputes but, instead, to accept a Commission made up of the Free State alone, and its ex parte submission as basis of Grey’s determination of a boundary between Lesotho and the Free State. This formed the basis of a settlement that Grey forced Moshoeshoe I to sign, on 23 September, 1858, in which Basotho lost more land to the Free State.

• 1864: British High Commissioner Philip Wodehouse intervened in another boundary dispute between Basotho and the Free Staters. He admitted that his settlement was “…quite in favour of the Boers…” Prompted by the desperate situation that the British and the Boers had created for Basotho, Wodehouse later admitted the injustices his country perpetrated against Basotho—such as denying Basotho an opportunity to purchase arms in wars with the Free State that led to loss of more land by Basotho—and fiercely attacked the policies.

•  1869: At the end of the 1865-1867 war between the Free Staters and Basotho in which, in 1866, the Boers had conquered all of modern Lesotho’s fertile lowlands to the north-east, warring parties agreed to British High Commissioner Wodehouse’s arbitration. The Free Staters succeeded to persuade Wodehouse against allowing Basotho and PEMS missionaries’ participation in the talks, and represented Basotho by himself in negotiations with the Free State. Although Wodehouse was able to prise modern Lesotho’s north-east lowlands from the Free State, and return the territory to Basotho ownership, he allowed the Free State to keep all land that Basotho lost to the British and the Free State from the 1830s. According to a Free State newspaper, through the 1869 Treaty Basotho lost a further “…large portion of their beautiful country…” Outcome of Wodehouse’s intervention left Moshoeshoe I sorely disappointed; and he declared: “I am left a small portion of my country, which is overcrowded with people”.

The facts are, perhaps, best left here without comment and interpretation. Only when we have agreed on them would it be useful to comment on, and interpret, them. Even in those comments and interpretations, it would be useful to agree on what the approach should be: Should it be a nationalist, statist one that emphasises power between states, and “might is right”? Or should it be one that searches for what is just?

Finally, it is important to note that concerns about boundaries are expressed by, at least, two groups in Lesotho. First, the political elites and middle class politicians who normally raise the issues during election campaigns. The basis of their claim for “return of territory” is nationalistic, and driven by nationalist pride. Secondly, poor Basotho and organisations that work with them, motivated by hope that arrangements can be made to remove the border and allow Basotho to move freely between Lesotho and South Africa, and be able to work in South Africa. In other words, the second groups are open for discussion of arrangements that can ease overcrowding, poverty and other socio-economic pressures that the majority of Basotho face.

Motlatsi Thabane