Commerce as Politics

The Two Centuries of Struggle for Basotho Economic Independence

Sean M. Maliehe

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781789209815
• eBook ISBN: 9781789209822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This is the first comprehensive economic history of the Basotho people of Southern Africa (in colonial Basutoland, then Lesotho) and spans from the 1820s to the present day. The book documents what the Basotho have done on their own account, focusing on their systematic exclusion from trade and their political efforts to insert themselves into their country's commerce. Although the colonial and post-colonial periods were unfavourable to the Basotho, they have, before and after colonial rule, launched impressive commercial initiatives of their own, which bring hope for greater development and freedom in their struggle for economic independence.

Part I
The Rise and Fall of the Basotho Nation

CHAPTER 1

The Formation of the Basotho Nation, 1820s–1870s

Introduction

The nineteenth century saw the making of modern southern Africa, including Lesotho. The Mfecane/Lifaqane wars were a turning point. The region experienced a series of prolonged and severe droughts in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, leading to military competition over resources and trade. These wholesale regional disruptions started on the eastern coast among the Zulu people of King Shaka. Under Moshoeshoe’s leadership and influence, various Bantu-speaking communities and refugees that had been scattered over the region came to form the nucleus of the Basotho nation in the 1820s and 1830s (Eldredge 1993; Hamilton 1995; Omer-Cooper 1987; Thompson 1975; Sanders 1975).

This period coincided with European global expansion and Evangelical anti-slavery crusades. Due to contact with Europeans – missionaries, Afrikaners and the British – the nascent Basotho nation was integrated into the modern global economy after the Napoleonic wars, when the British took over the Cape from the Dutch. What began as a refreshment station on the Asian trade route dominated by the Dutch East India Company now changed the region’s history. Its occupants settled and made permanent inroads into the interior from the 1830s and 1840s (Feinstein 2005; Swart 2010).

Upon Moshoeshoe’s request, missionaries worked among the Basotho from the early 1830s. They promoted commerce, introduced new agricultural technologies and supported people’s individual rights. As a result, two interconnected economic paths for ordinary Basotho emerged within a domestic economy that was dominated by the chiefs. One stream provided labour to the Europeans in the Cape and the Free State, while the other provided grain and livestock to various communities in the region.

These groups introduced horses and guns to the rest of the Basotho. The two technologies transformed trade, communication, transportation and war. By the 1850s, the Basotho were a significant part of the new regional trade networks connecting the interior with the coastal areas, and became the ‘granary’ for the new diamond-mining towns in South Africa by the 1870s. Murray, a pioneer of the 1980s school of political economy in southern Africa, focused on this latter period, with little attention given to the period that preceded it (1980, 1981). Murray chronicled the rise and fall of Basotho peasantry, rebutting neoclassical tropes that the Basotho lacked agrarian skills. Scholars that focused on the earlier period examined the political achievements of Moshoeshoe and land loss (Omer-Cooper 1987; Thompson 1975; Sanders 1975).

Covering the period between the 1820s and 1870s, this chapter examines the emergence of this new post-Mfecane regional economy. It demonstrates that the role of ordinary people was pertinent in Basotho expansion. Money and trade connected their territory to distant markets; the result was the creation of an interdependent formation based on mutual exchange of commodities and labour. The political and economic resilience of the Basotho was strengthened as well.

Moshoeshoe’s Nation-Building Project

The consensus of historians and linguists is that Basotho farmers were the descendants of Bantu-speaking Iron Age communities from West Africa who had settled along the border of modern-day Nigeria and Cameroon. By 300 BC, some groups had migrated to the great lakes of East Africa, and had reached the east-African coast by the third century AD. Some made their way south by the fourth and fifth centuries, where they found San and Khoi-Khoi hunter-gatherers (Hamilton et al. 2012; Parsons 1993; Omer-Cooper 1987).

By the sixteenth century, the Sotho-speaking communities had moved deeper into the region’s central and southwestern parts, while the Nguni-speaking communities settled on the southeast fringes along the coast. The northern Sotho groups, particularly the Tswana (Batswana), occupied the dry plains of the Kalahari (Kgalagadi), while the southern Sotho communities migrated into the southern Highveld, populating the area beyond the Lekoa and Mohokare Rivers (Parsons 1993; Omer-Cooper 1987). These groups were organised in small semi-autonomous chiefdoms, which expressed their identity through clan totems, liboko (Mothibe 2002a: 3–10).

The Iron Age communities depended on crop production and herding livestock. They supplemented these with hunting and collecting wild vegetables – male and female occupations respectively. They engaged in reciprocal economic exchanges within their groups and participated in long-distance trade with other communities in the region, such as the Nguni-speaking peoples of the east coast. They traded household utensils made from iron and copper, iron hoes, animal skins, cattle, tobacco and other goods (Eldredge 1993: 19–21).

Beads were used as a medium of exchange for long-distance trade. They could be given different values according to their colour. This was because beads were ‘fungible, could not easily be obtained, and could be given different values according to their size and colours’. They were ‘considered as money, to be employed only as a medium of trade with distant tribes and for the purchase of more expensive articles’. Additionally, the ‘beads facilitated the relay trade system in which groups that traded directly with one another but did not need each other’s goods accepted compensation in beads that could be used elsewhere to obtain the goods they did need’ (Eldredge 1993: 21).

Within the Basotho groups, beads appear to have been introduced in the eighteenth century by Mohlomi, a regionally renowned senior chief, healer, philosopher, sage and traveller (Machobane 1990). Early beads were named after him as the ‘beads of Mohlomi’. Oral tradition also recalls that beads were obtained through trade with communities on the eastern coast. When they were in short supply, a barter system facilitated exchanges. The AmaHlubi and the AmaZizi Nguni groups from the east coast ‘crossed the mountains to trade with the BaKoena as early as the seventeenth century; bringing knives, spatulas, and hoes to exchange for animal skins, cattle, and tobacco’ (Eldredge 1993: 21). These regional trade networks were disrupted by the Mfecane wars.

The Mfecane upheavals coincided with the rise to power of a junior chief of the Kuena (crocodile) clan of the Bamokoteli lineage known as Lepoqo – later, Moshoeshoe, a name he assumed following successful and celebrated cattle raiding adventures (Sanders 1975: 23). With these expeditions, Moshoeshoe’s wealth and popularity grew. He was undoubtedly an impressive warrior, full of the youthful arrogance, ambition and aggression necessary for political success and adoration in a patriarchal and hyper-masculine society. The mentorship of Mohlomi moulded him into the wise leader that he became – a nation builder (Ellenberger 1912: 107).

After marrying, Moshoeshoe had to leave his father’s village of Menkhoaneng to start his own – this was customary among the Sotho groups. In preparation, he gathered his age-mates and other clans. He welcomed many war refugees, providing them with food, shelter and security. He further co-opted and subordinated weaker neighbouring chiefdoms, and formed alliances with stronger ones. This is why the Basotho form a heterogeneous society today (Sanders 1975: 23).

In the search for a more defendable fortress, Moshoeshoe moved with his followers from Menkhoaneng to Botha-Bothe Mountain in 1820. When they arrived, they inhabited a vast cave on the southern side below the summit, and later built a village on the mountain top. The mountain had good pastures and strong perennial springs that supported their mixed-farming economy. Despite its fertile lands, rainfall and reliable streams, Botha-Bothe Mountain was not easily defendable, as it was connected to the Maloti mountain ranges on its southern side, making access by enemies possible (Walton 1959: 18).

Following a three-month siege by the Batlokoa clan, Moshoeshoe and his people were forced to leave Botha-Bothe Mountain. Their arch-rivals destroyed their crops in the fields and prevented their livestock from accessing pasture and water sources down the mountain (Thompson 1975: 41). Soon, Moshoeshoe’s ‘grain supplies were exhausted; they could no longer hunt … the proverbial tlala ea bojalikata [sic], the famine which reduces to gnawing old karosses, became a reality, and they killed their dogs and ate meat which they knew was rotten, for nothing was left’ (Sanders 1975: 33).

During the siege, Moshoeshoe sent his messengers (intelligence gatherers, lihloela, and fast runners, lititimi) to Chief Sepheka, a contemporary Nguni chief and ally, to ask for his assistance. Sepheka came to their rescue and launched a surprise attack at night. During the battle, Moshoeshoe had a visit from a fellow kinsman who informed him of a place in the south that would make a better fortress. Moshoeshoe sent a delegation of messengers and intelligence gatherers to survey the proposed area. The delegation returned with an excellent report of a mesa they had found in the south. In the winter of 1824, Moshoeshoe and his people escaped to the new mountain fortress, which they subsequently named ‘Thaba-Bosiu’ (‘the mountain of the night’). Fortified with traditional medicine, this meant that it grew at night to deceive adversaries (Ellenberger 1912: 145).

Thaba-Bosiu is a mesa in the valley of the Little Caledon (Phuthiatsana) River. A belt of steep sandstone cliffs encircles the summit. Detached from all neighbouring hills, it is in an amphitheatre of mountain ranges. These features made it possible for watchers to see enemies in all directions. A dolerite dyke cuts the sandstone cliffs in the northern side of the summit, providing seven defendable passes to the top. Moshoeshoe assigned his family members to set up their villages on the passes to guard them. The mountain had a big cave where Moshoeshoe’s wives and other villagers hid during wars. The area around the mountain and its top boasted good pastures and arable lands to support mixed farming, and was well-watered, with about eight good perennial springs. The mountaintop plains were large enough to accommodate a good number of villages, especially for the royal family and other high-ranking families. At a short distance, a river meandered at the foot of the mountain slopes, providing water for the inhabitants and their animals (Walton 1959: 18).

During attacks, Moshoeshoe’s strategy was to volley spears and roll an avalanche of stones down on climbing adversaries. This was the primary means of defence and a highly successful one. On the left of Moshoeshoe’s village, there are the remains of a cairn. Visitors, as a gesture of respect to the chief, added a stone to the cairn on arrival. Ambrose argues that: ‘[N]o doubt the cairn was plundered for missiles in times of wars’ (Ambrose n.d.: 13–14).

Between 1827 and 1865, eight major attacks failed. For example, in 1828 the AmaNgwane Nguni group attacked Moshoeshoe’s fortress. Because of their superior numbers, they were on course to overwhelm the defenders. Their girls had already brought beer to celebrate the victory. However, fewer than five thousand Basotho warriors defeated them, led by Moshoeshoe’s two eldest sons, Letsie and Molapo. In 1829, when Moshoeshoe had gone cattle raiding, the Batlokoa again attacked his people, but the old men and young boys who had been left to protect the summit passes defeated them. In 1831, the AmaNdebele of Mzilikazi (a breakaway Zulu group) attacked Thaba-Bosiu; like the others, they were repelled by avalanches of rocks down the mountain (Ambrose n.d.; Thompson 1975; Sanders 1975).

Moshoeshoe’s acquisition of guns and horses played a crucial role in consolidating his supremacy in the region. Cattle occupied a central economic and symbolic position in Basotho society, but the horse was now elevated to a similar position, and it played a crucial role in social transformation. The horse increased military, communication and transport efficiency. As Swart (2010: 100) observes, ‘The Basotho experienced the horse as a revolution in the military sense, a vital cog in the machinery of state formation’. They also ‘operated as a cohesive cultural force, continuing to be central in sports, festivals, social relations (although secondary to cattle) and funeral rituals’. Swart observes further that:

Key leaders like Mzilikazi, Sekonyela, Moshoeshoe, Dingane and Hintsa¹ all turned their attention to ensuring that their combatants were mounted and armed as far as possible. There were also initiatives from ordinary people themselves to acquire horses and guns. Gun and horse ownership seeped through to the Caledon Valley, Highveld and eastern seaboard (from the Cape). The acquisition happened rapidly: in 1800, for example, Tswana were on foot fighting off mounted raiders, but a generation later they themselves had access to guns and horses. Similarly, in the 1820s, Xhosa factions simply hungered after horses, but by 1846 they were able to mobilise as many as 7,000 armed mounted men. But only one African group became a wholly mounted polity – the Basotho. (Ibid.: 78–79)

Individuals working in the Cape under white and Griqua farmers were the first to carry the news of these two pieces of military weaponry back home. At first, they were acquired from the Cape and across the Orange River in exchange for labour, as spoils of border disputes with the Afrikaners in the early 1830s, and through raids. Moshoeshoe is said to have imported about two hundred horses between 1833 and 1838. By 1842, he had an army of some five hundred horsemen; a decade later, this had risen to six thousand soldiers, on horseback and adorned in European regalia (Swart 2010: 77–102).

By 1850, a British official observed that ‘[t]he Basuto people have within the last few years become exceedingly rich in cattle and horses’, and that they possessed ‘more firearms than all other tribes in the [Orange River] Sovereignty put together’ (Swart 2010: 88). In 1875, thirty-five thousand horses were counted in Basutoland, and the figure had increased to over eighty thousand by 1891 (ibid.: 94–96).

Within the region, the Basotho became famous as the ‘horse people’ due to their success in breeding, training, riding and trading horses. They developed a breed which came to be known as the ‘Basotho Pony’. The biophysical environment was crucial for its development; the mountainous topography and good pastures, in a relatively disease-free zone, aided in the development of a much-desired, hardy and ‘all very square-built active’ phenotype (Swart 2010: 98).

The Basotho breed was an adoption and adaption of the ‘Cape Horse’, a stock animal that developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch East India Company commissioned a refreshment station in the Cape to feed the scurvy-ridden and malnourished crews of ships voyaging to the East Indies. This is how horses came to southern Africa. The Dutch settlers had the ambition to create a ‘colony’, and that needed horses, amongst other things. But the Company saw the Cape just as a ‘refreshment station’, and refused permission for a colony. The few horses imported from Holland often died of horse sickness in the new environment (Swart 2010: 20–24).

The Cape settlement now imported horses from the East and elsewhere. In 1689, it imported some ‘Javanese’ ponies (a South East Asian horse of Arab-Persian breed). It later introduced South American stock (in 1778); North American breeds (in 1792); English Thoroughbreds (in 1792) and Spanish Barbs (in 1807). Through breeding and acclimatisation, the Cape Horse/Pony evolved. It was exported to other parts of the world, while it also found its way into the hinterland of its own territory (Swart 2010: 32).

Wealth, Redistribution and Social Relations

Moshoeshoe’s chiefdom grew and its population increased rapidly in the nineteenth century. From eighty thousand people in the 1840s, the population had reached about two-hundred thousand by the 1890s (Eldredge 1993: 94). Frequent outbreaks of war at the beginning of the century disrupted production and trade networks. As a result, the survival of the people depended heavily on their chiefs’ ability to provide livestock and land for them. Moshoeshoe redistributed wealth in the forms of these two commodities to provide for his people. For Basotho, the land belonged to the people; it was held in trust by chiefs who had administrative rights over it, while the people had rights of usufruct (Duncan 2006). Commenting on land administration, ownership and use among the Basotho, Casalis (1861: 159) had this to say:

The sale or transfer of land is unknown among these people. The country is understood to belong to the whole community, and no one has a right to dispose of the soil from which he derives his support. The sovereign chiefs assign to their vassals the parts they are to occupy; and these latter grant to every father of a family a portion of arable land proportionate to his wants. The land thus granted is insured to the cultivator as long as he does not change his locality. If he goes to settle elsewhere, he must restore the fields to the chief under whom he holds them, in order that the latter may dispose of them to some other person. The bounds of each field are marked with precision; and cases of dispute are referred to the arbitration of the neighbours; and, as a last resort, to the chief himself.

Furthermore, Moshoeshoe redistributed cattle to his subjects through cattle-loaning (Mafisa). He would loan a household about twenty to thirty heads of cattle. By 1839, Moshoeshoe had allocated around twenty thousand cattle in this way (Backhouse 1844: 375). The benefactor retained ownership rights and any offspring, and could inspect his livestock at any time. The recipient was responsible for grazing cattle in the mountains where there were good pastures. They consumed dairy products, and after the introduction of the plough, used oxen as draught power. Since cattle were spread over a wide geographical area, not all of them could be affected by drought or disease at once. Kimble (1978: 53) argues that ‘by lending cattle to his followers, the chief ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• Introduction
• Part I. The Rise and Fall of the Basotho Nation
• Part II. British Trading Monopoly and the Liberation Struggle
• Part III. Lesotho’s Postcolonial Counter-Revolution and Resistance to It
• Conclusion. Commerce as Politics
• Index