Facts On How Basotho Lost Land In The 19Th Century

(MENAFN- The Post) THE conversations around boundaries between Lesotho and South Africa ought to start, first, by agreeing on events leading to Basotho losing 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.

It is critical to identify the various groups raising questions of Lesotho boundaries and their motives.

Equally important is the need to agree on the purpose of raising the issues and discussing them.

Let's start with the groups before presenting the historical context. There are two main groups.

The first group are the political elites and middle-class politicians who normally raise the issue during election campaigns.

The basis of their claim for the return of territory is nationalist and driven by nationalist pride.

Secondly, poor Basotho and organisations that work with them, motivated by hope that regaining the territory will ease overcrowding and socio-economic pressures that come with being cooped in a small and poorly resourced territory.

The second group are open to discussion of other arrangements (apart from the return territory) for easing overcrowding and socio-economic pressures that Basotho face.

There are disputes, even among Basotho, regarding the question of what happened leading to Basotho's loss of territory to the British and the Free State (FS) in the nineteenth century.

This is an important question to ask and try to answer because it might go a long way to inform judgments about the justifiability, or not, of Basotho's claim to the territory. The historical account below does not claim to be more valid than others.

A reading of Basotho history shows that all land that Basotho lost was by either war and conquest or treaties Basotho signed under British pressure.

No land was signed away by Moshoeshoe I for personal gain as happened in some chiefdoms. Some of this land was lost initially to the British in ways described below, until 1854, when it was inherited by FS, 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 they expected the British to act fairly but the British, by their own admission, were quite biased towards the Boers in their awards. All that land became part of the Union of South Africa (1910), apartheid white minority-ruled Republic of South Africa (1948) and majority-ruled Republic of South Africa (1994).

The chronology of events presented below might provide an understanding of how Basotho lost their land to the British and, then, to the FS, and governments that followed. It might also help in deciding whether there is any justification in Basotho's claims to land.

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: Napier Treaty signed by Moshoeshoe I, on 5 October, 1843. The Treaty 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 lost territory became British territory.

1845: Maitland's Treaty. Moshoeshoe I signed the Maitland Treaty in which he demanded, and the British promised, removal of the Boers from Basotho territory. In fact, however, the Treaty was never presented for signature of the British High Commissioner (BHC) in the Cape Colony, and the British never alerted Moshoeshoe I of this. Without BHC signature, the Treaty was null and void. Territory from which the British had promised to remove the Boers remained British territory, and was later inherited by FS. 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: BHC 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, ORS. A large part of territory that became British territory in this way was Basotho's land. As with the two previous Treaties, Moshoeshoe I's motive in signing was to secure British protection from the voortrekker settlers.

1849: Warden Line. An agent of the British in FS, Douglas Warden, drew a boundary between Basotho and Free Staters which“...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 sovereignty over the ORS, handing over to the Free Staters all territory they (British) had taken from Basotho; and repudiating all their Treaties with Basotho. In these ways, the British left the Boers 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 FS that year, BHC George Grey, accepted 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 FS's Commission and its ex parte submission as basis of Grey's determination of a boundary between Lesotho and the FS. 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 FS.

1864: BHC Philip Wodehouse intervened in another boundary dispute between Basotho and the Free Staters. He described his settlement as having been“...quite in favour of the Boers...” Prompted by the desperate situation that the British and the Boers had created for Basotho, Wodehouse later attacked policies of his country which denied Basotho arms in wars with FS that led to loss of more land by Basotho.

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 northeast, warring parties agreed to BHC Wodehouse's arbitration. The Free Staters succeeded to persuade Wodehouse against allowing Basotho's participation in the talks, and represented Basotho by himself in negotiations with a full complement of FS representation. Although Wodehouse was able to prise modern Lesotho's northeast lowlands from the FS, and return the territory to Basotho ownership, he allowed the FS to keep all land that Basotho lost to the British and the FS from the 1830s. Through the Treaty Basotho lost, according to a FS newspaper, a further“...large portion of their beautiful country...” That is how present Lesotho boundaries came about. 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: Is it a statist one that emphasises power between states, and might is right?

Or is it one that searches for what is just?

Should it be a nationalist one?

It is not clear whether facts presented above form bases of arguments by groups agitating for return land lost from the 1840s.

Dr Motlatsi Thabane

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