The Basotho Nation-State: What Legacy for the Future?

Abstract

Virtuallyall analyses of Lesotho's political framework have agreed that strong elements of national identity have neither forestalled domestic conflict nor served to promote a unified assault on awesome economic problems. Hence many writers imply that a major asset, rarely found in independent Africa, has been wasted.1Roger Leys has perceptively applied dependency theories of a ‘labour reserve’ economy to Lesotho,2and spends considerable effort on historical analysis aimed at demonstrating the duration and pervasiveness of this process of systematic underdevelopment. In his conclusion he suggests that ‘the long and courageous battle of the Basotho to assert their dignity and worth is in fact a resource and political weapon of incomparable significance in the long-term battle for the liberation of southern Africa.’ Leys infers that national and class identities are interrelated, and possibly reinforcing, when he says that ‘the history of the struggle of the Basotho people and the very degree of their integration into the black working class of South Africa is a formidable weapon.’3