#lesotho

[aestum]

(by germanadventurer)

[folkfashion]

Basotho boy's blanket, Lesotho, by Chris Parkes

[afloweroutofstone]

In Lesotho, a small African nation surrounded on all sides by South Africa, the combination of US aid withdrawal and President Trump's threat of imposing a 50% tariff led the nation to declare a national state of disaster.

"In a Country Trump Says Nobody’s Heard Of, Tariffs Bring Chaos," Alexanda Wexler, Wall Street Journal, 1 August 2025 [non-paywall version here]:

Trump, who publicly disparaged Lesotho as a place “nobody has ever heard of,” threatened the tiny southern African country with 50% tariffs, among the highest rates proposed for any single nation or territory. The Trump administration ultimately set a 15% tariff on Lesotho late Thursday, but much damage has already occurred to the country’s textile industry. It is uncertain how many buyers will return, leaving thousands of workers in limbo... By imposing tariffs, Trump appears to be sidestepping the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which allows 32 African countries to sell some 1,800 products in the U.S. duty-free. The law expires this year, and, with Trump wielding tariffs as the foundation of his international economic policies, most experts don’t expect the Republican-controlled Congress to renew it. Shelile says a lobbying group that purported to have access to prominent members of Trump’s family asked in a virtual meeting for $1.5 million to campaign for tariff relief. He didn’t identify the lobbyists. “They wanted the money immediately, and they didn’t want to guarantee results,” Shelile said. Lesotho declined the offer, he said... In September 2024, the U.S. Embassy in Maseru said it would pay for a new schoolhouse in Qabane, but had only disbursed about half of the pledged $9,000 before Trump ended the funding, said Cheletsi Lefa, the school’s principal. The school’s 47 pupils continue to attend classes in the roofless church hall while Lefa searches for funding to finish the new building.  “We are going to every corner we can reach to get funding,” he said. “We are leaving no stone unturned.”

[stavrosskundromichalis]

Some hungry Abrictosaurus consors checking out a dried out river bed in Early Jurassic South Africa

[iseetheworldinmetaphor]

The Forgotten Kingdom

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 25, 2025 - African Liberation Day: a day of continued anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle!

Revolutionary organizations across the African continent mobilized for African Liberation Day to declare that the fight for sovereignty and independence from imperialist and colonial threats continues.

Many groups expressed support for the AES (the Alliance of Sahel States, consisting of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso), which has taken bold steps to combat imperialist meddling, kicking out French colonial troops and nationalizing several industries owned by foreign multi-nationals. [video]

[banzaboiieatskilishi]

TRIBE OF THE DAY : Basotho

The Sotho people, or Basotho, are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa who speak Sesotho. They are native to modern Lesotho and South Africa. The Basotho have inhabited the region since around the fifth century CE and are closely related to other Bantu peoples of the region.

The modern Basotho identity emerged from the accomplished diplomacy of Moshoeshoe I who unified the disparate clans of Sotho–Tswana origin that had dispersed across southern Africa in the early 19th century. Most Basotho today live in Lesotho or South Africa, as the area of the Orange Free State was originally part of Moshoeshoe's nation (now Lesotho).

Ntsoana-Tsatsi  is believed to be the place of origin of the Sotho/Basotho people. It is both a mythical and physical place. The mythical aspect of it, as described by Ellenberger (1988) is a place from where the first Sotho people emerged.

They are believed to have come from the ground at Ntsoana-Tsatsi, where there is a lot of water and reeds. The geographical location of this place is believed to be Vrede in the Free State Province of South Africa, according to accounts by informants. It still carries this name and some Sotho people are still found in the area.

Early history. Bantu-speaking peoples had settled in what is now South Africa by about 500 CE. Separation from the Tswana is assumed to have taken place by the 14th century. The first historical references to the Basotho date to the 19th century. By that time, a series of Basotho kingdoms covered the southern portion of the plateau (Free State Province and parts of Gauteng). Basotho society was highly decentralized, and organized on the basis of kraals, or extended clans, each of which was ruled by a chief. Fiefdoms were united into loose confederations.

19th century. In the 1820s, refugees from the Zulu expansion under Shaka came into contact with the Basotho people residing on the highveld. In 1823, pressure caused one group of Basotho, the Kololo, to migrate north. They moved past the Okavango Swamp and across the Zambezi into Barotseland, which is now part of Zambia. In 1845, the Kololo conquered Barotseland.

At about the same time, the Boers began to encroach upon Basotho territory. After the Cape Colony was ceded to Britain at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, farmers who opted to leave the former Dutch colony were called the voortrekkers ("pioneers") and moved inland where they eventually established independent polities.

At the time of these developments, Moshoeshoe I gained control of the Basotho kingdoms of the southern highveld. Universally praised as a skilled diplomat and strategist, he moulded the disparate refugee groups escaping the Difaqane into a cohesive nation. His leadership allowed his small nation to survive the obstacles that destroyed other indigenous South African kingdoms during the 19th century, such as the Zulu hegemony, the inward expansion of the voortrekkers and the plans of imperial Britain.

In 1822, Moshoeshoe established the capital at Butha-Buthe, an easily defensible mountain in the northern Drakensberg mountain range, thus laying the foundations of the eventual Kingdom of Lesotho. His capital was later moved to Thaba Bosiu.

To deal with the encroaching voortrekker groups, Moshoeshoe encouraged French missionary activity in his kingdom. Missionaries sent by the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society provided the King with foreign affairs counsel and helped to facilitate the purchase of modern weapons.

Aside from acting as state ministers, missionaries (primarily Casalis and Arbousset) played a vital role in delineating Sesotho orthography and printing Sesotho language materials between 1837 and 1855. The first Sesotho translation of the Bible appeared in 1878.

In 1868, after losing the western lowlands to the Boers during the Free State–Basotho Wars, Moshoeshoe successfully appealed to Queen Victoria to proclaim Lesotho (then known as Basutoland) a protectorate of Britain. Accordingly, the British administration was established in Maseru, the site of Lesotho's current capital. Local chieftains retained power over internal affairs, while Britain was responsible for foreign affairs and the defense of the protectorate.

In 1869, the British sponsored a process to demarcate the borders of Basutoland. While many clans had territory within Basutoland, large numbers of Sesotho speakers resided in areas allocated to the Orange Free State, the sovereign voortrekker republic that bordered the Basotho kingdom.

The Sotho language, seSotho, is a Bantu language closely related to seTswana. Sotho utilizes click consonants in some words, while sePedi and seTswana do not have clicks. Sotho is spoken in the Kingdom of Lesotho and in South Africa. It is concentrated in the Free State, Gauteng and Eastern Cape Provinces, with small groups of speakers in Namibia and Zambia.

Sotho is 1 of the 11 official languages recognized by the South African Constitution and 7.9% of the South African population uses it as their home language. It is a tonal language governed by the noun, which is split into various classes. It is known as an agglutinating language (a combination of simple word elements to express a specific meaning), with many suffixes and prefixes used in sentence construction causing sound changes.

It is rich in proverbs, idioms, and special forms of address reserved for elders and in-laws. Currently, Sotho has two spelling systems, one in use in Lesotho and another in South Africa. For example, in Lesotho a common greeting is Khotso, le phela joang? (literally, "Peace, how are you?"). In South Africa, the word joang (how) is written jwang, and khotso is written kgotso.

Sotho was one of the first African languages to become a written language and therefore Sotho literature is extensive. South Sotho is comprised of the Fokeng, Tlokwa, Kwena, Phetla, Phuti, and Pulana dialects or varieties and according to scholars the written form was originally based on the Tlokwa dialect. Today the written language is mostly based on the Kwena and Fokeng dialects, although there are variations. Sesotho was transmuted into writing by the missionaries Casalis and Arbousset of the Paris Evangelical Mission who arrived at Thaba Bosiu in 1833. One of the first novels in a South African language was Chaka, written in Sotho by Thomas Mofolo in the early years of the twentieth century. It is still read today and has been translated into a number of languages.

(source used 101lasttribes.com but please if you have nothing to do research this tribe)

LETS CELEBRATE THE BASOTHO PEOPLE

[miku-earth]

Calling all artists!

and those who might have seen such art!

I've searched high and low to make sure every country is represented by the "Miku worldwide" trend, but I'm yet to see any art for:

🇳🇪 Niger (not to be confused with Nigeria!)

🇲🇼 Malawi

🇬🇳 Guinea

🇧🇮 Burundi

🇨🇫 Central African Republic

🇪🇷 Eritrea

🇱🇸 Lesotho

🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau

🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe

🇸🇿 eSwatini - seen! ✅

other African nations not listed have already had a Miku posted or in the queue!

If you have seen any art in the 'Miku worldwide' trend from one of these countries, please let me know!

Please pass this around so that it is more well known! For those without tumblr, there is a contact link on the site miku.earth :)