Lesotho

Amidst growing global endorsements of new biomedical HIV prevention strategies, ARV-based pre-exposure prophylaxis (ARV PrEP) has garnered considerable attention as a potentially promising prevention strategy. Though it may offer more effective protection for certain at-risk groups than conventional prevention strategies (such as sexual partner reduction, condom use, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission), PrEP is more costly. PrEP requires more ongoing contact between individuals and providers, and a level of surveillance from the health system that is not necessary with other preventive measures. In this sense, it represents a new biotechnology for HIV prevention that poses particular challenges for worldwide implementation, given developing countries' struggling health systems and incomplete HIV treatment programs. Since the emergence of PrEP has stimulated ethical discussions premised on incomplete knowledge of efficacy and implementation, this paper explores the ethical parameters of a likely scenario for PrEP usage in a single, resource-poor country. We first develop a plausible model for PrEP deployment and utilization based on current PrEP research, while carefully considering the reigning institutional values of feasibility and effectiveness in global health approaches. Drawing on ethnographic research of HIV treatment and prevention approaches in Lesotho, we address ethical questions arising from this scenario of PrEP delivery. Lesotho presents a compelling and emblematic case study of PrEP's potential successes and pitfalls in a developing country, given the country's high HIV prevalence, struggles to achieve universal access to HIV treatment regimes, continued existence of stigma around the epidemic, and difficulties in addressing persistent social inequalities that fuel infections.

The article analyses various cases of captivity in a region comprised within modern-day South Africa and Lesotho in the late precolonial period. Focusing on a single social institution, bohlanka, the article follows its traces scattered among the Batlhaping, the Basotho, the Barolong, the Bataung, and other smaller precolonial communities. Generally considered by scholars as a form of clientship based on cattle-loans, bohlanka is here redefined as originating from warfare and captivity, and later expanding to include the destitute. The fundamental elements of the institution-violence, natal alienation, and suspended death-lead to the conclusion that bohlanka constituted a local form of slavery that pre-dated colonial influences.

Cahiers édités par le Centre tricontinental, Louvain-la-Neuve Autorisation de reproduction ou traduction à demander à cetri@cetri.be Résumés L'eau, patrimoine commun de l'humanité Éditorial L'eau principe de vie et patrimoine collectif La question de l'eau devient centrale pour l'humanité. Or, la pénurie est une expression des rapports sociaux existant entre les nations et à l'intérieur de chacune d'entre elles. L'eau est une source de conflits qui risquent de devenir majeurs dans un avenir proche. Sa contamination fruit du modèle de développement, pose des problèmes majeurs et immédiats. Les solutions techniques ne sont pas neutres, quant à la privatisation, elle consiste à faire de l'eau une marchandise, soumise à la loi du marché et non à celle des besoins. L'eau est un problème éthique et doit être considérée comme un patrimoine universel de l'humanité. L'eau, bien commun des peuples Samir Amin Indispensable à la vie, l'eau est répartie de façon inégale sur la surface du globe. Une telle répartition conditionne largement le devenir des peuples, car elle fait de ce patrimoine commun une source d'abondance pour les uns et de rareté pour les autres. L'offensive néolibérale actuelle, sous sa bannière de marché unique et mondial, aggrave cette inégalité au sens où elle entend faire de l'eau un bien marchand et, par conséquent, sujet à la privatisation et à la concurrence propre au marché. Quelles qu'en soient les motivations, cette option ne prend pas en compte les besoins des populations, encore moins, elle respecte son droit fondamental à la vie au travers de ce qui en constitue l'élément de base : l'eau. Et donc, il est plus que jamais urgent d'affirmer le droit des peuples à ce bien commun, de promouvoir des perspectives économiques plus soucieuses du développement humain que des intérêts économiques, et d'encourager des initiatives politiques favorables aux plus défavorisés, notamment en matière d'eau. La crise de l'eau aux Philippines Antonio M. Claparols

Objective: Early and frequent antenatal clinic (ANC) attendance is important for promotion of healthy outcomes for mother and child. This study explored the relationship between HIV status at the first ANC visit and subsequent ANC attendance among pregnant women in Lesotho.

The geologic history of the Great Escarpment, which includes within it the Drakensberg escarpment, closely follows cycles of tectonic evolution and land surface denudation from the Jurassic to Miocene that affected the entire southern African region. Along the Drakensberg escarpment, which includes some of the highest mountain summits in southern Africa, the presence of flat-lying Jurassic basalts has strongly influenced processes and patterns of subsequent weathering, erosion and mass movement, in particular during cooler climate periods of the Quaternary. Distinctive weathering, periglacial and glacial, mass movement and fluvial phenomena have resulted from this interplay between geology, climate and geomorphological processes over the Quaternary and Holocene. The Drakensberg escarpment region also shows a close interconnection between landscape geomorphology, biodiversity and patterns of human cultural occupation during the Holocene. For these reasons, conservation of geomorphological, ecological and cultural sites in the Drakensberg escarpment, and their sustainable management under conditions of climate change, is an important contemporary issue.

An increasing number of large dam projects present a major threat to cultural heritage in much of Africa. This paper asks how such destructive projects can be held to account; not only to mitigate damage, but also to develop local heritage management structures and increase public awareness. It focuses on the situation in Lesotho, which has a history of large dam projects, but a severely under-resourced archaeological and heritage management community. The main emphasis is on a recent and ongoing project in advance of the Metolong Dam in western Lesotho that was founded with training and skills transfer as a primary aim. In addition to some practical suggestions for Lesotho that take into account its particular geopolitical context, this case study brings three broader interrelated issues into view, none of which are new, but all of which deserve fresh attention: the unsuit-ability of a solely commercial, contract-based response to the threat from development; the negative effects of using unskilled 'labour'; and the imperative to develop an archaeology that is relevant to and actively involves the rural African communities within which we work.

ABSTRACT Climate change poses significant challenges to the tourism sector, with snow-based tourism particularly threatened. Snow-based tourism is largely dependent on adaptation, including snowmaking practices and product diversification. In the global south, the limited snow-based tourism products face similar challenges to the global north, but with significantly higher vulnerability and lower adaptive capacity. By making use of a questionnaire survey and personal in-depth interviews this paper examines adaptation mechanisms and the perceptions held by tourists and managers at Afriski, Lesotho. While Afriski already implements adaptive mechanisms, considering the current global environmental change projections for southern Africa, greater adaptive action is necessary.

This chapter traces the ways that politicians, the colonial government, and the independence-era government of Lesotho used communism in local political battles to bring the Cold War into domestic politics and the politics of decolonization.

In 1924 the agricultural department in Lesotho, southern Africa, launched a demonstration program whereby local men performed rural outreach. Studies of agricultural demonstration in Africa and elsewhere have focused on the ways colonial and segregationist states deployed knowledge and policy via demonstrators to control people and landscapes. This article complicates this important position by arguing that the problems and possibilities of agricultural demonstration, which today remains central to agrarian policy in many countries, must be situated at the intersection of political, economic, and ecological processes operating across multiple scales. This story involves agricultural networks in the British Empire and the American South, and focuses especially on farmers, demonstrators, and politicians in Lesotho and South Africa. Most importantly, local narratives from mountainous Lesotho show that the location of demonstrations, the identity of the demonstrators, and their changing priorities and approaches were key factors in determining how these programs unfolded.

Lesotho was one of the first countries to pledge their support to the African Mining Vision (AVM). The question of ownership of mineral rights remains divisive in many host countries and communities. The most challenging phenomenon is whether Lesotho can be able to come up with the ownership model that will ensure that it develops its economy as well as yielding reasonable returns for private investors.

Domestic investors have been a Cinderella in ownership of mineral rights in Lesotho as they government of Lesotho relied heavily on foreign direct investment (FDI). There is no transparency on how domestic investors interested in extractive sectors could be informed about opportunities to invest. The role of host communities in ownership of mineral rights leaves much room for interpretation by mining companies. The paper attempts to unpack the structure of ownership of mineral rights in Lesotho as well as making recommendations on how the government policy could facilitate a balance between optimising domestic and foreign investments. The government of Lesotho has not followed the bank wagon and formed state owned mining companies like its neighbouring countries of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa amongst others. Rather the government has resorted to holding a minimum 20% stake in all fully operational mines. The government stake in mining companies ranges between 20% and 30%. Diamond mining has become a very important industry in Lesotho since early 2000s.

The government of Lesotho has not implemented a public enterprise corporate governance policy which could hold state owned enterprises (SOEs) accountable. The paper makes recommendations on how the government should model the mining and mineral policy in order to ascertain that Basotho benefit from the minerals extracted from their land. The recommendations include indigenisation, role of government, role of domestic investors and greater accountability.

""This paper discusses the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) in rural
communities of Lesotho. Literature study reveals that bridging the digital divide in disadvantaged
communities requires adequate knowledge of the underlying causes of the divide, a favorable
Government Policy, a focus on the benefits of providing ICT, the provision of suitable infrastructure and
a committed management team that is prepared to get around the various barriers or risks found in such
disadvantaged communities. The aim of the study was to find the contribution of ICT to the socioeconomic
environment of Lesotho rural communities. Using Activity Theory as a lens, the study
evaluated ICT provision in Lesotho’s disadvantaged communities. Methodologically, the research refuted
the principle of ‘cause and effect’ hence a descriptive research enquiry was followed. Questionnaires
were distributed in two villages, Mabote and Khubhetsoana and it was found that while ICT has the
potential to improve the socio-economic status of rural people, issues like cost, accessibility, lack of
infrastructure, illiteracy to mention but a few are impediments to the full realiasation of ICT’s
empowerment potential in rural communities of Lesotho. The research concludes by suggesting some
strategies to improving the positive impact of ICT in these areas.""

Slope and lowland sediment systems throughout southern Africa are dominated by the presence of colluvium with interbedded palaeosols and hardground duricrusts. These sediments correspond to phases of land surface instability and stability, respectively, during the late Quaternary. This study examines the stratigraphy and environmental interpretation of slope sediment records from specific sites in southern Africa for the period of marine isotope stages (MIS) 6 to 1 (~191 ka to present), informed by theoretical ideas of the dynamics of slope systems including sediment supply and accommodation space. Based on this analysis, phases of land surface instability and stability for the period MIS 6 to 1 are identified. The spatial and temporal patterns of land surface conditions are not a simple reflection of climate forcing, but rather reflect the workings of slope systems in response to climate in addition to the role of geologic, edaphic and ecological factors that operate within catchment-scale sediment systems. Considering these systems dynamics can yield a better understanding of the usefulness and limitations of slope sediment stratigraphies.

Although Roman-Dutch law is distinct from English law, the two legal systems have borrowed from each other in relation to the law of contract. Roman-Dutch law is a casuistic (judge-made) made legal system which is applied by the courts of Lesotho. English law which is also judgemade law has also played a major role in the development of the principles Roman-Dutch law and as a consequence both legal traditions (systems) occupy a significant part of the law of contract of Lesotho.

This thesis presents an archaeological, historical, and ethnohistorical study of the nineteenth-century BaPhuthi, a peripatetic, horticulturist chiefdom with a political economy premised upon cattle raiding and active in southern Africa's Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains. The BaPhuthi appear as a valuable case study for exploring how 'tribes' and cultural identities (particularly when rooted in subsistence strategies) are historically and archaeologically constructed. Firstly, the thesis explores how eighteenth-and nineteenth-century sociocultural taxonomies were crafted by colonists and colonial subjects alike, with ethnonyms acting as ciphers for political and economic behaviours and locational traits rather than emic identifications. The BaPhuthi's choice to combine traits of hierarchical chiefdoms with pronounced mobility and heterodox, 'outlaw' activities (i.e. voluntarily becoming barbarians) confounded these taxa, as the BaPhuthi failed to conform to expectations of forager, farmer, chiefly, or 'savage' behaviour, rendering them historically marginal or invisible. The thesis thus employs a range of archival evidence to reconstruct BaPhuthi lifeways and historical trajectories. The BaPhuthi emerged and thrived in the borderlands between Moshoeshoe I's Basotho state, the eastern Cape Colony, and the Orange Free State: they exploited the ambiguities of colonial authority to build an extensive network of alliances premised upon cattle raiding, aided by their ability to turn the inhospitable terrain of the Maloti-Drakensberg to their advantage. This analysis illuminates the BaPhuthi as a culturally hybrid, ethnogenetic polity that attracted and discharged a disparate following as needed, while maintaining a degree of solidarity and chiefly hierarchy. The thesis details the BaPhuthi's peripatetic settlement strategy: BaPhuthi leaders established multiple dispersed political seats throughout their territories south of the Senqu River, which they would frequently activate and deactivate, enabling them to settle their heterogeneous following within their territories. The thesis then explores archaeological corollaries of BaPhuthi lifeways: historical analysis suggests that the BaPhuthi's archaeological footprint would be ephemeral (despite their polity's regional significance), and archaeological approaches to Iron Age Farming Communities (based in the historical identities described above) currently do not fully accommodate polities such as the BaPhuthi. The thesis discusses a methodology designed to address the archaeology of the BaPhuthi polity and its results. Considering how the BaPhuthi fashioned a diverse, heterodox chiefdom that manipulated the ambiguities of colonial rule encourages revisiting prevailing conceptions of how cultural identities and economies are rooted in contingent historical circumstances; drawing on comparative cases from North and South America suggests revising longstanding views of the Maloti-Drakensberg as a marginal colonial theatre and re-positioning heterodox actors as capable of influencing the terms of colonial encounters.

Climate change poses a number of challenges for the global tourism industry, with site-specific issues for many tourism destinations. The snow-based tourism industry is particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change, notably through rising temperatures and alterations in natural precipitation patterns. Afriski is a mountain ski resort established in the Lesotho Highlands that is facing the challenges of a changing climate. Afriski is a unique tourism experience as one of only two ski resorts in subSaharan Africa. This resort is actively addressing the challenges of climate change through the artificial production of snow, the temporal manipulation of the skiing season and through diversifying their tourist product offerings. Adaptation mechanisms implemented as a means of addressing climate change are critical to the longevity and success of snow-based tourism resorts and for the tourism industry in general. This study makes use of a mixed-method approach comprising face-to-face, semi-formal interviews with managerial stakeholders, questionnaire surveys completed by tourists and an analysis of climatically relevant comments posted to TripAdvisor. Tourist perceptions, as determined by this study, showed general concerns regarding climate change and tourism. Tourist perceptions however, also revealed high levels of satisfaction regarding the adaptation mechanisms implemented in order to address the challenges of climate change. This unique case study investigates the impacts of climate change on a snow-based resort in southern Africa while contributing to the body of research on climate change and tourism in the global south.

Despite the tectonic changes that have taken place in Southern Africa since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is still widely considered a hegemonic regional power by scholars, practitioners and pundits. This article challenges this interpretation, asserting that both Pretoria’s foreign policy and that of its neighbours fit the concept of regional unipolarity with more precision. Since the early 1990s, South Africa has pursued leadership within binding regional institutions and invested resources in order to reinforce the sovereignty of second-tier states such as Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which have in turn disputed its diplomatic and military primacy, achieving impressive results. This behaviour is characteristic of unipoles rather than hegemons. In this article I revisit the evolution of South African relations with its more proximate neighbours in a transition from hegemony (1961–1990) to unipolarity. I start by defining both concepts and clarifying the behaviours that regional powers and small states are expected to have under hegemonic and unipolar settings. Then, I examine inter-state relations in the region, showing that the concept of unipolarity best describes power distribution and best predicts foreign policy in Southern Africa since the 1990s. Finally, I show that this exercise in concept rectification illuminates comparisons with other regional unipoles, and provides a useful framework to forecast the consequences of an eventual Southern African bipolarity, if Angola continues to catch up.

Nelson Mandela's clandestine membership of the South African Communist Party (SACP) placed the African National Congress (ANC) and, later, its military wing, under SACP control, created civil war within the ANC on class lines between 1955-1959, and abolished direct one person one vote in the ANC (1957). These moves culminated in the split that created the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). It is arguable that Mandela's work to protect his class interests delayed South African freedom by maybe twenty years.

For 130 years dinosaurs have been divided into two distinct clades – Ornithischia and Saurischia.

This dissertation looks at the earliest evolution of the clade Dinosauria by focusing upon the interrelationships of the major subsidiary clades within it. It does this following examination, comparison and description of early dinosaur material, and by utilising modern phylogenetic analysis techniques, to rigorously and objectively test the fundamental groupings within the clade Dinosauria using a newly compiled dataset of early dinosaurs and other dinosauromorphs (= close dinosaur relatives). The current consensus on how the principal clades within Dinosauria (Theropoda, Sauropodomorpha and Ornithischia) are related to one another is challenged by the results of these analyses. This study finds, for the first time, a sister-group relationship between Ornithischia and Theropoda, here termed Ornithoscelida. Consequently, a new definition for Dinosauria is presented, as the historic definition would exclude all members of Sauropodomorpha from the clade. As well as this, I propose revisions to the definitions of each of the principal dinosaurian sub-divisions and propose a new timeframe and geographic setting for the origin of Dinosauria. These new hypotheses force re-evaluations of early dinosaur cladogenesis and character evolution, suggest the independent acquisition of hypercarnivory in multiple dinosaur groups and offers an explanation for many of the anatomical features previously regarded as striking convergences between theropods and early ornithischians.

As well as presenting new anatomical data on many early dinosaurs and dinosauromorphs, including a comprehensive re-description of the postcranial anatomy of Lesothosaurus diagnosticus (Chapter 2), and a new anatomical dataset of early dinosaurs (the largest ever compiled), this thesis goes on to implement the new dataset to investigate a number of important outstanding questions about early dinosaur evolution and provides new lines of enquiry for future workers to pursue. The results of this thesis reveal the oldest known members of the dinosaurian clades Theropoda and Sauropodomorpha (Chapter 6), as well as a new clade within Ornithischia; a taxon previously thought to represent a derived theropod has been recovered as a potential ‘missing link’ between theropods and ornithischians using the new dataset.
This work now provides a unique tool for the assessment of the phylogenetic affinities of early dinosaurs and dinosauromorphs and, once published, will hopefully become the benchmark dataset for palaeontologists working in this area.

Many scholars note the exceptional economic and political performance of Botswana relative to other Sub-Saharan African Countries (e.g., Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson 2003; Lange 2009). Since independence Botswana has had one of the highest average growth rates in the world, plus high rule of law, political rights, and social rights relative to other African countries- despite the fact that the same party has won every election since independence. In addition, Botswana is the leading producer of diamonds in the world (in terms of value), yet has not suffered from the “resource curse” that plagues so many major exporters of mineral resources.
In this article I compare the history and development of Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe (three landlocked, former British colonies, with limited post-colonial ethnic diversity) to try to understand why Botswana has done so much better than other similar countries. These matched cases studies undermining arguments for post-colonial economic and political development based on greater exposure to British colonialism, European settlement, healthy climates, British common law, state capacity and diversified economies. Instead the relative influence of Protestant missions relative to European settlers seems crucial for understanding rule of law, protection of indigenous land rights, and the independence of local rules from outside interference. Although the choices of local elites were also important, Protestant missionaries helped create conditions that enabled better institutions.
I completed these case studies as part of the review process for Robert D. Woodberry. 2012. “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy” American Political Science Review. Among many other things reviewers asked me to complete case studies of India and China and matched case studies from somewhere else in the world. If picked these cases because I knew they had very different political outcomes, but knew almost nothing about their missionary and colonial history. Thus, I thought they would serve as a good test of my theory about Protestant missions and democracy. However, because I wrote them as part of the review process, this article still has the form of an online appendix to the previous article.

Although Roman-Dutch law is distinct from English law, the two legal systems have borrowed from each other in relation to the law of contract. Roman-Dutch law is a casuistic (judge-made) made legal system which is applied by the courts of Lesotho. English law which is also judgemade law has also played a major role in the development of the principles Roman-Dutch law and as a consequence both legal traditions (systems) occupy a significant part of the law of contract of Lesotho.

Ha Makoanyane in Lesotho was excavated in 2010 as part of the Metolong Cultural Resource Management (MCRM) Project ahead of the construction of the Metolong Dam, and represents a significant advance both in our archaeological understanding of the Maloti-Drakensberg region and in public participation in archaeological practice. The site, occupied from roughly 1881 until the 1960s, offers a window on a major transitional period in Lesotho's colonial history, in terms of both the region's economy and the role of traditional authority. This case study highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches to such recent periods, including bringing ethnohistoric, archival and archaeological evidence to bear upon short-lived and potentially disturbed archaeology. It also identifies future directions for the archaeology of Farming Communities in Lesotho and for community collaboration therein.

Lithic miniaturization refers to the systematic production and use of small tools made from small cores. Archaeologists typically associate the production of miniature toolkits with small retouched tools or 'microliths'. Yet, ethnographic accounts and archaeological data show that miniature toolkits also comprised small unretouched flakes and bladelets. Because it proliferates during the Late Pleistocene and is associated with the Later Stone Age in Africa, archaeologists associate lithic miniaturization with 'modern human behavior'. However, toolkit miniaturization is no more consistent a feature of Late Pleistocene assemblages than bone point production, rock art, or engraved ochre. Lithic miniaturization was one of many strategic options our Pleistocene ancestors employed. The paper reports a miniaturized lithic assemblage marked by the systematic production of small un-retouched flakes and bladelets from small cores (b 5 g) during the Late Pleistocene (c. 14–12 ka calBP) at Ntloana Tšoana rock shelter in Lesotho. This assemblage was made on a range of locally available rock types using free-hand and bipolar reduction. Analogous lithic assemblages are reported from elsewhere in southern Africa suggesting that unretouched miniaturized toolkits were widespread. The process of systematic unretouched small tool production could be ancient, but the extent of these processes remain unknown. Using appropriate terminology combined with contextual approaches to defining and quantifying lithic miniaturization while demonstrating the intent to miniaturize toolkits provide initial solutions to this problem.

An examination of small development projects that all ran under the label of "self-help" in the early independence period. I argue that these projects helped Basotho conceive of and make real in their minds the abstract concept of independence, even as such projects were utilized and deployed by political leaders for their own ends. Most of these projects failed to bring about any substantive changes in the economic situations of rural Basotho.

Ha Makoanyane in Lesotho was excavated in 2010 as part of the Metolong Cultural Resource Management (MCRM) Project ahead of the construction of the Metolong Dam, and represents a significant advance both in our archaeological understanding of the Maloti-Drakensberg region and in public participation in archaeological practice. The site, occupied from roughly 1881 until the 1960s, offers a window on a major transitional period in Lesotho's colonial history, in terms of both the region's economy and the role of traditional authority. This case study highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches to such recent periods, including bringing ethnohistoric, archival and archaeological evidence to bear upon short-lived and potentially disturbed archaeology. It also identifies future directions for the archaeology of Farming Communities in Lesotho and for community collaboration therein.

The enclave state of Lesotho served as a labor reserve for South Africa's mining industries for more than a century before the the migrant labor economy declined dramatically in the 1990s. The Lesotho government has since hung its hopes on becoming another kind of reserve for South Africa: a water reservoir. A treaty between the two countries initiated the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a multibillion‐dollar effort to dam and divert water from the mountains of Lesotho to the arid industrial areas south of Johannesburg. Just as the infrastructure of South African apartheid‐era labor reserves required “upstream” engineering, whether material, social, or symbolic, so too does its water reservoir. One example of symbolic engineering, described here, includes the construction of Lesotho as a place defined by water abundance. Elites in Lesotho have sought to deploy water as a symbol of national identity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity, integrating rivers, dam reservoirs, and hydroelectric infrastructure into its national iconography. But while it is true that water is abundant in rivers that flow out of the highlands, the country is plagued by regular droughts and spotty water access. Everyday notions of water in Lesotho emphasize these contingent, capricious, and even destructive qualities. Scrutinizing contradictions between the representation of water and local realities, I show that the production of water commodities entails more than water's disarticulation from its meaningful cultural contexts, as depicted in literature on water commodification elsewhere. Water commodification in Lesotho—and therefore Lesotho's status as a water reservoir for South African industry—is dependent on water engineers' ability first to link water to those local contexts. That is, engineers generate a type of water that is locally emplaced but unfamiliar to local people. In conclusion, I show how everyday notions of water in Lesotho call into question anthropological depictions of the “harmonious” water threatened by commodification.

This paper reconstructs a sheep-dipping campaign in Lesotho, southern Africa to explore the historical dynamics between local social and political circumstances, ecological change and veterinary knowledge. African livestock owners and the British colonial government accelerated a biological transition from local breeds to non-native merino sheep in the early 1900s to produce wool. Wool-bearing sheep ushered in Psoroptes ovis, a parasitic mite that caused the skin condition called scab. Examining colonial Lesotho’s anti-scab campaign from 1903 to 1933, its politics, ideas and procedures, improves our understanding of the past and present interplay between transnational science, farmers, governments and the non-human world. This case study of sheep-dipping and the wool industry that it bolstered shows, too, how people from across the social spectrum interacted within new regulatory communities under a colonial state. These communities, fraught with social cleavages of race and class, and geared towards capitalist production, coalesced during the anti-scab campaigns and formed the political, technical and ideological foundation on which subsequent development schemes were built. Chiefs, stockowners, herders, labourers and European veterinarians too participated in various ways in this process of producing and circulating knowledge, and transforming livestock practices and policies.

Naming is not just an act of linguistic labeling by which speakers of a language identify the entities they are referring to in the real or imaginary world. A name is not chosen arbitrarily but is chosen based on a combination of socio-cultural factors. This is because language cannot be divorced from culture, for it is through language that speakers reflect their cultural and sociolinguistic etiquette. This study examines the names of bus stops in Lesotho with a view to unveiling the factors that could have motivated the awarding of such names. Findings indicate that the names could be classified into the following categories: descriptive, metaphorical, experiential and mythological. The study concludes that through the names of bus stops, Basotho narrate their experiences, emotions and belief systems, among other things.

Journal of African History 55:3 (Nov 2014), 401-421
The rhetoric of development served as a language for Sotho politicians from 1960–70 to debate the meanings of political participation. The relative paucity of aid in this period gave outsized importance to small projects run in rural villages, and stood in stark contrast to the period from the mid-1970s onwards when aid became an ‘anti-politics machine’ that worked to undermine national sovereignty. Examination of the democratic period in Lesotho from 1966–70 helps explain the process by which newly independent states gave up some of their recently won sovereignty, and how a turn to authoritarianism helped contribute to this process.
Copyright Cambridge University Press

Joseph Orpen’s 1874 Cape Monthly Magazine article relating the testimony of Qing, a San man in the Maloti Mountains, is a bedrock text of southern San cosmology. For the last few decades, this article has been the subject of intense scrutiny by rock art researchers and archaeologists studying hunter-gatherer societies. Recently, scholars have questioned whether Orpen’s encounter with Qing has been appropriately contextualised, citing lingering uncertainties over Orpen’s motivations and biases that may have informed the article. This paper addresses these concerns through examination of Orpen’s archival corpus. It draws on new archival data to articulate the development of Orpen’s personal politics, research motives, and interpersonal relationships within Cape knowledge networks. When examined more broadly, Orpen’s intellectual career appears primarily concerned with native history and land title rather than a specifically philological or anthropological agenda, and his encounter with Qing as having been overshadowed by his dedication to represent the interests of Basotho sovereignty.

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender Studies, Vol 13 (2015) 183-209

This article tells the story of Maleseka Kena, a woman born in South Africa but who lived most of her adult life in rural Lesotho. It narrates how her story of helping apartheid refugees cross the border and move onward complicates understandings of what the international border, belonging, and citizenship meant for individuals living near it. By interweaving her story with larger narratives about the changing political, social, and economic climate of the southern African region, it also highlights the spaces that women had for making an impact politically despite facing structural obstacles both in the regional economy and in the villages where they were living. This article relies heavily on the oral testimony of Maleseka herself as told to the author, but also makes use of press sources from Lesotho, and archival material from the United States and the United Kingdom.

Economic anthropologists often look to goods that resist commodification to understand how culture determines what can be exchanged and on what terms. Livestock in Africa have served as prominent examples of such “recalcitrant commodities.” In this article, I argue that goods that do not resist commodification—what I call “clean‐break commodities”—also illuminate the culture of the economy. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork in Lesotho, I contrast the reticence to sell cattle in African societies, long the focus of anthropologists as well as experts in conservation and development, with the prodigious sale of sheep and goats (i.e., ovicaprids). Narrow focus on charismatic cattle cultures obscures both the historically shifting commodification of ovicaprids and the economic dreamworlds in which they become enrolled. Ovicaprid cultures morphed over time as rural Basotho navigated their country's structural transitions in the regional political economy—from recently colonized ethnostate to labor reserve for South African mining industries and to defunct labor reserve. Just as the resistance of cattle to commodification described by James Ferguson as the “bovine mystique” opened a window into social life in the labor reserve, the facile commodification of ovicaprids that I call the “ovicaprine mystique” does the same throughout Lesotho's history. [bovine mystique, livestock, commodification, postindustry, sub‐Saharan Africa]