Early history The Basotho nation is a mixture of
Bantu-speaking clans that mixed with
San people who already lived in Southern Africa when they arrived there.
Bantu-speaking people had settled in what is now South Africa by about
1500 CE. Separation from the
Batswana is assumed to have taken place by the 14th century. Some Basotho people split from the
Nguni while others got assimilated into building the Nguni nation. By the 16th century, Iron-working was well established in Basotho communities alongside their
Nguni neighbours. Basotho were mostly independent and relatively isolated up until this point in which they occasionally traded with the regions north of their homeland with external links that are described as "Sporadic and Marginal". By at least the 17th century a series of Basotho kingdoms covered the southern portion of the African plateau (nowadays
Free State Province and parts of
Gauteng), and
North West. Basotho society was highly decentralized, and organized on the basis of
kraals, or extended clans, each of which was ruled by its own chief. Chiefdoms were united into loose
confederations. 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,
Angola,
Zimbabwe,
Botswana, and
Namibia). 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, many farmers opted to leave the former Dutch colony in the
Great Trek. They moved inland, where they eventually established independent polities. At the time of these developments,
Moshoeshoe I skillfully and systematically unified a loose confederacy of Basotho clans and Nguni tribes that had settled there into what would become a modern state of Lesotho in the southern highveld. 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.
Missionaries sent by the
Paris Evangelical Missionary Society provided the King with foreign affairs counsel and helped to facilitate the purchase of modern weapons. 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
Basutoland (modern
Lesotho) a
protectorate of Britain. Accordingly, the British administration was established in
Maseru, the site of Lesotho's current capital. In 1869, the British sponsored a process to demarcate the borders of Basutoland. Migrant workers from the Free State and Lesotho thus helped spread Sesotho to the urban areas of South Africa. It is generally agreed that migrant work harmed the family life of most Sesotho speakers because adults (primarily men) were required to leave their families behind in impoverished communities while they were employed in distant cities. Officially, the majority of Lesotho's population is Catholic. The Southern Basotho's heartland is the Free State province in South Africa and neighboring Lesotho. Both of these largely rural areas have widespread poverty and underdevelopment. Many Sesotho speakers live in conditions of economic hardship, but people with access to land and steady employment may enjoy a higher standard of living. Landowners often participate in subsistence or small-scale commercial farming ventures. However,
overgrazing and land mismanagement are growing problems. ==Demographics==