Identificación, construcción y fortalecimiento de redes de apoyo

The missionaries of the P.E.M.S. (Paris Evangelical Mission Society), Eugene Casalis, Thomas Arbousset and Constant Gosselin, took up their residence in Lesotho and settled at Morija in 1833 (cf. Gill, 1993: 75). Their first impression about the Basotho was that the latter were essentially without God, and without hope in the world, and that their civilisation was infinitely inferior to their own. The missionaries viewed the latter as illiterate and barbaric. Their mission was therefore to evangelize them by replacing the ancestor religion and culture of the Basotho, not only with Christianity, but also with the colonizers’ culture. To achieve this, they established schools which were primarily an instrument of Christianization through which the converts could be able to read the Bible. Says James Stewart in Kunene (1971: xii),

If missionary education communicated no other power than ability to read the Bible, it would still justify itself.

The missionaries sought peacefully to undermine the foundations of the old Basotho, and replace them with Western Christian ones. In recognising the integral and re-inforcing nature of the homestead (Gill, 1993: 81), they requested their converts to move towards the mission stations as their new places of residence. The intention was to sever as many ties as possible with the “unhealthy” influences of the “pagan” villages. Later, however, converts were encouraged to stay in their villages in order to act as “leaven”.

The missionaries pressed upon Moshoeshoe to bring about many reforms if his intention was to bring ‘civilisation’ to his people. Among others, Moshoeshoe had to make innovations regarding burial rites. When a Mosotho died it was customary to tie the corpse in the foetal posture, the chin resting on the knees; to sacrifice animals to enable the deceased to join the ancestral shades; and, if the deceased was a relative of a chief, to bury him in the wall of the cattle kraal. It was considered essential to perform these ceremonies in the appropriate manner, lest the shade of

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the deceased should torment his descendants. For the missionaries it was important to step in and liberate the Basotho from fear of the dead. When Mmantsane, Moshoeshoe’s senior surviving wife, died, Moshoeshoe gave an instruction that she, like Casalis’ first-born child, be buried according to Christian rites in the Christian cemetery near the village. He is also reported (Thompson, 1975: 92) to have told his father, Mokhachane, that when he died, he too, would be buried in the Christian manner.

In 1840 Moshoeshoe repudiated another fundamental custom: the initiation rites, in which adolescent Basotho were inculcated with traditional values. He ceased to convene initiation schools for his sons and the people of Thaba-Bosiu. He therefore abolished the rite of circumcision not only for all his family, but all who were placed under his influence. He declared himself very openly on the subject of initiation, and on one occasion he even instructed several pious individuals to snatch from those immoral ceremonies one of his children who had been taken there secretly (Thompson, 1975: 92).

Another question addressed by Moshoeshoe was that of polygamy. Convinced by the teachings and arguments of the missionaries, Moshoeshoe eventually took a bold step in his attempt to eradicate polygamy among his people. The significance of this is that he led his people by example. He announced at a pitso ‘assembly’ that his baptized senior surviving wives, Mmasekgonyana and Mmamosebetsi were no longer his wives as he had divorced them. However, their home is still under his control and that his people will still assemble as usual to cultivate the fields that have been assigned to them. This statement was met with strong opposition by Ramatsheana, the king’s councillor, whom the people threatened to kill as a result of his opposing view.

Moshoeshoe took a strong public stand against the killing of supposed witches. It was at a special pitso that he explained his name Lepoqo [dispute], namely, that he received it at the moment when people were fighting in his father’s village about a person who was accused of witchcraft. He further explained that he had never killed any person except on the battle-field. He then repudiated accusation of a person on a basis of witchcraft. This was as a result of an incident in which a woman named

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Mmamothepane, a relative of Moshoeshoe, was dispossessed of a field on the grounds that her immediate chief, Mojakisane died after she cursed him.

These four changes - the adoption of Christian burial customs, the cessation of initiation schools, the grant of divorces to baptized women, and the repudiation of the killing of witches - shook Sesotho society to the core.

Many of the Basotho customs were found to be in conflict with the teaching of the Bible. The gospel preached by the missionaries was that of nineteenth-century evangelism, with strong emphasis, not only on the everlasting love of God, but also on the unquenched fires of Hell. Partly because of its intrinsic content and the norms of European society which had been grafted on it, this gospel was incompatible with almost the entire body of the Basotho custom. Some of these customs included marriage cattle as payment for lobola, polygamy, ancestor worship, witchcraft, divination, rain making, burial customs, and cattle raiding. Sanders (1975: 123) explains,

Initiation, which was regarded as barbaric and ridiculous; the payment of marriage cattle, which was thought, at the least, to reduce women to a state bordering upon slavery; polygamy, which was clearly opposed to the teaching of the New Testament and introduced so many harmful jealousies into Sotho homes; the reverence shown towards the badimo, the ancestral spirits, which was held to be inconsistent with the worship of the one true God; witchcraft, divination, rainmaking and burial customs, which were dismissed as mere superstition - all these were weighed in the balance and found wanting. Festive gatherings and dances, the drinking of strong beer, cattle raiding, and the chanting of praise-poems, these too were frowned upon and discouraged.

[emphasis added].

It was clear that accepting Christianity on this basis meant that a Mosotho had to give up almost everything dear to him. It is also important to note that the missionaries frowned upon the dithoko ‘praise poems’, and their chanting was discouraged. This meant that the performance of the dithoko among the converts

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was negatively influenced. Among the Basotho, almost every aspect of culture went hand in hand with the chanting of oral poems. So, destroying culture meant destroying oral poetry. Oral poetry, in a sense, has been part and parcel of Mosotho’s daily life.

This situation precipitated the revolt of 1880 between Basotho custom and Christianity, which, according to Ashton (1952: 8), caused much damage to much of the old Basotho culture.

The prejudice of the missionaries towards the Basotho culture in general, was also inculcated into the minds of the Basotho who eventually looked at their own culture with contempt. It is ironic to realize that the prejudice with which oral tradition and culture of the Basotho were looked at, appear to have been implanted in the minds of some of the Basotho authors. For instance, Azariel Sekese, in his book, Mekgoa ea Basotho ‘The customs of the Basotho’ begins his discussion well on the importance of oral tradition for the next generations. He continues to explain how the Gospel helped to awaken the Basotho from the culture of heathenism and darkness of sleep in which they used to be. He says the following about the missionaries (1953: iii),

Ba re bontšitse tebetebe ya bohetene, moo Morena, Modimo o mohau, o ba tsekileng teng ho morena wa lefifi ka Evangeli. Basotho kaofela, ba baholo le ka bana, re na be re hlobotse, re hloka dihlong; motšeare ho rona e ne e ka bosiu. Eitse hoba re ipone hobane re hlobotse, ra ba le lihlong, kajeno re qalile hanyenyane ho apara le ho hlobola bonyamatsane.

They have shown us the depth of heathenism, where the Lord, the graceful God, has rescued us from the king of darkness through the Gospel. All of us, old and young, were naked, and without shame; daylight to us was like night-time. When we realized our nakedness, we began to be ashamed of ourselves, and now we have gradually begun to dress properly whilst undressing our bestiality.

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The general view of associating culture with heathenism, greatly contributed to the Basotho’s gradual alienation from their culture and oral tradition. About six years after the arrival of the missionaries in Lesotho, the influence of their religion impacted so strongly upon the Basotho converts that it resulted in weakening the latter’s attachment to some of their customs, such as, war dances and polygamy. Sanders (1975: 125) confirms this in saying,

By 1839 war dances were no longer held at Morija and Thaba Bosiu, and a few polygamists had renounced all wives but their first.

By the year 1843 Arbousset (in Sanders, 1975: 123) could claim that:

Circumcision falls into disuse: polygamy is no longer so strong. People hardly believe anymore in sorcerers and rainmakers, and the cult of the false gods [i.e. the ancestral spirits]...is abandoned more and more.

Christian religion which systematically enforced beliefs contrary to the Basotho’s, became a stumbling block to the practice of culture and the maintenance of oral tradition, in particular, oral poetry. In this way, this religion exerted pressure on this oral art form which is the backbone of the Basotho’s oral heritage.

The introduction of Christian religion by the missionaries exposed the Basotho to a new way of life where the roles of traditional figures such as kings, chiefs and tribal religious leaders, among others, had either to change, be forsaken or replaced. This led to the disintegration of the Basotho society. In this way Christian religion contributed to the decline in the maintenance of oral poetry among some of the Basotho. It may be said that Christian religion as advocated by the missionaries did exert considerable pressure on oral poetry of the Basotho, especially on those who became the converts of the new religion. Despite the realities of the Christian influence, considerable resistance continued and the poetry succeeded to survive. Fortunately, the onslaught on the Basotho traditional religion was counteracted by the political and military onslaughts on the country which on their part required both wisdom and heroism which served as the backbone and wellspring of the heroic poetry.

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