MASERU, LESOTHO – Lesotho’s Prime Minister has urged the Basotho to reclaim a national identity shaped by discipline, resilience, vigilance, peace, hard work, and prosperity, as the kingdom marked its independence and paid tribute to its heroes and heroines.
Addressing the gathering, the Prime Minister, Sam Matekane, traced the country’s long history of struggle and survival.
He recalled that in the 1820s, King Moshoeshoe I, founder of the Basotho nation, accommodated Dutch farmers and their cattle posts before facing colonial encroachment and intrusion in the 1830s and military attacks in the 1850s in defense of Basotho territory.
In 1868, he said, Queen Victoria decreed that Basutoland would become a British protectorate, although in practice it was treated as a colony. The Basotho refused incorporation into the Union of South Africa in 1910, and in 1966 they attained independence from Britain, he explained.
The Prime Minister said independence was an occasion to recognize the efforts of their forefathers. Looking ahead to what he described as the journey of the next years, which begins tomorrow(today), he said the nation must reclaim a Basotho identity marked by discipline, resilience, vigilance, peace, hard work and prosperity. “We own our past and shape our future with our people,” he said.
