The Specter of Communism and Local Politics in Lesotho, 1952-1970

John Aerni-Flessner, Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University

Appears in: Frank Jacob, Editor, Peripheries of the Cold War (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015)

The Communist Party of Lesotho (CPL) was founded on 5 May, 1962 and made independence for Lesotho part of its manifesto, as was common among political parties in late colonial Basutoland.1 Identifying “British imperialism” and “White South African imperialism” as the greatest threats to economic prosperity for Basotho, the new party vowed to combat a lack of modern industry, primitive agriculture, and “backward” systems of “education, health and social services” on its way to “complete and genuine independence.”2 The party never really attained much in the way of electoral results, or even a genuine space for its leaders within national discussions taking place around independence in the mid-1960s. Its formation, however, forced Lesotho into the greater world spotlight, whether it was attention from the South African apartheid regime increasingly obsessed with what they saw as Communism behind every nationalist movement in the region, or the United States, increasingly concerned about the spread of communist ideologies in Africa around independence.3 Just as important to this increased international attention was the ways in which Lesotho politicians were using Communism as a rhetorical device in local political debates from the late 1950s through independence in 1966. Despite the CPL remaining a minor 1 Lesotho is the country. Even though the colonial territory was called Basutoland, people there referred to it as Lesotho throughout this time and I will continue this usage except when explicitly referencing the colonial government. The people are referred to as Basotho, while language and culture is Sesotho.2 Quotations all from John Motloheloa, “Lesotho’s Road to Independence: The Founding of the Communist Party of Lesotho (Basutoland),” African Communist 10 (1962), 21-30.3 S. Onslow, “The Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Nationalism and External Intervention,” in Onslow, editor, Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation (New York: Routledge, 2009); T. Noer, Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948-1968 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985).

player throughout its legal tenure (like all opposition parties, the CPL was banned after the 1970 coup that kept the Basotho National Party (BNP) in power), Communism—real, perceived, imagined, and projected—played a disproportionately large role in public debates regarding the forms of the state and the proper role of leadership in the lead up to independence.

The largest history of the Cold War on “the periphery,” focused on the 1970s and the early 1980s as the time when “superpower conflict in the Third World was at its peak and when developments in the Third World had most significance for the wider conduct of the Cold War.”4 Lesotho’s political choices during that time period were made by the unelected BNP government that had refused to hand over power in 1970. The shifts in government policy that took it into closer relations with a variety of Communist regimes, as well as further in the arms of the West in terms of development assistance and humanitarian assistance, are beyond the bounds of this piece.5 Rather this chapter focuses on the 1950s and 1960s as a formative period where outside interest intersected with domestic political concerns around the rhetoric and potential practice of Communism in Lesotho in the lead-up to independence.

Money from the USSR and China (Beijing) flowed into Lesotho in the 1960s to help fund the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) and the Marematlou Freedom Party (MFP), while at the same time the apartheid regime of South Africa and the Federal Republic of Germany were sending cash to help the BNP.6 The knowledge of these limited funds had the effect of putting Lesotho into policy conversations about the Cold War and decolonization in in London, Washington, Bonn, and Pretoria. A State Department memo from 1964 on talks between the USA and the United Kingdom noted that 4 O. Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge, 2005), 4.5 Onslow, White Power, Black Liberation; James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).6 R. Weisfelder, Political Contention in Lesotho 1952-1965 (Roma, Lesotho: Institute of Southern African Studies, 2002).

diplomats should enquire “whether more stringent controls to prevent South African, Soviet and Chinese penetration of political activities in the High Commission Territories [Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland], particularly Basutoland, could be exercised to benefit long range Western interests.”7 The focus for these planners, however, was not on domestic political concerns, but on their own Cold War worries.

What remains to be explored is the extent to which Basotho were making Cold War ideologies their own. Communism was never a potent political force in Lesotho in the sense of ever having chance of electoral success, but it was an ideologically charged expression that could help generate funds for groups that had limited visibility outside of this enclave state. It was also used extensively by Basotho politicians to make local political arguments. Exploring these uses of global ideologies extends the observation from Christopher Lee that Cold War history in Southern Africa is “not reducible to diplomacy or international relations but can also occupy realms of culture and community within and beyond the nation-state.”8 It further fits within the transnational/international frame that has driven much research on the Cold War recently that looks to “situate the local within the global…while locating the global at work locally.”9 For Lesotho from 1952 to 1970, Communism and the Cold War both played a dual role of being global forces that largely shaped how state actors outside viewed and responded to political change within Lesotho, but their local understandings were contested and contingent as politicians and ordinary Basotho used them to imagine and argue for their vision of the national community of Lesotho.

Pre-1959 Lesotho Politics7 United States National Archives (hereafter USNA), RG 59 State Department, Bureau of African Affairs 1958-1966, US-UK Talks December 1964, Memo 8 C. Lee, “Decolonization of a Special Type: Rethinking Cold War History in Southern Africa,” Kronos: Southern African Histories 37: 1 (2010), 10. 9 T. Brown, “’1968’ East and West: Divided Germany as a Case Study in Transnational History,” American Historical Review 114: 1 (2009), 70.

Ethnographic statistics on Lesotho emphasize that the country is homogenous—99.7% “Sotho” according to the CIA World Factbook, for instance—and authors like Pierre Englebert have used this to claim that the country is one of the few “legitimate” African states because it was “embedded in precolonial relations of authority” that allowed it to have “historical continuity and legitimacy unrivaled throughout Africa, with the exception of Ethiopia.”10 These claims rest on the historical legacy of King Moshoeshoe, whose historical legacy is that of bringing together a wide variety of individuals during the tumultuous 1820s and 1830s. Managing to keep together a fractious coalition of minor chiefs, allies of convenience, and his own wayward and strong-minded sons, Moshoeshoe safely steered his nascent state into the semi-protective hands of the British rather than their increasingly land-hungry neighbors—the Free State Afrikaners—in 1868.11 The supposed homogeneity of Basotho, however, is overstated by political theorists like Englebert who ignored clan divisions within society, as well as the historical autonomy of minority Xhosa and Zulu-speaking populations within Lesotho. The claims of the homogeneity of the Basotho “nation” were successfully used in the 19th century to keep control over land distribution in the hands of the chieftaincy, as well as in the 20th century by political aspirants to make a case for political independence from Britain. Even today, the legacy of Moshoeshoe is often invoked in contemporary political debates ranging from the mundane—minutiae of government policy and practice—to the profound—whether Lesotho should attempt to join the Republic of South Africa and give up its sovereignty.12

While appealing to the legacy of Moshoeshoe has a long history in Lesotho, Marc Epprecht argued that there was less consensus about relations of authority in the early 19th as contemporary commentators have claimed: 10 CIA World Factbook accessed 1/28/2014; P. Englebert, State Legitimacy and Development in Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 83. 11 Cf. L. Thompson, Survival in Two Worlds: Moshoeshoe of Lesotho, 1786-1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); P. Sanders, Moshoeshoe Chief of the Sotho (London: Heinemann, 1975).12 Cf. K. Maope “Don’t Trivialise Weighty Matters,” Public Eye 17 April, 2009.

“Sesotho as a distinct body of custom uniting [Basotho] thus simply did not exist when the first Europeans arrived in 1833 to begin recording it.”13 Rather, throughout the colonial period, there was constant negotiation and argument over the proper role of the chieftaincy in governing Lesotho, as well as debate, from the late 19th century, on the appropriate role for commoners in governance. The extent to which these contestations were driven by intra-Basotho concerns versus conflicts with outside powers like the British colonial state in the Cape Colony and the Afrikaner Orange Free State is still debated in the historiography, but the importance of these contestations of power for most of Lesotho’s history is undisputed.14

The story of Communism in Lesotho in intertwined with the history of Basotho labor migration to South Africa that started in the 1870s. For the first few decades, the income from this labor migration, mainly to the diamond mines of Kimberley and the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, supplemented income derived from farming and pastoralism in Lesotho. As populations and pressure on the scarce land increased by the late 19th century, this migration increasingly became necessary to the survival strategies of rural Basotho families. By the 1930s, a combination of drought and the collapse of commodity prices from the Great Depression completed the transformation of the territory from being the grain basket of the region into a dependent labor reserve. Under this setup, labor migration increasingly became a rite of passage for young Basotho men.15 While away on labor contracts, Basotho men came into contact with a wide variety of ideologies and organizations. The most influential organization of the early 13 M. Epprecht, ‘This Matter of Women is Getting Very Bad’: Gender, Development and Politics in Colonial Lesotho (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 2000), 15.14 M. Lelimo, The Question of Lesotho’s Conquered Territory: It’s Time for an Answer (Morija: Morija Museum and Archives, 1998); E. Eldredge, A South African Kingdom: The Pursuit of Security in Nineteenth-Century Lesotho (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); E. Eldredge, Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870-1960 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007); S. Rosenberg, Promises of Moshoeshoe: Culture, Nationalism and Identity in Lesotho (Roma: Institute of Southern African Studies, 2008). 15 C. Murray, Families Divided: The Impact of Migrant Labour in Lesotho (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); E. Maloka, Basotho and the Mines: A Social History of Labour Migrancy in Lesotho and South Africa, c. 1890-1940 (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2004).

20th century was the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU), an offshoot of the Garveyite movement, but a few Basotho also became involved with the nascent Communist Party of South Africa from the 1920s.16 Similarly, a number of Basotho, including three representatives of Paramount Chief Letsie II, were charter members of the South African Native National Congress from 1912, the organization that would become the African National Congress (ANC).

Within the borders of Lesotho, however, the founding of the middle-class Basutoland Progressive League (BPA) in 1907 and the rural Lekhotla la Bafo (LLB) in 1919 marked the start of formal contestation by commoners of the power of the chieftaincy in Lesotho.17 The only consistent consensus in Lesotho politics amongst chiefs and commoners was opposition to incorporation into South Africa. Three Basotho chiefs were sent, after a special nation-wide collection effort, to the 1909 negotiations for the Act of Union, which created the Union of South Africa, to lobby specifically for the non-incorporation of colonial Basutoland. These chiefs were successful as the three High Commission Territories were left out of the Union, but Article 151 of the Act still promised eventual incorporation of these territories, so the issue stayed alive until formal independence.18 This effort brought together the BPA and the chieftaincy, but was quickly followed by domestic criticism of the reticence of the chieftaincy to incorporate more commoners into Basutoland National Council. This body was founded in 1903 to consolidate colonial and chiefly control by creating a formal body to build consensus between the two groups, consisted largely of the upper echelon of the 16 For more on Basotho involvement in groups like the ICU and the early ANC, see A. Kemp and R. Trent Vinson “’Poking Holes in the Sky’: Professor James Thaele, American Negroes and Modernity in 1920s Segregationist South Africa,” African Studies Review 43: 1 (2000), 141-159; For Basotho involvement in the SACP see, R. Edgar, The Making of an African Communist: Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana and the Communist Party of South Africa 1927-1939 (Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2005). 17 For more, see R. Edgar, Prophets with Honour: A Documentary History of Lekhotla la Bafo (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988).18 The High Commission Territories refers to Basutoland, Bechuanaland Protectorate (modern-day Botswana), and Swaziland, which were jointly administered by the British High Commissioner in South Africa.

chieftaincy until reforms put representatives of the BPA, ex-soldiers, and other civil society groups into the body in 1948, and four members nominated by each District Councils from 1950.19

By the 20th century, however, the colonial administration was listening to the protests of commoner Basotho that there were too many chiefs and levels within the chieftaincy. Colonial government reforms in the 1930s and 1940s gradually cut down the total number of chiefs, reducing the number who had the authority to run fine-levying courts, and turning chiefs into paid civil servants. These reforms led to conflicts within a downsizing chieftaincy with individuals worried about losing their status and income, which touched off an outbreak of ritual murders in the 1940s and 1950s.20 Chieftaincy reforms and gradual additions to the National Council, however, did not satisfy those calling for changes to the way that Basotho were represented, especially after World War II. The “Second Colonial Occupation” of the British Empire marked a shift in administrative thinking away from reliance on the chieftaincy, to an emphasis on development and technocratic expertise. The education system in Lesotho, strong because of the presence of missionaries in the territory from the mid-19th century, saw an increase in funding and more secondary schools, while the Catholic Church founded the first tertiary institution in the territory in 1945—Pius XII College. An increasing number of Basotho were being educated over the course of the 20th century, and the quality of the schools also attracted South African students. This was especially true after the apartheid Bantu Education “reforms” of the mid-1950s that gutted mission schools in South Africa while turning government-run schools into training schools offering a third-rate education designed to keep non-white South Africans in a subservient position in society.

19 L.B.B.J. Machobane, Government and Change in Lesotho, 1800-1966: A Study of Political Institutions (London: Macmillan Press, 1990), 241-2. 20 C. Murray and P. Sanders, Medicine Murder in Colonial Lesotho: The Anatomy of a Moral Crisis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005).

The formalization and codification of the National Party’s plan for apartheid from the late 1940s put even more fear into Basotho politicians and chiefs, but also laid the ground work for the impending Cold War to play an important role in the southern African region. For most Basotho, however, the National Party victory stoked fears that South Africa would push harder for the incorporation of the High Commission Territories as part of its grand apartheid plans. While pre-apartheid governments in South Africa had also pressed periodically for incorporation, the fears of incorporation increased after 1948, with Prime Minister D.F. Malan pressing the British government for talks on incorporation as late as 1954.21 The apartheid regime held a strongly anti-Communist stance in its foreign and domestic policies, banning the CPSA in 1950, and claiming that the other main political opposition groups, the ANC and Pan-African Congress (PAC), had Communist ties as well. These groups were all banned in 1960. The strident anti-Communism of the South African government was echoed in Lesotho, in part, by similar attitudes among influential members of the Catholic missionary community, especially French-Canadian priests. Unlike the South African government, however, the Catholic Church in Lesotho had a more complicated relationship with communal economic efforts to improve communities than its anti-Communist rhetoric in the 1960s would suggest.

From the 1930s, the Catholics pushed to expand the reach of their missions further into the rural areas, especially the mountain districts. These districts tended to be the poorest, with the growing seasons even shorter and less predictable than those in the more-fertile lowlands, and so populations there were particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and fluctuations in commodity prices. The drought and Great Depression of the 1930s hit these wool-producing mountain communities. Focusing on a creating a series of small wool-buying cooperatives to bypass the European-owned trading stores, a series of buying cooperatives to cut local prices on

21 Rosenberg, Promises, 57.

foods and household goods, and a series of communal projects to build roads and dams to improve market access for rural communities, the Church took the lead in developing alternatives to the migrant labor system, especially ones that could be run by and for women.22 The colonial government was broadly supportive of these aims of rural development, but was threatened because they lacked control over the planning and execution of these projects, and because they faced strenuous protests from the mainly British expatriate traders whose livelihood was threatened by cooperatives. While the local infrastructure projects and women’s community groups had staying power, the cooperative buying programs gradually faded away under pressure from the government by the late 1940s and early 1950s. That these cooperative systems were designed and administered by many of the very same French-Canadian priests who would lead the anti-communist charge of the 1960s highlights the shifting nature of ideological loyalties and terms in Lesotho.

Another group that was starting to build and claim influence in Lesotho was a new generation of Basotho who had received their education in mission schools run by the Catholics, the Anglicans, and the Paris Evangelical Mission Society by the late 1940s/early 1950s. They were not content to simply join the BPA and the LLB, but were responding to continental and global trends. The BPA was, by the 1950s, largely a spent force, and the LLB struggled to integrate these younger Basotho leaders into an organization dominated by longtime leader Josiel Lefela. Many of these younger Basotho came together in 1952 to form the Basutoland African Congress (BAC), which renamed itself the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) in 1959. Founder Ntsu Mokhehle had been a member of LLB for a short time and had joined the ANC Youth League, home to many future luminaries of the liberation struggle like Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, when at the University of Fort Hare in

22 Epprecht, Women, 187-8.

South Africa.23 The BAC/BCP drew on the same well of commoner resentment to the abuses of the institution of chieftaincy and the unresponsive nature of colonial administration that had driven the BPA and LLB, but was more focused on the goal of self-governance for Lesotho and developing grass-roots nationalism, in lines with trends across the British colonies in the 1950s.24

The BAC/BCP aligned first with the ANC, but by the late 1950s was working more closely with the Pan-Africanist block in the ANC that would break away to form the PAC in 1959. Many of the BAC/BCP members, like their leader Mokhehle, had been involved in liberation groups during time spent at school, living, and/or working in South Africa, but the primary focus of the party was on local political change in Lesotho. It garnered the support of most educated Basotho and was especially strong in lowland towns close to the South African border. These towns, like Maseru, Mafeteng, and Leribe, had vibrant local newspapers and strong political awareness because of their position as jumping off points for labor migration into South Africa. They also housed an increasing number of South African political refugees as the apartheid regime cracked down harder on liberation groups in the 1960s. While the BAC/BCP occasionally found common cause with the chieftaincy, for instance around the publication of the 1955 Moore Report that seemed to deal a blow to political changes toward more representation for Basotho, but by-and-large, the BAC/BCP generally argued that the chieftaincy held back political developments that would move the territory toward independence.25 By the early 1960s, Mokhehle and the BCP were starting to make connections with and receive funding from the Chinese government, and these ties with a Communist regime worried many in Lesotho like the colonial government, chieftaincy, and the Catholic hierarchy, but also South Africa and the USA. 23 Arianna Lissoni, “The PAC in Basutoland, c. 1962-1965,” South African Historical Journal 62: 1 (2010), 59.24 Weisfelder, Political Contention, 4-6, 13-4.25 Ibid, 7-8.

This possibility of close Communist ties and their desire to have Catholic-supporting politicians contesting public office led the Catholic hierarchy to encourage a minor chief, Leabua Jonathan, and other Catholic intellectuals like Gabriel Manyeli and the lawyer C.D. Molapo to form a political counterweight to the BAC. This party, the Basotho National Party (BNP), formed in 1958 to contest the 1960 elections. It lacked the intellectual heft and broad popular support among the educated elite that the BCP had, but was still grew quickly into a major party because of the widespread influence and power of Catholic missions, especially off the road system in the foothill and mountain districts of the territory. A final political party that formed prior to the 1960 elections was the Marematlou Party—a royalist party founded by S.S. Matete in 1956, whose main plank was having the Regent ‘Mantsebo step down in favor of the young prince Bereng Seeiso. This campaign succeeded in 1960, but the party continued on as a royalist/chiefly party. It merged in the early 1960s with the Freedom Party, a splinter faction of the BCP led by one of Lesotho’s premier intellectuals, B.M. Khaketla, to become the Marematlou Freedom Party (MFP).

In the face of increasing political pressure from both politicians and members of the chieftaincy for reform of the government system, the British government agreed to a new constitution in 1959 that allowed for the first general election in 1960. These elections, open only to male voters, chose District Councils in the nine districts. These Councils, which had been quasi-elected through the pitso system of public meeting from the late 1940s, were supposed to operate a layer of local government closer to the people than the distant colonial administration, and also act as an electoral college, choosing half of the representatives to the Basutoland National Council. The other half of the Council consisted of chiefs and other Paramount Chief nominees. The National Council was also given, for the first time, limited legislative ability. Despite the limits of these reforms, enthusiasm among the electorate in 1960 was high. While the Lesotho Communist Party was still not

yet a reality, and Communism was not the issue it would become by the mid-1960s, rumors of BCP ties to Communist countries, especially, and decolonization elsewhere in Africa in 1960 brought the attention of the United States to political developments in Lesotho.26 It is to the interplay between global ideas and local people that we now turn.

Communism and Its Uses in Lesotho, 1959-1965

A Catholic, anti-Communist party forming in 1958 was certainly not a thunderbolt out of the blue in Lesotho. Concern about Communism in Lesotho had come from many quarters previous to this time. As far back as the 1920s, there was suspicion within the colonial government that Lekhotla la Bafo (LLB) was flirting with Communism and Communists. A report from the northern district of Butha Buthe in 1928 outlined the connections LLB was making, bringing ANC President J.T. Gumede to the district for a rally. The Assistant District Commissioner worried that Gumede had “recently returned from Russia where he had been with a delegation of South African Socialists to investigate the political conditions of that country.” Remarking that he wanted to keep Gumede’s stay as short as possible, he noted that Gumede’s affiliations with Communists had also attracted negative chiefly interest: “Chief Qhobela will not allow the meeting to take place in his ward.”27 Qhobela, evidently, was not content to simply ban the meeting, criticizing both LLB and Gumede for attempting to “confuse this small nation of Basuto (sic).”28 While LLB and its founder Josiel Lefela were clearly not Communists, or even “foreign,” their willingness to associate with outside political groups with suspect ties, like the ANC, put them firmly on the radar of the colonial government and their chiefly allies.

26 USNA RG 59 State Department, Bureau of African Affairs, Records Relating to South Africa, 1959-65, Basutoland 1958-59, Memo about Constitutional Changes in Basutoland (n.d.)27 Lesotho National Archives (hereafter LNA), S3/22/1/1 Lekhotla la Bafo Memo Deputy Assistant Commissioner Kennan to Assistant Commissioner Leribe, 10 July 1928.28 Ibid, Letter Chief Qhobela Molapo to Kennan, 10 July 1928.

The organization did have some close organizational ties to the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), and this was controversial, even among commoner Basotho in the 1920s. Lefela wrote a letter in 1928 to a CPSA publication, the South African Worker, soliciting funds to take a petition of commoner grievances directly to the British government in London. This attempted course of action drew the attention and scorn of colonial officials, but their reaction prompted LLB President Masupha to protest that the organization was being unfairly called Communist simply based on where the appeal had been published, and was “already losing members because of this guilt-by-association.”29 Masupha’s solution to this problem was to request to bring in actual Communist literature so that people could see that the nationalist agenda of LLB was not Communist at all. While it was certainly true that the organization was not Communist in being affiliated with the Comintern, they were more willing than most groups to work with the SACP, and by their own admission suffered from declining enrollments because of this link. Further, when the colonial government banned LLB from holding political meetings in the territory during World War II, the leadership of the organization acquiesced, but also encouraged its members to join the CPSA, the United Front, and Friends of the Soviet Union to continue their political activity.30

LLB continued to be a driving force in anti-colonial activities in the post-war period, with its leader Josiel Lefela nominated to the National Council through the new District Council structure that helped give a greater voice to Basotho commoners. However, chiefs still dominated the National Council up to the 1960s, so this increased voice was quite limited.31 The main concern of LLB, however, was on rectifying abuses in the colonial system and limited the power of the colonial government. Despite colonial worries about its nationalism, its affiliations with Communist groups were alliances of

29 Ibid, Letter Masupha, President LLB to High Commissioner, 24 May 1928.30 Edgar, Prophets, 32. 31 Ibid, 33.

convenience rather than shared ideology. LLB lost some of its political influence in the early 1950s as Lefela struggled with colonial criminal charges as well as the push by younger Basotho to form new political parties.32 By the time of his release from prison in 1956, the BAC under Mokhehle had harnessed much of the popular anger against colonial rule and LLB, while never fully folding, lost its position of prominence among anti-colonial Basotho.

In addition to an ever-present anti-Communist line from the colonial government, there was also a domestic strain of anti-Communism in Lesotho that came at various times from the chieftaincy (as seen with Chief Qhobela in 1928), and middle class commoner organizations like the BPA. In the post-World War II period, however, the prime mover behind anti-Communist efforts was the Catholic Church. This was not always the case, as noted earlier in the Catholic cooperative efforts from the 1930s that were certainly socialistic in their orientation, but the emergence of the Cold War and the hardening of the central church’s position on Communism from the late 1940s onward presaged a hard rightward turn in the official position of Catholic hierarchy and individual priests.33 Two Catholic school teachers and Boy Scout organizers, Peter Khamane and Benedict Leseteli, were lead organizers of the group, Mesa-Mohloane (the Regiment of Grasshopper Roasters) in the 1950s. They formed this organization because of what they saw as an “inclination toward communism” in the BAC, and the start of public organizational efforts of Communist Party of Lesotho (CPL) founder John Motloheloa from the 1950s.34 The leaders of Mesa-Mohloane traveled the territory organizing meetings, many on Catholic missions or with Catholic school teachers, arguing that the Basotho way of life was under threat from parties who took Communist money, like the BAC and the MFP, and, of course, after 1962 the CPL. Most of the individuals in the group were

32 Ibid, 36-8.33 Epprecht, Women, 187-8.34 Interview Peter Khamane, Ha QhuQhu, 29 October 2008.

Basotho, but its travel and newspaper were funded in large part by expatriate traders within Lesotho, the Catholic Church, and influential Catholics in South Africa, as well as overseas Catholic organizations.35 The group, however, was using the specter of Communism and associations with avowed or alleged Communists to accuse its political opponents of being insufficiently nationalist, or falling outside established norms of cultural practice. By the mid-1960s, however, Mesa-Mohloane had lost much of its momentum and its activists had largely come into the BNP, which was positioned as the anti-communist champion. It garnered large-scale assistance for these efforts from the global Catholic Church, in particular Canadian orders from Quebec, and staunch anti-communist governments like that of South Africa and West Germany.36

The BAC had changed its name to the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) in 1959 to contest the first elections, and their position on Communism shifted multiple times during this time period. Initially in the early to mid-1950s, the BAC supported the ANC their SACP allies, but by the late 1950s the party increasingly moved toward a political alliance with the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). Party leader Mokhehle travelled to Ghana in 1958 to take a leadership role in the All-Africa People’s Conference, and received support from Kwame Nkrumah. The final rupture between the BCP and the ANC took place in 1960 as Mokhehle accused fourteen BCP-ANC members of plotting to assassinate him and causing the formation of the CPL.37 The close relationship between the BCP and the PAC led to more funding coming to the party from newly independent African states, especially Ghana and Egypt, both of which viewed the collaboration between the ANC, the majority-white SACP, and the Soviet Union with deep suspicion. Close ties between the PAC and BCP were bolstered by the presence of large numbers of PAC refugees in Lesotho following the 1960 South African banning of the PAC and subsequent

35 Weisfelder, Political Contention, 32-4. 36 Ibid, 36.37 Lissoni, “PAC in Basutoland,” 60.

crackdown on the organization following the Sharpeville massacre. The PAC reorganized in exile in Maseru in the mid-1960s, in part because its General Secretary Potlako Leballo was born in the territory and had residency rights. The ability of activists to slip across the border and lax immigration procedures made entry into the territory easy, while the unwillingness of the colonial government to deport activists into the arms of the apartheid regime allowed many PAC activists to use late colonial Basutoland as a sanctuary. These refugees, mostly young men, also had plenty of time to spend on politics and the BCP could and did mobilize them at various times. The Pan-Africanist orientation of the BCP meant that it was suspicious of Soviet Union funding because of the history of the Comintern attempting to control those who received funding, but they took money from Communist China, whose money was not seen to come with the same strings as the USSR.38 The presence of Chinese funds, however, left the BCP open to charges of Communist ties in the lead-up to the 1965 elections.

The final major political party was the Marematlou Freedom Party (MFP), which was created in December 1962 from an odd political amalgamation of the Royalist Marematlou Party and the Basutoland Freedom Party, consisting of a splinter group which left the BCP. This organization had a hard time keeping its message coherent because of this, but had wide influence because of the support of the Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe II and many of the senior chiefs. Whether it would push for more chiefly privileges or more popular participation vexed the party, and its sources of funding varied widely in the 1960s. B.M. Khaketla, one of the ideological leaders of the party, was strongly royalist and anti-Communist, but the party itself relied on funding from the Soviet Union for the 1965 elections. Khaketla had approached the Americans in 1962 for financial assistance for the party before it started receiving Soviet funding, but his memo to the State Department shows how delicate the triangulation would have been even had

38 Weisfelder, Political Contention, 64.

they been receptive to his overtures. Khaketla attacked the BCP and Mokhehle for attempting to raise funds in the USA because of Mokhehle’s supposed willingness to “hobnob with communists. [He] now wants the western countries to which he is extremely opposed to think that he is their friend.” But Khaketla had to mention that any assistance from the Americans to the MFP would have to be covert as the perception of American influence could damage their standing domestically: “I do not wish it known that our Party is receiving assistance from America.”39 While the Americans were worried about Communist inroads in the territory, they did not give the MFP any funding as they worried that they could potentially “further complicate an already confused situation.”40 Since American funding was not forthcoming, the MFP turned to Joe Matthews, a South African refugee lawyer living in Maseru.

Matthews, son of noted University of Fort Hare professor Z.K. Matthews, was a Central Committee member of the SACP and on the National Executive Committee of the ANC—the top leadership of both organizations. He had escaped to Lesotho in 1960 during the post-Sharpeville crackdown, and after gaining official residency had received a British passport.41 This enabled him to travel repeatedly outside of the territory to the Eastern Bloc to secure funding for a variety of organizations in South Africa and Lesotho.42 Some of the funds he raised abroad went to help the MFP. The combination of senior members of the chieftaincy and Communist funding was not a natural fit, but Matthews used the BCP’s Pan-Africanist orientation, the alliance between the MFP and the ANC, and the need of the MFP for funding to make his mark on local politics. These efforts 39 USNA RG 59 State Department, Bureau of African Affairs, 1958-66, Box 54, Letter Khaketla to Kenneth Snyder, Bureau of Cultural and Educational Affairs, 30 April 1962.40 Ibid, “The Case Against Covert Assistance to Basutoland Political Organizations,” 5 May 1964. 41 This was standard practice for refugees who received a permanent residency permit. After a wait of one year, they could receive the United Kingdom and Colonies passport. 42 Interview Joe Gaobakwe Matthews, South African Democracy Education Trust, http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/RTD/stories/Stories%20-%20Joe%20Matthews.pdf accessed 20 Feb, 2014.

were also part of a broader rivalry between the PAC and ANC for leadership of the struggle against apartheid, and the ANC and SACP hoped to keep independent Lesotho as a site where they might be able to set up base or maintain as a destination for refugees attempting to leave South Africa.43

The rapid pace of political reform in the 1960s in Lesotho sharpened debates about Communist influence and raised the political stakes for parties looking to gain funding and followers. The 1960 elections for District Councils were quickly followed by further political reforms that culminated in the 1964 constitution that promised rapid elections, followed by independence after a one year transition period where the British administration would rule in conjunction with the winning party. The assumption by all politicians was that the party best positioned to win the 1965 elections would lead the country into independence.

Communism in the Independence Era

The 29 April 1965 election would for the first time bring about a fully elected Parliament that had legislative powers. The campaign prominently featured debate on the role of foreign influence in soon-to-be-independent Lesotho, and Communism took a central role. This was in part because of the presence in the territory of a number of prominent SACP members like Joe Matthews and Elizabeth Mafekeng.44 Mafekeng was a trade union organizer and vice-president of the ANC Women’s League in Paarl outside Cape Town who had fled to the territory to escape a banning order in 1959. She settled in the small lowland town of Mafeteng where she ran a general store with fellow ANC exile Gilbert Hani.45 Soon heavily involved in Lesotho politics,

43 Weisfelder, Political Contention, 69; National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter NAUK), CO 1048/561 V.J.G. Matthews (Joe) Political Refugee from South Africa in Basutoland, Extract Bechuanaland Executive Council Meeting, 25 February 1965.44 Her surname was sometimes spelled Mafikeng as well.45 Gilbert Hani was a noted ANC activist, but his son, Chris, would become a leader of the SACP and the ANC’s armed wing, MK. He went into exile in Lesotho first in 1963, returning to

Mafekeng fell afoul of the Paramount Chief as well as the Resident Commissioner for her work helping to organize the fledgling Lesotho Communist Party in the early 1960s.46 It was only international pressure on the British government in London, and the negative publicity that would necessarily come from handing over a mother of eleven children to the apartheid authorities, that allowed her to stay in country.47

Despite the fact that the MFP, the party advocating more power for the monarchy, was accepting funds from the Soviet Union via Matthews, Moshoeshoe II was deeply suspicious of Communist influence in the territory as well. His opposition was open, as his speech at the opening of the new Parliament in 1965 clearly showed: “My Government rejects trouble-makers and the foreign, communist ideology of destruction.”48 While this was the official policy of the monarchy, it was possible for Communists to stay relatively unmolested in the territory, as the experiences of noted SACP organizer Thabo Mofutsanyana show. He also slipped across the border in 1959 to take up residence after fearing arrest at the hands of the apartheid authorities.49 Unlike Mafekeng he stayed in the rural areas, first in the rural Leribe District near the border with South Africa, and then further up in the mountains with LLB supporters. While he did occasional writing for both the SACP in exile and the CPL, Mofutsanyana did not actively engage in electoral politics in Lesotho and so he was able to remain in Lesotho until the 1990s, despite the fact that there is no evidence that he ever applied for formal asylum or residency in the territory.50 The presence of Communists and

live in the country from 1973-1982 while he directed ANC guerrilla operations from Maseru. He was assassinated outside Johannesburg in 1993 as the first democratic elections approached. 46 NAUK FCO 141/575 Basutoland Refugees, Note Commissioner of Police (Special Branch) to Government Secretary, Maseru 16 July, 196347 NAUK CO 1048/136 Mrs. E. Mafekeng, Refugee from Republic of South Africa in Basutoland, note from E.L. Sykes, 9 March 196248 “Parliament Opened: Speech from the Throne,” Basutoland News 21 May 1965.49 Edgar, Mofutsanyana, xi, 50-1.50 Personal communication with R. Edgar.

Communist money in Lesotho made many fear that organizing efforts were being secretly controlled or influenced from abroad.

For all the fear of Communists, the CPL played at best a nominal role in the 1965 elections, as the three main parties garnered most of the popular support and coverage in the run-up to the election. That did not stop other politicians and parties from using Communism and the role of outside interests and ideologies as centerpieces of their campaign rhetoric. BNP connections with the apartheid government and conservative Catholic groups became a major issue, as did BCP connections with Beijing and the Pan-African Congress (PAC) from South Africa, while MFP connections with the ANC and SACP were also brought up repeatedly. At their heart, however, these accusations were being used as proxies for arguments about nationalism and the form that post-independence institutions should take. This was especially tricky task in Lesotho because of the problem of keeping the country viable politically and economically since it was completely surrounded by and economically dependent on the apartheid regime.

This meant that in addition to their relationship to Communist governments and funding, a key place of difference between the parties was their respective plans for maintaining relations with South Africa. As had been true almost from the founding of the Basotho Kingdom under Moshoeshoe in the early 19th century, all Basotho agreed that the preeminent aim should be to keep Lesotho free from South African influence and political control.51 While all parties condemned apartheid, the BNP argued for a policy of engagement with the apartheid regime as a way of hopefully getting more aid and development assistance. The BCP, on the other hand, called for a government policy of open opposition to the regime, relying on more Pan-African ties to hopefully counter South African influence and garner more assistance. The MFP, meanwhile, was opposed to apartheid, but called for a stronger monarchy and chieftaincy as a way to strengthen 51 Eldredge, South African Kingdom.

Lesotho internally, while also taking an anti-apartheid stance. With the South African government using an anti-Communist line as the centerpiece of its foreign policy in an attempt to maintain Western support, the lines each party took on Communism and their plan for relations (or not) with South Africa were related.

The BNP ran as an explicitly ant-Communist party, and received significant funds from anti-Communist forces overseas, facilitated in many cases by the Catholic Church. Strongly hinting to their would-be supporters that a BCP or MFP victory would mean the end of Roman Catholic missions and the marrying-off of nuns, the BNP very much used Communism to play into the fears of everyday Basotho.52 In addition to using Communism as a scare-tactic, BNP politicians also used it to make their claims that they were presenting a better nationalist vision than their opponents. Senator Molapo, a staunch BNP supporter, denounced the political opposition and argued that a BNP government would bring better prosperity to all in Lesotho during a 1965 Parliamentary speech: “We shall not give Communism a chance to build itself up in Basutoland…Communism thrives where there is filth and squalor, where the people are hungry. We have declared war on poverty, the breeding ground of Communism.”53 Thus Communism (or at least the specter of Communism) was a rhetorical device BNP leaders used to make nationalist arguments. This is not to say that BNP leaders were insincere about their anti-Communist views—they were not—but that the rhetoric enabled them to make bigger political arguments on terrain that played well with their political base of rural, Catholic, Basotho.

The BNP continued to beat the anti-Communist drums during their time in office from 1965 to 1970, a tenure that included Lesotho’s formal independence on 4 October 1966 from Great Britain. The two major newspapers sympathetic to the BNP, the Catholic Moeletsi oa Basotho and

52 Weisfelder, Political Contention, 65-6.53 “Senator Molapo’s Speech,” Basutoland News 4 June 1965.

the Government-run Lesotho Times, highlighted Communism in world affairs throughout the period 1966-1970 as a way of reminding their readership of the BNP claims of a continued threat from global Communism. Moeletsi featured extensive coverage of the Vietnam War (buying into the American-government driven message about the war being a fight to stop the spread of Communism).54 They also featured street protests in Paris and Prague in 1968, supporting the Prague uprising and condemning the Paris students while cheering on De Gaulle’s crackdown.55 As the January 1970 elections approached and campaigning began, the rhetoric by high ranking governmental officials ramped up, in an attempt to counter opposition attacks on their lack of delivery on promises to bring jobs and economic development to Lesotho. The BNP had claimed to be better positioned to deliver on foreign aid and assistance, but had largely failed at procuring large aid projects from Western governments like the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, as well as multilateral organizations like the World Bank and UNDP. The first years of independence were marked by few jobs and infrastructure projects that had been promised in 1965.56 Thus, the BNP faced an uphill task in its reelection campaign and fell back on anti-Communism and further developmental promises in hopes of getting its base to the polls despite their shortcomings.

Attempting to capitalize on this perceived erosion of popular support for the BNP government, as well as its own stinging and surprising defeat in 1965, the BCP ramped up its local organizational efforts in advance of the 1970 elections. On account of the BCP’s renewed commitment to grass-roots organizing, the party was operating from a position of political strength in 54 “Ho khaphatseha mali [To Overflow With Blood—about Vietnam]” Moeletsi oa Basotho 17 Feb 1968, translation by author.55 “DeGaulle o hlotse makomunisi [De Gaulle has Defeated the Communists]” Moeletsi oa Basotho, 13 July, 1968; “Makomunisi a bontsitsi ‘mala [Communists Have Shown Their True Colors]” Moeletsi oa Basotho, 7 Sept. 1968, “Marashea a tsoe Czechoslovakia [Communists Should Move Out of Czechoslovakia]” Moeletsi oa Basotho, 14 Sept. 1968, all translations by Teboho Mokotjo56 John Aerni-Flessner, “Development, Politics, and the Centralization of State Power in Lesotho, 1960-75,” Journal of African History (Forthcoming).

the run-up to the election, but he still had to face uncomfortable questions about their acceptance of Chinese money, and the training that many younger BCP supporters had received in Communist countries in the early independence period.57 Hoping to bring the election back to questions of foreign influence instead of their own relative failure of service delivery, the BNP repeatedly reminded voters of their view that Communism was a threat to Basotho nationalism and independence.58 The BCP, on the other hand, reminded voters of South African support for the BNP, and argued that this was a threat to sovereignty. The BCP charges against the BNP resonated with Basotho voters, especially those that attacked the government for not getting enough benefit for average Basotho out of their relatively close relationship with the apartheid regime, and for relying on South African officials seconded from Pretoria who took up key government administrative and judicial positions.

The use of Communism as a rhetorical proxy for nationalism continued in the 1969/1970 campaign. A June, 1969 speech by BNP Senator Molapo condemned the BCP for its “leanings towards Communism,” but on this occasion, his harshest rhetoric was saved for the MFP, who had just elected a new leader. While condemning their Communist ties, he also attacked them for electing a “foreigner from Thaba-Nchu [the South African Homeland reserved for Tswana] as its leader…the Basotho would never allow themselves to be led” by such a person.59 This conflation of ideological ties in the opposition parties with a lack of suitable nationalism was common among BNP officials. With the BNP cultivating an explicitly religious sense of nationalism, Minister of Education Anthony Manyeli made similar comments in December 1969 as he accused the BCP and the MFP of being both Communist and hostile to religion.60 This charge insinuated that their visions 57 NAUK CO 1048/881 Relations Between the High Commission Territories and the Republic of South Africa, Brief Number 6, Right of Transit to and from Basutoland across the Republic of South Africa, Independence Negotiations. 58 Matthew White, “South Africa’s Role in Lesotho General Election,” The Star, 23 Jan. 1970. 59 “Senator Molapo Warns Against Communist Infiltration,” Lesotho Times 24 June 1969.60 “Lesotho Likely to Have No Opposition—Hon. Manyeli,” Lesotho Times 2 Dec. 1969

for political change were antithetical to the nationalist views of BNP supporters, who supported both independence and the Catholic Church.

BNP Prime Minister Jonathan made the links between anti-Communism and nationalist visions for development explicit, tying together for the electorate his links with Western governments and his ability to deliver programs designed to improve the standard of living for Basotho like the Peace Corps and USAID-funded small projects bringing piped water and new school classrooms to villages. These projects were part of greater American (and other Western countries) efforts to keep newly independent countries like Lesotho firmly in a pro-Western alliance, and Jonathan argued that the anti-Communist stance of their government was the key to continuing these sources of aid.61 While being less explicit about who was funding the majority of these programs in the campaign, in an effort to take more credit for delivery of basic services to rural communities, Jonathan also threatened communities. He said on the campaign trail that development assistance would only continue if communities “would vote [the BNP] back into power in the coming general elections.”62 Jonathan asked the population to judge his government on the delivery of aid and development: “If you think [the development] we have brought to Lesotho is a good thing, return us to power…If you reject the Basotho National Party, then you reject the developments we have achieved.”63 Unfortunately for Jonathan’s case, voters did not see the BNP government as being particularly effective in delivering this development. Thus, the BCP was on track to win the elections of 1970 before Jonathan, with the assistance of the security forces and the tacit support of South Africa, staged a coup and stayed in power.

61 USNA RG 59 State Department, Bureau of African Affairs, 1958-1966, Memo Williams 10 Nov 196462 “Development Will Come to Winning Constituencies—Premier Jonathan,” Lesotho Times 2 Dec 196963 Jonathan quoted in Khaketla, Lesotho 1970: An African Coup Under the Microscope (London, 1971), 189.

Learning from the 1965 campaign, the BCP made combating allegations of Communist influence part of its strategy prior to the 1970 elections, though the issue was not always at the center of the campaign as it was in 1965. It was still important enough, however, for the BCP to stress its non-alignment policy on the eve of the elections. They stated this policy clearly in December 1969 on the eve of elections.64 This was intended to blunt some of the BNP criticism that conflated their past support by Communist regimes and a supposed lack of nationalism, but was also in keeping with broader Pan-Africanist sympathy for the global Non-Aligned Movement that was attempting to build a coherent alternative to the Cold War lines of Communist and Capitalist. While this was not likely to sway the most fervent anti-Communist supporters of the BNP, it was intended to show persuadable voters that the BCP was not beholden to any foreign government. It also presented a fresh alternative to the BNP policy of engagement with South Africa and the West that had failed to bring about the large-scale funding that Jonathan had hoped it would. Indeed, in his own words, the amount of aid Jonathan had been able to garner from the British, for being the former colonial rulers, was “disappointing.”65 Despite ideological alignment with the West in the Cold War, Jonathan’s BNP government had not seen their loyalty rewarded in terms of development money or projects that Basotho were able to see in any significant way in their lives. The Basotho electorate was savvy enough to see that politicians were severely constrained in their policy options in landlocked Lesotho. The vote for a change of government in 1970 was less a call for radical changes in policy or ideological alignment of the Lesotho government than it was an acknowledgement that they wanted to give a different group the chance to govern.

64 “’Political Witch-hunting,’ says Mokhehle: Congress Party Leader Hits Out at Jonathan,” The Friend 30 Dec. 1969.65 NAUK OD 31/169 Lesotho Post Independence Aid, Conversation High Commissioner Maseru and PM Jonathan, 9 Feb. 1967.

As had been the case in 1965, Communism was a language through which politicians could make arguments about nationalism, the forms of institutions, and foreign policy. The threat of a Communist takeover in Lesotho was even smaller in 1970 than it had been in 1965. There was some genuine curiosity, however, among some Basotho who wanted to discover for themselves what the ideology was. Simon Phafane, an MFP supporter and staunch Royalist who was working for King Moshoeshoe II in the late 1960s, said that he would actively seek out Communist literature in Maseru. He did so not because he agreed with the ideology, but because he enjoyed reading other perspectives on world issues, and he found the writing style accessible: “You read it very quickly and you get the ideas very quickly. But if you read a book written by an American or a British it is complicated.”66 The image of a staunch Royalist in the employ of King Moshoeshoe II actively seeking out Communist literature and Russian novels peddled by Basotho Communists on the streets of Maseru in the late 1960s presents a nicely complicated view of Cold War politics in Lesotho.

Politicians used Cold War rhetoric, funding, and images for their own purposes, but local people did not necessarily buy into this stark worldview or see there being a choice to make in an ideological battle. Being on the periphery of the Cold War, Basotho were free to pick and choose how seriously they took these ideological charges. Friends and neighbors of known South African Communists living in Lesotho like Thabo Mofutsanyana, Elizabeth Mafekeng, and Joe Matthews certainly saw Communism in Lesotho. Anti-Communist organizers like Peter Khamane and Senator Molapo certainly saw the proverbial Red Peril in Lesotho, but most Basotho were probably feel on the spectrum closer to Phafane—being vaguely interested in learning about ideologies without feeling a strong allegiance to any of these outside ideologies. The miniscule support that the CPL garnered in its two electoral attempts shows that Communism was never a serious ‘threat’ in Lesotho,

66 Interview Simon Phafane, Maseru, 3 Nov 2008.

but it also does not fully elucidate the engagement that many Basotho had with its ideological underpinnings. Basotho, by and large, read the coded messages of their political leaders for what they were—attempts to use the language of Communism, development, and other global forces as rhetorical devices in their battle to convince the electorate that their particular vision of nationalism was the one that should triumph at the polls in independence-era Lesotho.

Conclusion

After losing the 1970 elections, Prime Minister Jonathan and his BNP government remained in power with the tacit support of the apartheid regime and the assent of the elite security forces in Lesotho, which had been funded in large part by South Africa.67 Jonathan knew that he needed to regain international legitimacy after nullifying the elections in order to continue his sources of overseas funding that would allow him to rebuild his credibility as a leader in the country.68 In the wake of the coup, the United Kingdom suspended its aid for general operating support as well as its funding of capital for development projects. The USAID and other governmental funding bodies, like those from the Scandinavian countries, followed suit suspending their aid programs. In an effort to break free, to some extent, from dependence on British aid and broaden the potential sources of funding, Jonathan and his government made a concerted effort to couch their position in Cold War terms. Publically, Jonathan loudly proclaimed that the declaration of a State of Emergency was done in order to prevent a Communist takeover and was part of the “fight against the threat of international communism and its agents in Lesotho.”69 In private, diplomats from Jonathan’s government were claiming to State Department officials that 67 NAUK OD 31/371 British Aid to Lesotho 1971/72 and 1972/73; B. Khaketla, Lesotho 1970, 120.68 Aerni-Flessner, Centralization.69 “Our Fight is Against Communism,” Lesotho News 17 Feb 1970.

the Communist Party of Lesotho “was much stronger than it was thought to be” and had planned to seize power from the BCP after they took over (with collusion from MFP members recruited by SACP leader Joe Matthews). Jonathan claimed a militia had been drilling secretly in the mountain districts for just this purpose. Within the framework of independence-era Lesotho and the Cold War, American diplomats were willing to accept that there might have been some sort of alliance between the MFP and the BCP, but were, quite rightly, skeptical of government claims that a substantial militia, especially a Communist one, could have been training without anyone knowing about it in the mountains of Lesotho.70

While the story was too far-fetched for even Cold War US diplomats to accept, the fact that the leaders of the government in Lesotho were pitching their coup in Cold War terms suggests that they understood and hoped to utilize this global conflict to legitimize their position to the international community. Using Communism as a foil was not just for domestic consumption. Most Basotho, likewise, did not accept the idea that the coup was necessary to keep Communism at bay in Lesotho, but that was never the goal of the government. Rather they hoped to buy time to stabilize the security situation (violence had broken out in parts of the country followed the nullification of the results), and consolidate control.71

The strong anti-Communism of Jonathan’s government was abandoned to some extent after the coup. Needing to strengthen his legitimacy after the coup, and realizing that his policies of engagement with South Africa were not yielding the desired result of more funding for development, Jonathan changed tack in the mid-1970s. His move to condemn apartheid by this time won him more support from other African states, and actually positioned him well to take advantage of USAID assistance, which by the early 1970s had

70 USNA RG 59 State Department, Office of Southern African Affairs, Records Relating to Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, 1969-75, Memorandum of Conversation with Ambassador Mashologu 25 Feb 1970.71 Interview Simon Phafane, 3 Nov 2008; Interview Mohlalefi Moteane, 27 May 2009.

been earmarked to support African-run states in the shadow of the apartheid regime.72 While his early anti-Communist stance had helped garner USAID assistance, the continuation of this aid was not dependent on maintaining a rigid anti-Communist stance, as evidenced by his establishment of diplomatic relations with China (Beijing) and Yugoslavia by the mid-1970s. His refusal in the 1980s to evict ANC refugees, and his continued relations with the Eastern Bloc contributed to the border blockade orchestrated by the apartheid regime in 1986 that led to his ouster via military coup.73 This part of the story, though, is mostly beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffices to demonstrate that questions about Communism, the Cold War, and the connection between foreign funding and nationalism extended well beyond the 1970 coup. The 1950s and 1960s were an especially interesting time to investigate the uses of Communism as a rhetorical device because of the stakes for political parties in linking outside ideologies with their views of nationalism in the emergent state of Lesotho. While SACP refugees and money from Moscow, Washington, Beijing, London and other global centers of the Cold War were flowing into Lesotho in at least limited quantities, political leaders and ordinary Basotho were taking Cold War ideologies and attempting to utilize them to further their own domestic political agendas.

72 FRUS Online: Paper Prepared by the National Security Council Interdepartmental Group for Africa, March 1972, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-76, XXVIII Southern Africa (Washington: Department of State) available at: http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v28/d71, accessed 20 March 2014.73 Tom Lodge, “The Southern African Post-Colonial State,” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 36: 1 (1998): 36-7.