Lesotho's culture: a hat, a blanket and a written Sesotho

Who the Basotho are

Lesotho is close to a single-nation state. Wikipedia's article on the country gives an estimated 99.7% of the population identifying as Basotho, and the Encyclopedia of the Nations counted about 1,600 Europeans and 800 Asians living there in 1998. Britannica adds a Zulu minority, a small population of Asian or mixed ancestry and an expatriate European community of teachers, missionaries, aid workers and advisers. Basotho subgroups include the Bafokeng, Batloung, Baphuthi, Bakuena, Bataung, Batšoeneng and Matebele.

The nation is younger than the people. Britannica writes that the Sotho were originally united by loyalty to the royal house of Moshoeshoe I, who drew lineages and whole chiefdoms scattered by the wars of the 1820s into his kingdom at Thaba Bosiu, and that divisions between chiefdoms, and within the royal lineage, have had political weight ever since while the sense of Sotho nationhood has stayed strong. The BTI's 2026 report cites the Afrobarometer survey of 2024 finding that Basotho take great pride in their national and ethnic identity. Across the border, 62% of the Free State's inhabitants spoke Sesotho as their first language at South Africa's census of 2011, and migrant work carried the language to Gauteng.

Village life, as Britannica describes it, centres on the fields, the chief's court, the kraals, the school, the church and the initiation lodge. The houses it illustrates are circular huts with thatched roofs and coloured door frames, on the lowland plains and on highland hillsides alike, and painted decoration on house walls is among the village crafts it lists. Initiation, lebollo, is still practised: boys undergo circumcision in a ritual that trains them as members of family, clan and nation, and girls have their own ceremony. Many boys spend years as herders at cattle posts, while women and girls do much of the field work. The chieftaincy still runs from the king through the chiefs to the village.

Which languages Lesotho speaks and writes

Section 3 of the constitution names two official languages, Sesotho and English, and provides that nothing is invalid because it is written or conducted in either. In practice, the BTI's 2026 report writes, Sesotho is the mother tongue of the majority and English the language of government, law and education. The same report notes that isiZulu, isiXhosa and sePhuthi, spoken by smaller communities, have been proposed for inclusion in an amended constitution. Phuthi is a Nguni language heavily influenced by Sesotho; Britannica describes it as a dialect of Swati.

Sesotho, also called Southern Sotho, is a Bantu language of the Sotho-Tswana branch. Wikipedia's article on the language gives about 1,493,000 speakers in Lesotho on data from 1993, 85% of the population at that time, and records that within Lesotho there is no discernible dialect variation beyond faint differences of vocabulary. The language has ejective and click consonants and a uvular trill. Ordinary courtesy is built into it: Wikivoyage's guide notes that an older man is addressed as ntate and an older woman as 'me, as in the greeting dumela ntate.

Reading and writing came through the missions. Eugène Casalis and Thomas Arbousset of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society developed a Sesotho orthography and printed works in it between 1837 and 1855, and the first Sesotho translation of the Bible appeared in 1878. Literacy rates are higher among women than men, and the gap is unusually wide: the BTI gives an adult literacy rate of 82.01% in 2022, 88.29% for women against 70.07% for men, and explains the difference by boys dropping out earlier for employment or migration.

How the mission press made a literature

Britannica credits the printing presses at the mission stations with a substantial share of the religious and educational literature of southern Africa. A mission press has published the newspaper Leselinyana la Lesotho, "The Little Light of Lesotho", for more than a century; one of its editors, Edgar Mahlomola Motuba, was abducted and murdered in September 1981. The country's first daily paper, The Nation, began in 1985, and weekly papers now appear in Sesotho and English. The state runs a television station and a radio station broadcasting in both languages, independent radio stations operate beside them, and South African channels are received across the country; the Lesotho National Broadcasting Service is in turn carried into South Africa by satellite.

Sesotho writing produced at least one book read far beyond southern Africa. Thomas Mokopu Mofolo wrote Western-style novels in Sesotho, and his Chaka has been translated into several languages, including English and German. Britannica also names the composer Joshua Polumo Mohapeloa, who lived from 1908 to 1982, among the figures in whom there is national pride, beside an oral literature of folk songs, proverbs, jokes, myths and legends and the memory of Moshoeshoe I.

The Morija Arts and Cultural Festival is held each year at Morija, south of Maseru, where the missionaries settled in 1833. Visual artists sell much of their work to collectors and visitors, and Britannica writes that many use motifs from the San paintings at Ha Baroana, a rock shelter east of Maseru.

What Basotho believe

Christianity is the majority religion on every count, but the counts differ.

Wikipedia's figures for 2011 put non-Christian religions at 9.6% and those with no religion at 0.2%. The Catholic Church is organised as a province under the archbishop of Maseru with suffragan bishops at Leribe, Mohale's Hoek and Qacha's Nek. Britannica notes that small numbers practise Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and traditional religion, and that some Christians also hold traditional beliefs; Wikipedia's article on the Sotho people describes Modimo as a supreme being who cannot be approached directly, with ancestors interceding between Modimo and the living.

The BTI's 2026 report describes Lesotho as a secular state whose constitution prohibits religious discrimination, and it records official events opened and closed with prayer, a public argument in 2023 over a cross erected on the Mpilo hilltop near Maseru, and criticism the same year of a minister who called Muslims a security risk.

What Basotho wear and why

The blanket is the garment by which Basotho are known. Britannica explains it by the climate: because of the sharp swings in temperature both men and women wear blankets, often multicoloured, as cloaks. Wikipedia's article on the country describes the Basotho blanket as originally made of wool and now mostly of acrylic fibres, with its main manufacturer, Aranda, producing it at a factory across the border in South Africa, and Wikivoyage's guide says the blankets were introduced by British traders before becoming everyday and formal wear. Herd boys in the mountains wear the blanket with gumboots and woollen balaclavas against the wet and the cold; women wear long skirts and dresses, often with a blanket or printed cloth wrapped around the waist, and on occasions such as weddings the seshweshwe dress. The film director Ryan Coogler said Lesotho inspired his depiction of Wakanda in Black Panther in 2018, and Basotho blankets became more widely known through the film.

The mokorotlo is woven from reeds or grass into a cone with a decorative topknot, and Britannica lists the weaving of these hats among the crafts still practised in the villages. The first flag of 1966 carried a white mokorotlo. A military emblem with a shield replaced it in 1987, and the flag adopted in 2006, intended to show a country at peace with itself and its only neighbour, brought the hat back in black, which Wikipedia's article on the flag says was chosen to represent Lesotho as a black nation. UNESCO's list of intangible heritage for Lesotho shows the element inscribed in 2026 under the title "The knowledge, craft techniques and skill of making the Basotho hat / Moliea-Nyeoe". Lesotho accepted the World Heritage Convention on 25 November 2003.

What is cooked and drunk at home

The national dish named in Wikipedia's article on the country is motoho, a fermented sorghum porridge. A staple is pap, a cornmeal porridge served with a vegetable sauce, and the economy article follows the farming behind it. Tea and locally brewed beer are the usual drinks, and fermented ginger beer is a local speciality. Chesanyama is sold by independent sellers across the country with side dishes such as cabbage and pap. Britannica lists maize, sorghum, wheat, beans and peas as the main crops, and wool and mohair among the products exported.

Which music and sport Basotho share

Herders play the lesiba, an instrument Britannica describes as a string and a feather on which the player blows, so that it is both a string and a wind instrument. The mohobelo is a men's stomping dance of synchronised movements and high kicks, and women perform a dance kneeling in a line and beating the ground with their knees. The gumboot dance came back from the mines, and Britannica cites it as an example of migrant labour reshaping traditional forms.

Famo, an accordion-based Sesotho music genre popular in Lesotho and South Africa, has a darker recent history. Freedom House reports that rivalry between famo groups turned into gang violence, that political parties used the groups' music and support in the 2022 campaign, and that in May 2024 the government invoked the Internal Security Act and banned 12 famo groups, a measure Freedom House notes could harm cultural groups that depend on live performance.

Football is the most widely played sport, and many of the best players play professionally in South Africa. Britannica adds judo and boxing, both helped by police training facilities, long-distance running, and horse racing, which is important to rural social life. The Basotho pony, once ridden into battle, is still used for transport and farm work. On film, This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection became the first Lesotho film submitted for the Academy Award for best international feature, in November 2020.

Where national memory is kept

Thaba Bosiu, the hill outside Maseru where Moshoeshoe I settled in 1824 and was buried in 1870, is in Britannica's words the country's most important historic site. Moshoeshoe's Day, on 11 March, the anniversary of his death, begins with the laying of wreaths on his grave by a delegation led by the king, followed by a parade. The government archives and the national library are in Maseru, and Teyateyaneng, also outside Maseru, is the centre of the arts and crafts industries.

Some of the national memory is abroad. The British Museum holds approximately 515 objects associated with Moshoeshoe I, many assembled for the International Exhibition in London in 1862 and given to the museum by the collector Henry Christy's bequest of 1865. Lesotho's Department of Culture opened discussions about their return in 2017, a photographic exhibition of the objects was shown at the Thaba Bosiu Cultural Village museum in October 2018, and a request made in December 2019 asked for a long-term loan of 80 objects for a planned Lesotho National Museum; the British Museum Act of 1963 generally prevents an outright return. The rock art that the San left in the mountains is protected in part within the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, which UNESCO lists for an estimated 35,000 images in about 690 sites.