This study explores the meaning and value of Basotho traditional farming practices and Indigenous knowing using Indigenous methodology. The study sought to 1) understand the core tenets of Basotho traditional farming practices that involve Indigenous knowledge and sustainable land care; 2) investigate the implications of these practices, and how they may inform school curriculum in ways that promote food security and reduce child hunger; and 3) examine the role of gender in food practices in Lesotho. I collaborated with women Elders who knew oral traditions or traditional farming practices by working with children on a school farm. I used Basotho ways of knowing and communication to gather data including storytelling and observation. I complemented my observation data by utilizing photographs and field notes. The Elders shared their farming experiences, oral traditions, and knowledge including the cultural and survival significance of selecting, preserving, and sharing seeds, how to grow diverse, healthy, and nutritious food and how to be food self-sufficient. They spoke of and demonstrated ways to gather people together as a community to plant, harvest, and share food while caring for the land through culturally respectful practices. The Elders further shared ways to think about and relate to the land as a gift, as 'a being' from Creator, to be respected and cared for in the same way humans care for themselves. The Elders underscored the need to promote food security and land care through a food curriculum that embraces traditional farming practices steeped in Indigenous knowledge. Farming practices such as letsema (community collaborating in fieldwork), hlakantsutsu culture (diversified mixed cropping), koti (minimizing tillage), use of animal dung and ash fertilizers, selecting and preserving native seeds and molala (allowing land to rest after harvest) can constitute a desired curriculum. The Elders taught me what I understood as, and call, the principles of Re seng (we are all related): all humans and non-humans alike, rootedness, letsema (community collaboration), interdependence, connectedness, reciprocity, respect and care for the land. Reflection on these principles continuously shaped the study's theoretical framework with consequent implications on the participatory action methodology, which I characterize as the Basotho Indigenous Participatory Action Methodology.

This study explores the meaning and value of Basotho traditional farming practices and Indigenous knowing using Indigenous methodology. The study sought to 1) understand the core tenets of Basotho traditional farming practices that involve Indigenous knowledge and sustainable land care; 2) investigate the implications of these practices, and how they may inform school curriculum in ways that promote food security and reduce child hunger; and 3) examine the role of gender in food practices in Lesotho. I collaborated with women Elders who knew oral traditions or traditional farming practices by working with children on a school farm. I used Basotho ways of knowing and communication to gather data including storytelling and observation. I complemented my observation data by utilizing photographs and field notes. The Elders shared their farming experiences, oral traditions, and knowledge including the cultural and survival significance of selecting, preserving, and sharing seeds, how to grow diverse, healthy, and nutritious food and how to be food self-sufficient. They spoke of and demonstrated ways to gather people together as a community to plant, harvest, and share food while caring for the land through culturally respectful practices. The Elders further shared ways to think about and relate to the land as a gift, as 'a being' from Creator, to be respected and cared for in the same way humans care for themselves. The Elders underscored the need to promote food security and land care through a food curriculum that embraces traditional farming practices steeped in Indigenous knowledge. Farming practices such as letsema (community collaborating in fieldwork), hlakantsutsu culture (diversified mixed cropping), koti (minimizing tillage), use of animal dung and ash fertilizers, selecting and preserving native seeds and molala (allowing land to rest after harvest) can constitute a desired curriculum. The Elders taught me what I understood as, and call, the principles of Re seng (we are all related): all humans and non-humans alike, rootedness, letsema (community collaboration), interdependence, connectedness, reciprocity, respect and care for the land. Reflection on these principles continuously shaped the study's theoretical framework with consequent implications on the participatory action methodology, which I characterize as the Basotho Indigenous Participatory Action Methodology.

This study explores the meaning and value of Basotho traditional farming practices and Indigenous knowing using Indigenous methodology. The study sought to 1) understand the core tenets of Basotho traditional farming practices that involve Indigenous knowledge and sustainable land care; 2) investigate the implications of these practices, and how they may inform school curriculum in ways that promote food security and reduce child hunger; and 3) examine the role of gender in food practices in Lesotho. I collaborated with women Elders who knew oral traditions or traditional farming practices by working with children on a school farm. I used Basotho ways of knowing and communication to gather data including storytelling and observation. I complemented my observation data by utilizing photographs and field notes. The Elders shared their farming experiences, oral traditions, and knowledge including the cultural and survival significance of selecting, preserving, and sharing seeds, how to grow diverse, healthy, and nutritious food and how to be food self-sufficient. They spoke of and demonstrated ways to gather people together as a community to plant, harvest, and share food while caring for the land through culturally respectful practices. The Elders further shared ways to think about and relate to the land as a gift, as 'a being' from Creator, to be respected and cared for in the same way humans care for themselves. The Elders underscored the need to promote food security and land care through a food curriculum that embraces traditional farming practices steeped in Indigenous knowledge. Farming practices such as letsema (community collaborating in fieldwork), hlakantsutsu culture (diversified mixed cropping), koti (minimizing tillage), use of animal dung and ash fertilizers, selecting and preserving native seeds and molala (allowing land to rest after harvest) can constitute a desired curriculum. The Elders taught me what I understood as, and call, the principles of Re seng (we are all related): all humans and non-humans alike, rootedness, letsema (community collaboration), interdependence, connectedness, reciprocity, respect and care for the land. Reflection on these principles continuously shaped the study's theoretical framework with consequent implications on the participatory action methodology, which I characterize as the Basotho Indigenous Participatory Action Methodology. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

This thesis uses belonging as an analytical tool to analyse the history of the Basotho community in the Dewure Purchase Areas in Zimbabwe. The thesis analyses how Basotho’s migration history and their experiences with colonial displacements shaped and continue to shape their construction of a sense of belonging. It also examines how Basotho’s purchase of farms in the Dewure Purchase Areas in the 1930s and their establishment of a communally owned farm have played a key role in their struggles for belonging. It also explores the centrality of land, graves, funerals, and religion in the belonging matrix. The study, however, avoids projecting the Basotho community as a monolithic and cohesive unit by analysing the various internal schisms and cleavages within the community and examining their impacts. Although, Basotho have seemingly managed to integrate into the local community, a more critical analysis reveals that they have also continued to maintain a level of particularism. The central dynamic in this thesis, therefore, is how the Basotho, in their different struggles and strategies to belong, over the last century, have fundamentally been caught between being seen and treated as the same as the other people around them and being seen (and seeing themselves) as different. It is arguably this ambivalence or delicate balancing between integrating and remaining ‘outsiders’ that has shaped Basotho’s sense of belonging and determined the strategies they have deployed in different historical contexts. The thesis concludes that, since it is relational and always in a state of becoming, strategies deployed in constructing and articulating belonging constantly change to suit particular historical contexts.

Making and being ‘made’ is a paradigm of lived experience applicable to all human beings who have intentions of being made but must also be prepared to execute those intentions. This is a subjective statement and its validation could only be induced from observation of BaSotho females making their unique buildings-as-artefacts, if these women were being ‘made’ through their actions of making then it must also apply to other makers. Prerequisites of this paradigm are that the maker is a free agent who is allowed to have intentions but who is also willing to execute these aims. Effective actions imply that the maker has been prepared mentally and physically, during a constant evolutionary growth of the mind and the body, starting from the stage of being a foetus. Lived experience is phenomenology, a lived gathering of experiences, perceived by all of the senses and integrated by the mind into an accumulated body of knowledge. As the chapters in this thesis illustrate, being ‘made’ was at the future maker’s threshold of consciousness, her primary concern is in making space for affiliation, place for private intimacy, often alone but also at other times with others, place-capacity too, for the spontaneity of appropriation of place and its imponderable use which generate new intentions. All makers of space need to get prepared for their future roles, these roles require a life long interaction with learning. The extent of knowledge affects the depth of intentions as well as its execution. Self confidence is caused by learning and personal experiences, the intensity of lived experiences evolve into a willingness to participate. The making women evolved along a timeline to become the makers of space, but it is not only in the physical requirements of space making that she has to live the experiences, she also has to learn how her interactions within her community affect her future role as maker. Her experience of interpersonal relationships, her Botho moral obligations and societal demands will make her realize the gravity of her responsibilities. Making and being ‘made’; she exists in the present and has a future of lived experiences, when and how reciprocity was accumulated during her life is identified by her existential phenomenology. The creative mind is ‘made’ through action but no sources in literature reviewed mentions that the makers of artefacts made their identity or that reciprocity was sought in the process of making. Execution implies that action has a reciprocal intent, not only to shelter and change the patterns of lived experience, but also to gain rewards for the effort. Approval and praise are such rewards; a sequel for executed intentions, this reward is cognitive and physical. Cognitive because along a time line of lived experience an in depth evolution took place of; self esteem, self confidence, knowledge, insight, increase the depth of intentions, willingness to enact. Physical because along this concurrent time line, only in the execution of intentions does dexterity, agility, ability, control of procedures, manipulation of the dictates of the material – earth. Resulting from a continuous cause to share in a process of effects there evolves an inward psychic and outward agility in the body of the individual; from the yet-to-be-born, to the baby, to the mature woman, ending with the living-dead, Badimo. Reciprocity, an extra sensory perception, affected their identity, self-esteem and knowledge of the possibilities and limitations of their bodies. Reciprocity is a lived experience, phenomenology, that takes place throughout the lifecycle of the makers and especially as makers fulfills their roles within their social and cultural value system. To achieve reciprocity, sometimes unknowingly, the building-asartefact is used as mechanism to substantiate reciprocity between an inward, by the evolution of self, and outward as the evolution of makers. The shaping of identity and sense of self of the maker, through the acts and procedures of making is realized through a reciprocal evolution between self and artefact; self included intuition, talent, and experience of accumulated knowledge, artefact either being executed or existed and is texts of qualities of use. Effective iinteraction with life affecting forces during the required execution of intentions gathered the emotional awareness of reciprocal purpose and meaning in life, self esteem and self confidence cultivated their own personalities. These makers were rewarded within their societal construct; Botho as the African phenomenology of expectations, if their end products resulted in successful physical manifestations of the depth of creativity in mental or psychic preparation. Reciprocity was substantiated within the guidelines of existential phenomenology. During living their experiences humans create them selves by creating and they create because they create them self. Success engenders reciprocity but it can also be lost through personal crises. Reciprocity was the result of most making experiences when: I can do it better, became a continuous quest and personal challenge to innovation within thoughtful lived experience. They achieved the deeper meanings of dwelling, its ‘wetness’ of water. It is inevitably a circular process: in hermeneutic phenomenology there is no possibility of escaping the need to have already understood an artefact-as-home before attempting to explain the process of understanding that product and evaluating its deeper meaning. BaSotho vernacular architecture within the guidelines of hermeneutic phenomenology recorded a cultural continuum as mental and physical reciprocity coupled the vernacular as historical interactive knowledge, to the woman’s timeline as an evolution of interaction, and with the woman achieving reciprocity. This understanding becomes essential while examining how archaeological and actual existing vernacular artefacts formed a reference base that affected and influenced her future intentions for making. Time in a re-iterative progressive process caused the physical manifestation to be evaluated and it then reframed the cognitive insight. The lessons learnt from the BaSotho past are that design has symbolic as well as utilitarian meanings. Evident in the vernacular is the ecological sensitivity of the BaSotho makers with their skill at clustering human habitations in networks of open space becomes vital for the creation of a sustainable future. A life long interaction between the cognitive and physical realms existed. During the evolution of solutions the BaSotho makers adapted form and materials to the conditions of nature; working with natural forms and climatic cycles rather than considering forces as obstacles to overcome has hermeneutic and practical values; used by intentional makers. The cultural identity in the woman made the home, and then the process of home-making ‘made’ the woman; a reciprocal reward. A culture of action: Intentions of bringing manifestations of space into existence create reactions from all the senses. This is true not only of the end product but also during the process of execution. Reciprocity from ontological phenomenology results from her staying in mental and physical control of the process of making with every decision considered, accepted or rejected and her proof of the correct decision evident in the final product and its language spoken to the members of her social construct. The observation of sensorial reciprocity as it presented itself in haptic phenomenology can be induced from the responses she received from users of her buildings-as-artefacts; her manual effort in executing components of her buildings reflected her concerns with the response to all the senses of enjoyment. The hand shapes form and the body delineates space to satisfy a basic need for a place to sleep. Primary data consisted of action photos, each was separated into its phenomenological elements to rediscover true-deeper meanings, and drawings with text recorded these elements. Secondary references in literature were used to validate aspects of the hypothesis, these explained deeper meanings and insights. Action as text: At a threshold of interaction during the process of execution reciprocity is a focused involvement of the whole body, all the senses and mind continuously inform the hand and during its process of execution evaluates and restructures intentions which then appropriately instructs the hand. This haptic phenomenological procedure is inherent to all processes of execution, not only in making space but also in such as making decisions at a board room table. It starts when the maker was a baby, tactile senses are enhanced by skin-to-skin contact, not only of the hand but the whole body becomes an internal and external organ in the perception of positive or negative influences. During the making of space materials continuously dictates and controls the grammar when ice becomes solid water, this metaphor of prescribed procedures of growth is equally appropriate to the processes of achieving spatial accrual. The nature of earth is such a dictate. The quality of a threshold of interaction implies that the depth of reciprocity is dependant on the degree of participation of the makers. Aesthetic phenomenology used a thesaurus of space, place and its formal built synonyms to interpret this unique BaSotho built language symbolically wrapped with its litema. Humans use many practices of language, from verbal to signs. This is relevant to each person who needs to be able to enter into forms of interpersonal discourse at a micro level. Verbal communicative acts are as indicative of intentions as are symbols used at a macro level, this is similarly applicable to the very act of executing communicative intentions. Litema as an art of the earth resulted from an interaction between ontological, haptic and aesthetic phenomena. Interpersonal discourse evolved into a BaSotho culture of community discourse, this evolution caused reciprocity to take place throughout the life cycle of lived experience, from birth till death of the maker, heightened especially when the maker fulfils her roles within her social and cultural constructs. Finally, because the maker of litema is a master of her art, others, say trained architects who make buildings may learn, by carefully studying these buildings-as-artefacts with their symbolic form of language with their essential insights into the process and technique of appropriate response to forces affecting mindsets. It is also usual for the interest in the maker to remain only incidental, observers are often not at all interested in the proof that any particular correspondence exists between the reputable intentions of makers with their acts or that there is a reward in innovation within discovered limitations and the work as it exists. This reward recognize the value of making and being ‘made’ solidified as a multifaceted paradigm of life, living and making. The hypothesis is substantiated. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Architecture / unrestricted

The core of this thesis is to investigate the role of the church in the community districted by divorce. More especially the role of the Catholic Church as it is one of the mainline churches in Lesotho. The process is to research how care of the people of God is undertaken, and to heal those who are affected by divorce because the Basotho men are separated from their wives while in the mines. How do we care for people especially those who walk alone and suffer quietly because no one cares. Never before in the history of Lesotho were we faced with such a problem of couples divorcing. Divorce has touched the Basotho lives badly, especially those who were known to be having a profound love in the marriage. My investigation throughout this thesis will be based on a question; what has gone wrong in our marriages especially to those people who were known to be loving people? They are now divorcing. Several questions come to mind. What has gone wrong? What is the church doing in order to rescue the situation? Why so many divorces among Basotho people? I will examine the role of the Catholic Church in Lesotho, which has more members in the country. I will also finally propose some of the tentative solution to the problem of divorce, which seems to be escalating. / Dissertation (MA (Theology) : Practical Theology)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

The inability to attribute art objects to the Basotho culture remains a problem for art historians and anthropologists alike. Current publications on the arts of Africa include few, if any, objects attributed to South Sotho-speakers, and often attribute Basotho objects under the broad label of "southern African," rather than linking them to artists from this particular culture. This is largely due to a lack of research on Basotho arts and culture, as well as the widespread belief that the cultures of the region are simply too enmeshed with one another for the arts to be distinguished. However, it is important that we be able to tell the art of one African people from another if we are ever to understand accurately how art expresses peoples' ideas and beliefs about themselves and the world in which they live. Through this project I challenge the label of "southern Africa" that is so often used in attributing art objects from the region, and develop a definitive system of identification for Basotho objects. This system differentiates Basotho arts from works produced by other cultures in southern Africa, and produces the first all-inclusive anthology of South Sotho art history. While my work first and foremost demonstrates the existence of a unique and identifiable Basotho visual style, it also investigates the roles that stylistic characteristics have played in the presentation of southern Sotho identity beginning with the formation of the Basotho polity 200 years ago. Furthermore I identify the contextual and cultural significance of an entire range of Basotho forms, generating a better understanding of Basotho art and culture. In order to complete this, I use a Morellian approach to identify and define the unique and specific visual aspects found among Basotho arts. This type of analysis is based solely on the external physical characteristics of a work of art, and focuses on the identification of similarities and differences within a group of objects. The resulting data provides a taxonomy for the classification of cultural, regional, and local styles through the isolation of the visual aspects of individual objects. However, because the Morellian methodology takes a morphological approach, I use historical literature and contemporary interviews to connect the function and social context to the objects in order truly to develop an art history of the Basotho. Through this analysis, I identify visual aspects that are unique to southern Sotho arts, and further locate visual signs that assert one's specific clan lineage within the broad "southern Sotho" cultural grouping. This allows me to clearly define the meaning and significance of the "Basotho" cultural moniker, and develop a nuanced understanding of identity amongst southern Sotho peoples.

The overall aim of this study was to investigate the culinary practices of Basotho with regard to traditional bread, to characterise breads and to apply the cultural hedonic framework to describe consumers’ perceptions about the acceptance of traditional Basotho breads. The culinary practices of Basotho have been transferred from one generation to the other without or with very limited documentation. The only sourced information was a research done by Ashton in 1939. The knowledge of traditional bread preparation and its acceptance by Basotho consumers is currently limited. Food practices are embedded in culture and every culture has specifications pointing to the hedonic characteristics of food such as taste, appearance, flavour and aroma, which are determined by the context in which the food is selected or consumed. It was important to understand the cultural hedonic framework underlying Basotho bread acceptance. The study was exploratory and descriptive in nature. Food acceptance and cultural hedonic framework theories were used to explore the reasons underlying the choice of bread. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative techniques of collecting data in the three phases. Data related to culinary practices was collected by a structured questionnaire and focus groups in phase 1. Phase 2 was the standardisation of recipes obtained in phase 1. The standardised breads were characterised in phase 3 by describing selected physico–chemical and sensory characteristics of dough and breads. The responses to the questionnaire and descriptive sensory evaluation were statistically analysed and the grounded theory approach was used to analyse data from focus groups. Ten Basotho breads prepared from wheat, maize and sorghum were identified in both rural and urban areas of Lesotho. Preparation of traditional Basotho breads involves preparation of grains (washing, sorting, soaking, dehulling, dry milling and wet milling), mixing/kneading, fermentation and cooking. Steaming method is applied to all breads, but baking and pot-roasting are used for wheat breads only. Younger participants were less familiar with maize and sorghum breads than they were with wheat breads. Unfamiliarity with the sensory attributes of these products, contributed to their lower acceptance. The older participants were familiar with all traditional breads and valued them for use in the important Basotho cultural ceremonies. The movement from the rural areas to urban areas has also changed the traditional bread practices to modern westernised ways. This therefore placed Lesotho into both higher and lower cultural hedonic context such that rural and old people are higher context cultures and urban and younger people are lower context cultures. The type of grain flour used influenced the sensory characteristics of breads. Red sorghum breads reflected dark red crumb and white maize breads reflected white crumb. Fine flour produced lighter breads than coarse flour of the same cereal type. Non-wheat breads were more crumbly, hard and fibrous than wheat breads. The instrumental texture analysis showed plastic deformation for wheat breads, brittle deformation for non-wheat breads and elastic deformation for standard breads. It is recommended that more attention be given to the development, standardisation and improvement of traditional bread recipes in order to produce bread with acceptable sensory attributes. The findings of this study help to understand and interpret the overall scope of Basotho attitude towards breads for the maximum utilisation of local grains in Lesotho. The study adds the Basotho perspective of cultural food acceptance to the excisting global knowledge of food choice regarding traditional food products. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Consumer Science / PhD / Unrestricted

Basotho family odes (diboko) form part of oral literature, and refer to names of families, clans or totems. They constitute poetic compositions conveying information about clans' historical origin, philosophy and ancestors. The performance of this oral art form makes use of formulaic techniques such as linking, parallelism, alliteration, etc., which are commonly used in praise poetry. As basis to the content of these oral art forms, the genealogies of the various Basotho clans are discussed to show the reflection of the progenitor names in the clan praises. The functions of family odes are of educational, social and religious nature. Other functions include their use in compositions of other genres, such as, praise poems, mine workers' chants, traditional doctors' falls (mawa) and songs. The recitation of this oral art form is characterised by the instability of the texts, which takes the form of extensions, additions, truncations, improvisations and genre transitions. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

Basotho family odes (diboko) form part of oral literature, and refer to names of families, clans or totems. They constitute poetic compositions conveying information about clans' historical origin, philosophy and ancestors. The performance of this oral art form makes use of formulaic techniques such as linking, parallelism, alliteration, etc., which are commonly used in praise poetry. As basis to the content of these oral art forms, the genealogies of the various Basotho clans are discussed to show the reflection of the progenitor names in the clan praises. The functions of family odes are of educational, social and religious nature. Other functions include their use in compositions of other genres, such as, praise poems, mine workers' chants, traditional doctors' falls (mawa) and songs. The recitation of this oral art form is characterised by the instability of the texts, which takes the form of extensions, additions, truncations, improvisations and genre transitions. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)