Magister Artium - MA (History) / The aim of this mini-thesis is to interrogate an incident that happened in Lesotho in 1982, where
the South African Defence Force (SADF) invaded the capital, Maseru, under the guise of
searching for ANC operatives and killed 42 people thirty of whom were South Africans, while
the remaining 12 were Basotho citizens. A particular concern is how traumatic events are
represented by witnesses, how they remember or, rather talk, about the event, and the secrets and
silences which may arise. A lack of literature on this period of Lesotho's history and the Raid itself has necessitated a
wider engagement with Raid as it is the first raid that involved the SADF, perpetrated in Lesotho.
The first chapter draws out and highlights the complicated relationships between Lesotho and
South Africa and their respective main opposition political parties, namely, the Basotho
Congress Party and the overall South African liberation movements including the African
National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress. This brings me to conclude that the 1982
Maseru Raid and subsequent ones took place on the back of a period that was burdened with
gross human rights violations in Lesotho and, this can be argued to explain why the Raid is not
particularly spoken about.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/6418 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mahula, Pulane Matsietsi |
| Contributors | Rousseau, Nicky |
| Publisher | University of the Western Cape |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | University of the Western Cape |
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