LESOTHO

BASALI!

STORIES BY AND ABOUT WOMEN IN LESOTHO

EDITED BY K. LIMAKATSO KENDALL

In her introduction to this collection the editor, K. Limakatso Kendall, writes, “Basali literally translated into English is ‘women’, but its meaning as an exclamation in Sesotho is rich with humour, affection and women’s connection. Usually exclaimed by one woman to another, often delivered with a laugh, an amused shaking of the head or a clapping of hands, Basali! strongly evokes Basotho woman’s love and respect for one another. It is roughly equivalent to ‘Girl!’ in African-American English and is spoken with the same high-toned, sliding inflection… But note that ‘Girl!’ is singular and praises individual audacity. Basali! is plural; it carries with it the implication that whatever the one woman is, and is being praised or admired for, is also true for the rest of her kind. ‘You are outrageous, powerful etc.; and so are we all!’”

About half the stories were first told orally in Sesotho, by woman who neither speak nor write English, then retold by their English-speaking children or relatives and transcribed and edited for this book.

In reading these stories, two things stood out for me.

Firstly, how the editor and those transcribing the stories had done such a good job of capturing the distinct Sesotho tone of the language and storytelling style. There was a lot that reminded me of growing up in Johannesburg, where so many of the women who worked in the homes in our neighborhoods were Sotho speaking. I haven’t thought about it for years, but reading these stories, the lyrical descriptions, the idioms and metaphors, and the use of animal characteristics to describe human nature and behavior, it all came back to me like a familiar song.

The second thing that I noticed were the almost ubiquitous instances of violence against women. In almost every story there was a description of a woman (usually the narrator) suffering physical abuse at the hands of a trusted man, often a family member. These events are not mentioned casually, often they are condemned and the men who perpetrate the violence are condemned, but equally as often, they are simply mentioned as another event among many other events that occur in the telling of a story.

In The Decision to Remain, Mapheleba Lekhetho tells her nephew, “‘Your Uncle Thabo, to whom I tried my best to be subservient and faithful as a king’s servant, was as aggressive and domineering as Makoanyane, that old Mosotho warrior you learned about in history. My husband was a lion,’ ‘M’e ‘M’akena said with bitterness. ‘Did he ever beat you up, aunt?’ I asked foolishly. ‘Child of my brother, my body was always in pain,’ she continued. ‘But one day he struck me so many times that I fainted. Thank God, he ran away afterwards, thinking that I was dead.’”

In Three Moments in a Marriage, a black woman describes her fear of the Boer (white, Afrikaner) policemen who come at night, terrorizing people and arresting them if they didn’t have the right permit for the house in which they were found. In Mpho ‘M’atsepo Nthunya’s case, she’d recently moved to her new husband’s family’s house and didn’t have a permit for that particular address. “They could come any time they like, come to the Location and get people—maybe men, maybe women—and beat them, shove them in the pickup, yell at them like they yell at dogs, kill them if they like.”

In Why Blame Her, M’Atseleng Lentsoenyane, tells of how she was unable to fall pregnant and soon discovered that her husband had taken a concubine and had a child with her. (Having a child with another woman would have been acceptable if he’d taken her as his second wife, but keeping a concubine meant he didn’t have to take responsibility for the child. Such a charmer!) When his wife confronted him about this secret child, he brutally attacked her, “His face suddenly changed; it became as black as a three-legged pot, while his eyes glittered like those of a poisonous snake. He slapped her across her face with the back of his hand, locked the door and fetched out his kubu.* He whipped, kicked and tossed her, not caring about the furniture on which she fell.”

In How She Lost Her Eye, Inahaneng Tsekana relays the story of Sehlahla who is beaten by her father, “It also came into Sehlahla’s mind how her father, Chaka, used to thrash her for unreasonable things. Marina, Sehlahla’s mother, could not intervene because her husband considered her a wife or a human being only at the flashing of the lightning. She was absolutely nothing in the family.” Then Sehlahla is attacked and brutalized by a doctor she trusts, who ties her to a tree, “I could smell blood. I looked up and there was Mocholoko, leering over me, his dagger in his hand.” He uses his dagger to pluck out her eye, and disturbed by passing men, leaves her there to die. She eventually discovers that the doctor had been asked to kill her by the Chief, because she’d refused his son’s proposal of marriage.

These examples of violence are not even always the central theme or events of the short story. They are simply an expected part of these women’s lives—while I was living, growing, learning, becoming a woman, I was beaten, whipped, slapped, stabbed by a man in my life. These Basali! recount the stories of their lives, and almost all include violence at the hands of a man.

According to UN Women, 243 million women and girls worldwide were abused by an intimate partner in the past year. In Lesotho, it is one in three women and girls.

*a kubu is a whip