Lesotho - Orange Free State
The expense of maintaining the Orange River Sovereignty proved too much for the British Government in London, and in 1854 the British withdrew from Bloemfontein, handing over responsibility to the newly proclaimed Orange Free State Republic of the Boers.
At first relations with Lesotho were cordial and at one point Moshoeshoe himself was a guest in Bloemfontein, but this did not last for long. The boundaries left undefined at the time of the British withdrawal soon led to armed conflict in Senekal's War of 1858. The result on the Basotho side was loss of life and destruction of mission stations, while the Orange Free State troops lost heavily in an ambush near Thabana-Morena, in what is now the Mafeteng District.
For the next few years an uneasy peace prevailed. Moshoeshoe, realising his precarious position, sought British protection from Sir Philip Wodehouse, the new High Commissioner, who arrived in the Cape in 1861. Hostilities with the Orange Free State again broke out in the Seqiti War of 1865. Thaba Bosiu was itself besieged but not taken and a boer commandant, Louw Wepener, was killed, during an assault on the mountain.
A short armistice followed during which Moshoeshoe renewed his entreaties to Wodehouse for protection. In 1867 Free State forces again overran much of Moshoeshoe's land and conquered almost every lowland fortress except Thaba Bosiu.
In this hour of crisis, Sir Philip Wodehouse finally secured the permission of the British Cabinet to annex the country. On 12 March 1868, Moshoeshoe's prayer was granted, and by proclamation of Sir Philip Wodehouse, Lesotho became a British territory.
Moshoeshoe died in 1870 soon after seeing his country saved. He was buried as have been nearly all principal chiefs since, in the graveyard on the summit of Thaba-Bosiu.
The after-effects of the war were serious. Casualties had been heavy, missionaries expelled and mission stations taken over, livestock lost, and, worst of all, a large area of land had been annexed by the Orange Free State. In the Convention of Aliwal North of February 1869, the boundaries of Lesotho were laid down in their present form.
The British protection sought by Moshoeshoe proved to be a mixed blessing, for Britain found it convenient to annex Lesotho to the Cape Colony which in 1872 was granted internal self- government by London. The move was unfortunate for Lesotho, since the Cape Colony soon began to apply to Lesotho the same laws and methods which it found convenient for administering other areas already annexed by force.
Matters came to a head with the imposition of the "Peace Preservation Act", by which all fire-arms were to be surrendered. Within a few months the whole countryside was in open rebellion.
The Gun War of 1880-81 cost the Cape Government dearly in men and money. Civil strife created further administrative problems. By 1883 chronic misgovernment induced the Cape Government to request Britain to restore direct rule over Lesotho, in return for which it was even prepared to pay any deficit in the annual recurrent budget.
As a direct consequence of the Gun War, the Basotho won the right to have their country administered separately from other parts of southern Africa. British rule was resumed in 1884, a major step in the sequence of events which led ultimately to the granting of independence by Britain in 1966.
Under the British Resident Cornmissioner, Sir Marshall Clarke (1884-1894) and Sir Godfrey Lagden (1894-1902) together with the Paramount Chiefs Letsie (1870-91), and his son Lerotholi (1891-1905), a system of dual government evolved. The British administration were mainly concerned with Lesotho's external relations, with tax collecting, the punishment of serious crime and the settling of boundary disputes between rival chiefs. Only in the eight (later nine) small government reserves or camps that became the nuclei from which Lesotho's towns developed, did the assistant commissioners had limited powers of local government.
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