Coalition Politics in Lesotho: A Multi-Disciplinary Study of Coalitions and their Implications for Governance ed. by Hoolo 'Nyane and Motlamelle A. Kapa

In his Preface to this book, Richard Weisfelder of Toledo University observes that when he was doing his doctoral research in Lesotho in 1965-66, there were few scholarly texts on the country's political development and institutions, and few of these were by indigenous authors. Although the pattern was to be disrupted by B.M. Khaketla's Lesotho 1970: An African Coup under the Microscope (University of California Press 1972), the major studies of Lesotho's politics that came out over the next decade were written by white, foreign authors and appeared in journals and books not easily accessible in Lesotho. By the end of the 1970s, however, 'a significant cadre of social science scholars had emerged at the National University of Lesotho'. I think his dating is a bit optimistic. There was, indeed, a very lively political debate going on among students at the University at that time, yet many of the most engaged were Zimbabweans and South Africans, each of whom had attachments to their own liberation movements. Yes, there were Basotho participants among the core group, yet the numbers were still very small. Nonetheless, Weisfelder is right when he indicates that local students, who were generally highly critical of the incumbent Leabua Jonathan's authoritarian regime, were prone to write under psuedonyms. What he does not say, is that such publications were in the local press. This was perhaps where they should have been, influencing local opinion. Yet the flip-side was that academic publication was still left largely to expatriate and foreign researchers.