AGRICULTURE, SOIL CONSERVATION, AND THE STATE IN LESOTHO: THE CASE OF LERIBE DISTRICT c.1800s-1966
Doctoral Thesis
| dc.contributor.author | Belinda Makare | en_ZA |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-09-09T12:19:41Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | en_ZA |
| dc.description | This study explores the history of agriculture, soil conservation, and state power in the Leribe district of Lesotho from c.1800s to 1966. Focusing on the interplay between precolonial institutions, ecological systems, and subsequent colonial interventions, the study examines how Basotho communities negotiated, adapted to, and resisted shifting political, economic, and environmental pressures during this period. This study draws extensively on archival materials, including missionary records, colonial administrative reports, agricultural reports, and district records, to reconstruct the dynamics and often contested interactions between state actors and rural landscapes that are ecologically and topographically challenging. While the colonial state increasingly oversaw the governance of natural resources and agricultural production, the study argues that it was neither monolithic nor uniformly effective in reshaping indigenous agro- ecological practices. The Basotho demonstrated selective compliance with colonial agriculture and conservation policies in the Leribe district. The relations between those who held positions of authority, such as colonial officials and chiefs, with the farmers, traders, ordinary men and women, older people, and the youth were complex, contested, and dynamic. It was defined by communal agency at multiple social, economic, ecological, and political levels. Furthermore, although the colonial rule reconfigured existing environmental governance systems, its effects on livelihoods and soil management varied over time, place, gender, and class. For some groups, colonial interventions opened new opportunities, and for others, they deepened inequality and exclusion. The study argues that these differentiated responses ranged from ‘stepping up' innovations to ‘hanging in' and survival, and to ‘stepping out' of agrarian practices, altogether contributing to shaping agriculture and conservation in an evolving landscape of the Leribe district. It also reveals that the legacies of uneven colonial encounters were extended to the new governments, which inherited and reproduced patterns of marginalisation embedded in earlier state and societal relations. By tracing the intersection of precolonial systems, colonial restructuring, and local agency over a century and a half, the thesis offers a fresh perspective on African environmental history, political ecology, and agrarian change in an area that has received limited scholarly attention. The main argument of this thesis is that agriculture and soil conservation in Leribe evolved through continuous negotiation between Basotho communities and an expanding colonial state, rather than through unilateral state imposition. While not claiming to provide a comprehensive national history, the study demonstrates the value of historically grounded, district-level research to understand iv the complexities of rural livelihoods in Lesotho. The study contributes to the growing scholarship that reevaluates state-society relations in colonial southern Africa, highlighting how past governance and practices continue to shape present-day agroecological challenges. v | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11660/13391 | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.title | AGRICULTURE, SOIL CONSERVATION, AND THE STATE IN LESOTHO: THE CASE OF LERIBE DISTRICT c.1800s-1966 | en_ZA |
| dc.type | Thesis |
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