By Abayomi Azikiwe
In his first speech before the House of Representatives and the Senate during his second bifurcated term of office on March 4, United States President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the Kingdom of Lesotho is a country that “no one has ever heard of.”
In an attempt to distort the character of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Trump said that Washington’s assistance to Lesotho was aimed at promoting the interests of the LGBTQ+ community inside the country.
After his slur against Lesotho, Vice-President J.D. Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson could be seen in the background laughing. Such racist and dismissive comments have become characteristic of the second Trump administration where peoples from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and Canada have been targeted by the U.S. head-of-state for ridicule and degradation.
He did not mention any of the assistance from Washington in the supplying of medications for people suffering from various infectious diseases including HIV-AIDS, a program established by former Republican President George W. Bush, Jr. The U.S. has maintained an embassy in the Lesotho capital of Maseru for decades.
Moreover, outside of its longtime diplomatic relations with Washington, Lesotho is a member of the United Nations, the African Union (AU) and the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC). The country participates in numerous international organizations in the areas of atmospheric science, hydroelectric power generation, agricultural and livestock production, among other development projects.
Consequently, the assertion that no one has ever heard of Lesotho is as ridiculous as the policy orientations of the recently installed Trump White House. Lesotho, along with other African states, will have to adjust to the current situation involving U.S. foreign policy.
Humanitarian assistance to countries in the Global South represent a political wedge issue in which the MAGA Republican White House and Congress can utilize to justify attacks on people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These cutbacks are impacting working and impoverished people inside the U.S. as well whose jobs and services are being slashed in order to transfer trillions of dollars in public taxpayer money to the billionaires controlling the higher echelons of the state apparatus.
As the attempts to trivialize the social conditions prevailing in African states take on a vile racist nature both domestically and internationally so does the threats to abolish the employment of federal workers in various branches of government including the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). These publicly funded government agencies which include the monitoring of medications, foodstuffs, environmental regulations, the maintenance of public lands, etc., employ significant numbers of workers from African American and Latin American communities.
In addition, federal agencies provide employment to women, many of whom are from oppressed nationalities. These job opportunities to some degree can be traced back to the efforts of people such as A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who threatened to mobilize a March on Washington in 1941 if African Americans were not allowed to be employed in the war industries. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Federal Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) which signaled the breaking down of racial barriers in government hiring.
Therefore, Trump’s current program of purging the government and its domestic and foreign programs are untenable since such a policy will inevitably incapacitate the administrative bureaucracy, preventing the implementation of his schemes designed to reconfigure the U.S. dominance of Europe, Latin America and other geopolitical regions. The rise of multilateral organizations such as BRICS+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) indicate that the emerging world economies are preparing for the coming collapse of the existing capitalist world system.
Lesotho Responds to Trump’s Racist Insults
The speech before the U.S. Congress by Trump was met with anger from the people of Lesotho as the government immediately condemned the comments as totally divorced from the reality in the country, often referred to as the Mountain Kingdom in the Sky due to its high altitude. Government officials in Lesotho noted that Trump’s point person for the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), Elon Musk, has applied for a contract to provide internet services to the country through his company.
Lesotho Foreign Minister Lejone Mpotjoane said of the present situation:
“’Lesotho is such a significant and unique country in the whole world. I would be happy to invite the president, as well as the rest of the world to come to Lesotho,’ said Mpotjoane. He said some civil society organizations funded by the U.S. Embassy in Lesotho did work to support the LGBT+ community, but the United States also provided important funding for the country’s health and agriculture sectors. Trump’s administration has cut billions of dollars in foreign aid worldwide as it seeks to align spending with Trump’s ‘America First’ policy. Mpotjoane said Lesotho was feeling the impact as the health sector had been reliant on that aid for some time, but that the government was looking at how to become more self-sufficient. The decision by the president to cut the aid… it is (his) prerogative to do that,’ said Mpotjoane. ‘We have to accept that. But to refer to my country like that, it is quite unfortunate.’”
Obviously, with this degree of diplomatic and developmental engagements, the U.S. is well aware of Lesotho. The statements by Trump related to Lesotho and other developing nations are merely an excuse to rationalize the 90% cuts to the USAID programs essentially shutting down the government agency.
Trump claims these cuts are to redirect funds from foreign assistance to providing tax cuts to citizens and residents of the U.S. Yet, many people know that these tax cuts are designed to benefit the upper echelons of the capitalist ruling class.
History of Resistance to Colonialism and Apartheid
This nation was formed during the early decades of the 19th century by King Moshoeshoe I (1786-1870) who brought together Africans from various ethnic groups and clans to form Basutoland. During the early 1850s, Moshoeshoe had become a powerful figure in the Southern Africa region.
Moshoeshoe had accumulated large amounts of livestock, land, gunpowder and firearms making him a threat to the British and Boer settler-colonialists. A series of wars were fought between the people of Basutoland against the British and the Boers extending from the 1850s to the early 1880s.
The military tactics employed by Moshoeshoe and his successors became notable in resistance history in Southern Africa. By 1881, the British agreed to conditions set by the chiefs of Basutoland where they would maintain their autonomy and weapons under a protectorate system which prevented full incorporation into the Cape Colony. Although the lower flatlands of Basutoland were captured and ceded to the Boers, later known as the Orange Free State, the mountainous areas of the country remained autonomous and would prove significant during the late 19th and 20th centuries as many refugees and freedom fighters from South Africa were able to resettle in the Maloti Mountains.
In an assessment of the situation in Basutoland from 1882 to the mid-20th century, Britannica.com noted that:
“That year a Cape army under Gen. Charles Gordon was sent in, but it retired without achieving anything. The Cape Colony, faced with prospects of endless war, gave over responsibility for Basutoland directly to the British government in 1884. Basutoland became a British High Commission Territory, and the powers of the Sotho chiefs were left relatively intact. This change in status is why Basutoland was not automatically included in the surrounding Union of South Africa when it was formed in 1910. Instead, the Sotho nation remained under British oversight until 1966, when it became the independent country of Lesotho.”
After its full independence from Britain in October 1966, being a totally landlocked state surrounded by the-then racist apartheid Republic of South Africa, the Kingdom of Lesotho, a Constitutional Monarchy, was to play an important role in the struggle to defeat settler-colonialism. Many South Africans continued to flow into Lesotho during the 1970s and 1980s as they received hospitality and educational assistance.
The South African History website says of the role of Chris Hani (1942-1993), a leading organizer in the African National Congress (ANC) military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the Communist Party (SACP), after 1974 that:
“Hani then moved to Lesotho where he remained for about seven years. Here he organized units of the MK for guerrilla operations in South Africa. By 1982, Hani had become prominent enough in the ANC to be the focus of several assassination attempts, including at least one car bomb. He was transferred from the Lesotho capital, Maseru, to the center of the ANC political leadership in Lusaka, Zambia. That year he was elected to the membership of the ANC National Executive Committee, and by 1983 he had been promoted to Political Commissar of the MK, working with student recruits who joined the ANC in exile after the 1976 Soweto uprising.”
South Africa would end the apartheid system when in 1994 the first nonracial democratic elections brought the ANC to power. Therefore, the historic role of Lesotho in the liberation of the region remains embodied in the consciousness of African and oppressed peoples. The racist arrogance and ignorance of the Trump administration can in no way overshadow the legacy of resistance and nation-building which has characterized the people of Lesotho and others throughout Southern Africa.
Note: This writer conducted field research in Lesotho during the 1990s where he traveled extensively throughout large swaths of the country.
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