An opposition MP in Lesotho wants to declare Free State and parts of four other provinces ‘Lesotho’s territory’, according to a report by the BBC.
‘It’s time for what is ours to be returned to us’, Tshepo Lipholo, the MP behind the motion, told Lesotho’s parliament.
‘History has a record of what was taken from our people and that people were killed in the process. It is time to correct that,’ he said.
Sesotho is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, and is spoken by about four million people in South Africa, as well as the two million inhabitants of Lesotho.
Were Lipholo’s bid to succeed, Lesotho would grow from 30 000 sq km to around 240 000 sq km.
He said that the land would help bring prosperity to the people of Lesotho.
Lipholo is the leader of the Basotho Convention Movement, which campaigned on the issue during last year’s election, gaining a single seat, which he holds.
The Lesotho government is yet to comment on the issue but it is unlikely to risk antagonising its much larger neighbour by backing it.
Lipholo’s motion is based on a 1962 United Nations resolution that recognised the right to self-determination and independence for the people of Basutoland – as Lesotho was then called.
A key stumbling block is the 1964 Cairo Declaration of the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union, in which African leaders agreed to recognise the existing borders of their newly independent countries, even if they were drawn up by colonial powers, to avoid stirring up conflict across the continent.
Lipholo says he also hopes to have the motion discussed in the British Parliament ‘since it was the UK that gave Lesotho its independence in 1966, without correcting the borders seized by the Afrikaners’.