Throwing Down White Man

struck White Man, I threw him down' - this shout of triumph, taken from the vivid and dramatic praise poems of Chief Maama, a senior grandson of Moshoeshoe, encapsulates how completely the bonds of loyalty between the Basotho and their Cape Colonial rulers had been shattered. When in 1871 Britain handed over control of Basutoland to the Cape Colony, the Cape's attack on chiefly powers had been welcomed by many of the ordinary people. But then, in the interests of wider security and control, the Cape government determined to disarm the Basotho and thereby provoked a rebellion, the Gun War of 1880/81, from which the Basotho emerged undefeated and defiant. Their victory was of lasting significance and resulted in the withdrawal of Cape rule, the re-establishment of imperial rule, and the triumph of the chiefs.Peter Sanders, a distinguished historian of Lesotho, tells, using oral traditions and archival sources, the story of these years, placing at the centre of the book a compelling and absorbing study of the Gun War itself.