Lesotho is a mountain kingdom completely inside South Africa
The Kingdom of Lesotho is Southern Africa’s largest sovereign enclave, wholly surrounded by South Africa. King Moshoeshoe I forged Basutoland in the 1820s, and British protection from 1868 and crown colony status from 1884 came long before the country regained full independence in 1966.
Basotho people make up about 99.7 per cent of residents, making Lesotho one of the world’s most homogeneous states, and literacy stood near 81 per cent in 2021. Moshoeshoe, son of the minor chief Mokhachane, gathered clans in the 1820s. French missionaries including Thomas Arbousset and Eugène Casalis arrived in the 1830s, while Boer trekkers from the Cape pushed onto the western borders, starting with Jan de Winnaar at Matlakeng in 1838.
The Boers claimed land between the rivers north of the Caledon, arguing it had been abandoned. The 1869 treaty of Aliwal North fixed Basutoland’s boundaries but ceded its western territories, halving Moshoeshoe’s kingdom, and administration moved from his mountain capital at Thaba Bosiu to a police camp in the northwest. Independence as the Kingdom of Lesotho came on 4 October 1966.
The Basotho National Party governed until January 1970, after which Leabua Jonathan ruled de facto. King Moshoeshoe II was exiled in 1987 and returned in 1992 as a private citizen, and the military handed power to an elected government in 1993. After the ruling party split in 1997, an interim authority designed a proportional system that kept 80 constituency seats and added seats for the opposition.
Prime Minister Thomas Thabane fled briefly to South Africa during an alleged coup attempt in August 2014 and resigned in May 2020 after being named a suspect in his former wife’s murder. Lesotho was the last African country to report a COVID-19 case. Sam Matekane became prime minister in October 2022, and in 2025 United States tariffs shut textile factories and cost thousands of mostly female workers their jobs.
Source: Lesotho
