Word: basuto
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Basutoland is a tiny (11,716 sq. mi.) British crown colony, entirely surrounded by the Union of South Africa. In theory, Basutoland is two-thirds Christian, but the real source of ultimate power, in the minds of most Basuto, is a gory brew called the diretlo. It is boiled up from human flesh, blood, fat, and herbs pounded into paste. To be really potent, the flesh must be stripped from a still living human body, which explains why 140 people have died since 1945-and 51 were accused of killings last year-to provide raw materials for diretlo...
...wise chief keeps a supply stuffed in a hidden lenaka, the hollowed horn of an antelope or ram, to smear on himself or members of his family when good fortune is most needed. Among the 650,000 Basuto, he who holds the lenaka holds power. Everyone agrees that no one has had more powerful medicine than Mantsebo Amelia Seeiso, Basutoland's portly, domineering Paramount Chieftainess...
Under the Blanket. Two decades ago, Mantsebo took over in a bitter family quarrel that sorely split the Sons of Mo-shesh, the elite 1,000-odd living descendants of the fabled 19th century ruler who fought off the Zulus, founded the Basuto nation, and asked that his people be taken "under the great Queen Victoria's blanket." Over the years, Mantsebo successfully parried each attempt to edge her out, but last week a new, more dangerous threat was on the scene: a tall, natty young Oxford student just back from England. He was Constantinus Bereng Seeiso, Mantsebo...
Calling a Council. Bereng found two of the country's four political parties and nine of the 22 Basuto principal chiefs on his side, but Mantsebo stubbornly stuck to her argument: Bereng could not become Paramount Chief until he finished his education and married. One of her fears: he might marry a white woman, as a London report had it ("That story about my having a fair gel-sheer nonsense," answered Bereng...