Word: basutoland
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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...
...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...
From British-governed Basutoland and Bechuanaland, both moving gradually toward independence, come thousands of workers each year, heading for South Africa's gold mines and carrying, along with their cardboard suitcases, dangerous new ideas about African rights. To the approving cries of "Hoor! Hoor!" (Hear! Hear!), Verwoerd warned that something must be done, and that multiracial political development was no answer...
...with the same questions from strangers in streets, subways and restaurants ("Whaddaya gonna do with all that money?" "How does that game work anyway?"), and succeeded in getting his telephone number changed just as the phone was about to drive him out of his apartment. From The Bronx to Basutoland, fans have deluged him with 2,000 letters, including 20 outright proposals of marriage, numerous veiled ones, solicitations from investment houses and wildcatters, requests for handouts that add up to more money than he has won. The town of Cornwall (pop. 1,100), where 26 Van Dorens gather each summer...
...dream thus analyzed in black and white raised more questions than even the commission could answer. Essential to the scheme was the incorporation in South Africa of the three enclaves formed by the British protectorates of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland, a fate that the natives of those protectorates strongly resist. To clear the black areas, thousands of white farmers would have to be moved from their farms and settled in white areas. If the black men still preferred Johannesburg to the bush, they could be forced into the national homes only with troops-an action that might well start...