Word: berenger
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...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's stepson and legitimate claimant to the paramount chieftaincy. Bereng was only two years old when his father, Paramount Chief, died in 1940, and Mantsebo, the senior wife, took over as regent. Now he had come of age, and was demanding his throne immediately so that he could...
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...
...Bereng said that he would not return to his Oxford classes (where his marks have dropped to near failing, anyway) until a family council was called to consider his demands. Mantsebo gave in, but it would be weeks before the conclave could be arranged, and meanwhile the old woman would be running things and able to control the nominations for Basutoland's new National Council...
Mantsebo's harsh treatment of Bereng -the rightful heir to the throne-was certain to arouse old hatreds, and all the Basuto could only hope it did not provoke another wave of medicine murder...