Word: lesotho
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...Lesotho is in many ways an undistinguished country. The Switzerland of Southern Africa, travel writers have termed her, but the phrase is much too glib. This is no Alpine wonderland; the surface beauty of the gnarled Maluti mountains masks a state of poverty that is among the most abject on earth...
Missionary persistence has given Lesotho the highest literacy rate on the African continent. But nature precludes her people from being able to exploit their education...
...Lesotho has some diamonds, but never enough to bolster a viable economy; abundant water, but a dearth of arable land. Sixty thousand Basuto men are driven to South Africa every year to work on the mines and farms, and their earnings there constitute the country's main source of income...
...Lesotho is an enclave of South Africa, and that fact is both her destiny and her special dilemma. For reasons of economy and geography, no Basuto government could ever afford to actively oppose the doctrines of White domination...
Tribal roots still run deep in Lesotho and it was a surprise to most observers that the Basutos permitted this restriction on their monarch-a direct descendant of the nation's founder' Paramount Chief Moshoeshoe I. That they did was probably due to the fact that many thought he was too young then to be a potent force in polities...