Whose Lesotho? Trauma, memory, and revisiting a time of fear in Rethabile Masilo’s Poetry

Abstract

This paper is focused on the analysis of the gripping narratives of Lesotho’s political terror and violence between 1972 and 1986 as captured in Rethabile Masilo’s poetry. To date, Masilo has published four poetry collections—Things That Are Silent (2012), Waslap (2015), Letter to Country (2016) Qoaling (2018) and Mbera (currently in Press). Arguably, these collections evoke a fecund poetic space to string together history and an extremely accurate details of Lesotho’s political trajectory during Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan’s governance. Drawn attention to, is the terrifying narratives of sudden experience of political unrest in the country shortly after independence from the United Kingdom in October 1966. Essentially, personal responses of Masilo (in his poetry) to the horrifying circumstances suffered by him and members of his family during the regime of Leabua stand as a bulwark against tyranny. The paper engages in interpretive analysis of Masilo’s poetry and Literary Trauma theory has been appropriated for its analysis. The paper foregrounds gripping, poetic narratives of anomie to revisit “a time of fear” in Lesotho between 1972 and 1986 when the 1970 election was annulled, and the constitution suspended my Prime Minister Leabua. The paper delineates a spate of the country’s agony and violence that accompanied a period of anarchy, which complicated Koeeoko’s gruesome perpetration of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial executions of members of the opposition.

Keywords:

• ‘a time of fear’
• exile
• memory
• Rethabile Masilo’s poetry
• trauma
• whose Lesotho?

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Correction

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Niyi Akingbe

Niyi Akingbe is Professor of Comparative Literature and Poetics. He is at present a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Department of English Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria. He received a PhD from the University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria, where he studied Protest Literature. His scholarly interests include Comparative, Postcolonial, Commonwealth, Protest and African literatures, Cultural studies, Music in literature, and the intersection of literature and Film studies. His work has been published internationally, in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States.