Shoeshoe Tsa Moshoeshoe

‘Shoeshoe tsa Moshoeshoe’ is one of several late songs by Mohapeloa that might have been composed while he was teaching at the National Teachers’ Training College in Maseru (now Lesotho Teachers’ Training College), after his retirement: thus 1979 is an approximate composition date. Multiple copies of the manuscript were found in his former office, maybe because the work was sung by the NTTC choir. It is one of several songs that Mohapeloa wrote in praise of Lesotho’s founding father, 19th-century King Moshoeshoe I, whose legendary courage and wisdom still provides a rich source of inspiration to Basotho. The text plays upon the relationship between Moshoeshoe’s name and the Sesotho name for the marigold flower, and it expresses the political and socio-economic challenges Lesotho faced in the years following Independence in 1966.