Tholo Ea Phera

Kudu are important in Lesotho as both game and totem animals, and their large size, curved horns and striped bodies make them quite visible. (For that reason, they are uncommon in Lesotho today.) Mohapeloa wrote more songs about birds than he did about animals, and so ‘Tholo ea Phera’ is an exceptional portrait of the brute power of kudu bulls fighting, something that might have been ingrained on Mohapeloa’s memory from childhood since he lived close to the rhythms and seasons of nature. He gives a sense of how powerful the antics of this royal beast – Lesotho’s ‘monarch of the glen’ – could be, and how much people enjoyed their fights as a spectacle.