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| Tradition is valued highly in Lesotho, which has been nurtured as a country by tradition. The Kome cave dwellings have been continuously inhabited, generation after generation, since they were built in the 19th century, and residents are living in them now. The caves have undergone restoration, and an information center has even been built there. Today they are designated national heritage sites. The threshing work done during the harvest season requires an advanced technique, and there are still some places today where everyone in the district takes part in threshing. After the harvest, the work of storing the maize and wheat in large handmade baskets in preparation for the winter still remains, and the basket-weaving techniques involved are part of the traditional handicrafts technology of Lesotho. The traditional performing arts include tribal dances and stick fighting, and visits to villages are likely to bring surprising encounters with traditional dancing. The country is also a treasurehouse of rock paintings made by the Bushmen (San tribes). Rock art paintings depicting traditional practices, hunting methods, and long-forgotten ways of life still remain here and there throughout Lesotho. These have provided historians with much vital information. |
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| Ancient dinosaur footprints |
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| Rock art paintings of the San tribes |
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| Hand-woven mohair tapestry |
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| Traditional dance of the Basotho |
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| Traditional Ndlamu dancing |
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All natural resources are sacred. They should be managed in common, with an awareness of the continuity between past, present, and future, for the benefit of the people living in the present and those who will be born in the future. This was the traditional attitude of people in Africa. All the culture and the land of Lesotho belong to the nation, which means they belong to the entire people. In traditional African culture, individuals, communal bodies, the land, and the environment are joined to each other by sacred bonds. These bonds were the traditional wellspring of the lives of African people, the cultures of African people, and the thinking of African people. These bonds gave rise to their communal sense of ethical responsibility toward the present and the future. Moreover, these sacred bonds constitute nothing other than a facet of the religions of African people that support the entirety of what constitute African people's thinking and actions. This is something that is expressed in the course of creation by God, who is not only present but eternally and unceasingly active, and it is expressed not only through nature but is expressed through every individual human being. The distinctive religion of the people of Africa has been a faith in the one and only God, whose image is made vividly manifest in the many different aspects of nature. At the same time that God is present in creation, so at the same time is God present outside of creation. God exists as the energy of life that penetrates throughout the entirety of all things. According to the traditional world view of the people of Africa, the activities of physical matter and the actions of human beings can be seen as the same. Both human beings and the natural environment have physical matter and spirit in overlapping existence, and spiritual things are given manifestation in physical matter. This is how they comprehend the world. In other words, both spirit and physical matter are the creations of God.
Sayings of Moshoeshoe II, "Return to Self-Reliance" excerpted from Inter Press Service, ed., Kazuhisa Shimizu, trans., Senju minzoku – chikyu kankyo no kiki o kataru [Indigenous peoples speak on global environmental crisis], Akashi Shoten Co., Ltd. |
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| Mount Qiloane has a shape reminiscent of a Basotho hat |
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| Stone-shrouded wall of Mohale Dam |
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| This building designed after the image of a Basotho shield is a tourist information center |
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