Litema

One of the earliest written accounts of Basotho mural art is by the missionary Rev. John Campbell. In his 1813 description of Batlhaping (South Tswana) art, Campbell stated the following:"Having heard of some paintings in Salakootoo's house, we went after breakfast to view them. We found them very rough representations of the camel-leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, lion, tiger, and stein-buck, which Salakootoo's wife had drawn on the clay wall, with white and black paint. However, they were as well done as we expected, and may lead to something better" (Grant 1995:43).

On his second journey in 1820, Campbell, gave an enthusiastic account of what he saw at the house of a certain chief "Sinosee" of the Hurutse lineage of the Sotho-Tswana. Campbell provided both illustrations as well as a verbal description of the chief's house: "The wall was painted yellow, and ornamented with figures of shields, elephants and camel-leopards, etc. It was also adorned with a neat cornice or border painting of a red colour...its walls (of Sinosee's bedroom) were decorated with delightful representations of elephants and giraffes… In some houses there were figures, pillars, etc moulded in hard clay and painted with different colours that would not have disgraced European workmen" (Van Wyk 1996:43; 1998:88). Campbell's accounts were compiled and published by historian George Stow, in his book The Native Races of South Africa (1905).[5] Stow also published the earliest known drawings of litema – reproductions of eight designs made by the "Bakuena" (the founding clan of the Basotho nation), which he likely drew himself, based on an unpublished letter by Stow in the South African Library in which he recounts visiting a ruined Bakoena kraal (Van Wyk 1998:89). Stow's drawings showed textured panels similar to litema engravings still made today as well as painted patterns of dots, stripes, triangles, and zigzags executed in limited colors. In his 1861 book, the French missionary Eugene Casallis recalled the litema patterns he had experienced since settling among Basotho in the 1830s, calling the designs "ingenious", which suggests designs more intricate than the Bakoena examples Stow reproduced (Van Wyk 1998:89). Stow's documentation did not include any designs incorporating plant motifs like those seen in modern-day litema. Van Wyk (1994) suggests that the more modern and "intricate curvilinear designs have a distinctly Victorian or Edwardian flavor that was probably influenced by such turn-of-the-century European products as linoleum patterns, cast-iron moldings and lace".

Almost a century separates Stow's drawings from those done in 1976 by students of the Lesotho National Teachers Training College (Van Wyk 1989:89). Benedict Lira Mothibe, an art lecturer at the college at the time, instructed students to copy litema designs for the purposes of using these in classroom geometry lessons and as copies for potato prints. More importantly, it was an attempt by Mothibe to revive interest in what he considered a worthwhile Sesotho tradition. Gary van Wyk employed these drawings during his extensive field research in South Africa and Lesotho from 1991-1994, recording women's responses to the historical patterns, including the names and meanings they ascribed to them, and later republished several of the drawings. He found that although many of the specific vegetal patterns (e.g. "melons") that had been named in the 1970s had been forgotten by the 1990s and subsumed under a general descriptive category of "blomme", the Afrikaans word for "flowers," nonetheless this designation maintained the close symbolic association between women and vegetative fertility, linked to women's traditional roles as cultivators and foragers. Furthermore, a few patterns recorded by Mothibe were still identifiable and being produced in the early 1990s, such as one that refers to the board for marabaraba, a popular indigenous game like checkers (1998:90-91).

More recently (2003), Mothibe, in a further contribution towards the cause of preservation, compiled and donated a second edition on litema designs entitled Basotho Litema Patterns (With Modifications) to the School of Design Technology and Visual Art of the Central University of Technology, Free State, providing an updated record of designs and their interpretation.[6]

In several works on this topic, Gary Van Wyk (1993, 1994, 1996, 1998) states that Sesotho murals are a form of religious art, appeals to the ancestors for the rain that delivers the fertility that nourishes the fields and thereby sustains the herds and the human community. Murals, he says, can be seen as prayers in paint. If the ancestors are satisfied, they provide rain that washes away the murals, and the cycle of life begins anew. It is fitting that murals are produced by women, who are symbolically linked to the house, which is a metaphor of the womb and of creation, and to the vegetal realm to which women are linked through their traditional roles as cultivators and foragers, and through several other vegetal symbols. The Basotho creation myth, for example, states that the nation emerged from a dark place deep in the earth through a bed of reeds; accordingly it was once customary upon the birth of child inside the earthen house, originally built in an igloo shape, and therefore womb-like, to place a reed in the doorway of the home until the child "crossed the reed" to emerge into the light of day (Van Wyk 1998: 103-107). Similarly, female initiates wear a reed mask, and during their initiation confinement they weave reed mats.

This symbolic link between the igloo-shaped house and the body later was transferred to modern rectangular homes with flat roofs, where the surrounds of doorways and windows were particularly ornamented, and the name for the litema patterns along the roofline was the "headband". "The fecundity of fields and of women is celebrated in the creation of radiant blooms, unfurling fronds, spiralling tendrils and sprouts...Because agricultural labor was traditionally women's work, women who decorate houses can be viewed as picturing this work in the fields upon their walls. The murals are thus African landscapes, composed of the very landscape they represent" (Van Wyk 1994). This is most apparent in litema patterns that consist solely of uncolored combing into mud: these closely mimic the appearance of a plowed field.[8] Van Wyk found that red ocher, called letsoku, or "the blood of the earth", symbolized fertility and the blood of both menstruation and sacrifice, underscoring the key link between the ancestors and fertility and accounting for the fact that red ocher is invariably incorporated into every painting scheme. White symbolized the calm, purity and enlightenment that the ancestors promote and desire, while black represented the dark rain clouds that the ancestors deliver if all is calm and well, and these two colors are frequently combined in dense, alternating patterns applied to transitional zones of the architecture, such as the roofline and around doors and windows. Similarly, such patterns elements as triangles and zigzags likely also carried symbolic meanings that have become obscured in recent times. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Van Wyk also photographed murals that expressed political statements, using the colors of the banned African National Congress during the apartheid era, or incorporating specific political graphics or statements.

Tom Mathews in his writings (supported by photographs taken by his son Paul Chanquion) stated that flowers and dots were symbols of fertility. Furthermore, he states that chevron patterns represent water or uneven ground whilst triangles are symbols denoting male and female (Changuion & Matthews, 1989:9,19,55).

In the study conducted by the CUT, no persons knowledgeable in the art of litema (Bekker, Thabane and Mothibe) or practising litema artists had any knowledge of a deeper significance other than that of beautifying the home for aesthetic purposes. Some of the artists questioned did however share their opinions concerning the possibility of symbolic meaning. According to artists in the Free State, their mothers (many of whom originate from Lesotho), might have been aware of such meanings, but did not share this information with them during their teaching.[9]

One popular commentator has claimed that litema represent an ancient Basotho logographic writing system.[10] As stated above, it is probable that there has always been a symbolic logic associated with litema (perhaps comparable to the tradition of Adinkra symbols in West Africa), but there is little evidence to assert the historical existence of a formal logography of the kind represented in Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese characters.

Nevertheless, there is indeed a contemporary writing system (specifically, a featural syllabary) associated with litema, that can be used to write Sesotho (and all other Southern Bantu languages). It is called Ditema tsa Dinoko ("Ditema syllabary") and is also known by its Zulu name, Isibheqe Sohlamvu, and various other related names in different languages.[11][12]