To some, being labelled a ‘nation nobody has ever heard of’ is like snagging a seat in the back row of the spectator stands at a football match and being smacked square in the face by a stray ball.

As a Mosotho national, you’d instinctively flinch, hold the area of impact and scan the crowd to see where the blow came from. The minister of Foreign Affairs in the Lesotho government addressed this statement made by US President Donald Trump during a speech to the US Congress on Tuesday, March 4th and called it shocking. Social media users have since expressed public outrage through posts to defend Lesotho’s honour.

I went against the grain and watched a film instead.

I am stuck in an endless replay of American director Andrew Mudge’s The Forgotten Kingdom, a Lesotho-based feature film now made available on YouTube twelve years after its debut. The film captures the essence of Lesotho, a kingdom entirely encircled by South Africa. It also offers insight into the interplay between invisibility and esteem; two of the central themes I contemplated while trying to wrap my head around the country’s newfound reputation as the place nobody has ever heard of. To me, the moral of the film is that despite Lesotho’s obscurity in the eyes of others, its desirability is not completely diminished.

The Forgotten Kingdom revolves around a young Lesotho-born man living in South Africa, known by his Christian name, Joseph, in the Johannesburg inner-city streets of Hillbrow where he resides. He is also known by his Sesotho name Atang, but only when he returns to the distinctly quiet backroads of his childhood home in the rural highlands of Lesotho. His journey begins after his estranged father dies in a Johannesburg township, and he is forced to sit through funeral deliberations where he reveals his father’s dying wish written on paper. It is a final request that rattles most of his old man’s South African neighbours− to be buried in that forgotten kingdom Atang and his father abandoned years ago in lieu of the familiar, significantly favoured Johannesburg Southwest township cemetery. In return, a neighbour attempts to convince Atang to reconsider Lesotho as a burial location because the ceremony will ‘incur high expenses’ −or something like that. When their criticisms do not hold up, another one of them lists more of the nation’s unfavourable traits. He asks Atang, ”are you really going to take him all the way to Lesotho? […] it’s cold, It’s too far. Do you even have a passport?”.

All I could think about at that point was, ‘man, tough crowd‘. Even so, the negative comments about my homeland held some, but not considerable weight because the film exposes something far more meaningful− the merits of Lesotho’s isolation as a nation within a nation. In line with the film’s title, Atang is emotionally and physically detached from his homeland at first, but the haunting memory of the idyllic maloti mountains, his late father, his childhood friend Lineo, and his introduction to a quick-witted orphaned boy, all inspire Atang to perceive Lesotho for what it is, a place of historical, geographical and cultural significance− a kingdom that cannot be forgotten.

Atang’s fatal flaw is that he tries to forget the one place he secretly yearns to belong. To show this, the film launches into a scene that reveals his struggle to fully integrate into the South African community he aligns himself with, and it is profoundly symbolic. Here is how it unfolds: three of his acquaintances traverse the Johannesburg city roads in synchrony to symbolise their shared South African identities. The men march over to Atang’s flat and urge him to come downstairs to join them, a metaphor for aligning himself with his newfound South African tribe. Instead, Atang feels overwhelmed and douses them with water to drive them away. At the core of it, he regards himself as a South African, but asserting his place in the country and forgetting Lesotho is much harder than he anticipated. It must be acknowledged that his search for a sense of belonging is a justifiable pursuit, but he later abandons it when he realises that Lesotho is indelibly marked in his identity and memories.

Atang’s negative impression of Lesotho serves as a window into a much greater matter here − the idea that Lesotho’s place in global memory is not firmly established. It becomes increasingly clear that the characters of the film and its natural landscape are both moulded by an undercurrent of solitude and isolation. In a wider context, this isolation reflects the fabric of Lesotho, a country which exists in obscurity on the map of Africa. Nonetheless, the film’s desolate landscape, minimal dialogue and the solitary and taciturn protagonist are proof that a moment or a thing is not insignificant just because many people are not there to appreciate or see it. Halfway through the film, Atang travels across ranges of mountains in Lesotho to find Lineo. He, along with the unnamed boy accompanying him, see a middle-aged man on a moving horse, overcome with grief. The man cradles his son’s coffin on his lap in preparation for a burial. The scene is particularly impactful because apart from a gravedigger, the man is unaccompanied, and the burial is discreet. His isolation challenges the burial custom that often requires a high turnout, particularly the eyes of several people, to preserve and honour an individual’s existence and legacy.

When the film is over, the credits roll, and the screen reveals an elephant in the room: the irony that the film has been written and directed by an American filmmaker. If you are thinking that the credit says a lot about Lesotho’s true visibility to the rest of the world, well, don’t. I propose that Basotho should maintain a level of self-acceptance that is impervious to external criticism and validation. 

When Atang finally decides to settle in Lesotho, his monologue leaves an indelible impression on me. With tear-filled eyes, he confesses that even though he did not speak to his father much towards the end, he still sees him and speaks to him. In dreams, his father tells him the same thing I would tell Lesotho, its rich culture, its people, the rugged cliffs of the Maletsunyane Waterfall, the Thaba- Bosiu plateau, and so on:

“I haven’t forgotten you. How could I forget you?”.