living in decision making and judgments about the
future. Therefore, the way to maintain stability
and harmony in society is to remember to ritual-
ize the deceased ancestors, who can help bring
about healing, solutions to problems, and order.
Besides Mbog Panther-men, and law makers,
there areMbombogand its confraternities,Um-the
Watersnake-men and judges;Nge-Leopard-men and
executors;Njek- specialized in the implementation
of immanent justice; Ngambi-revealer of secret
truths, present and future; Koo-Snail-women;
Ngam-Spider-men and soothsayers, among other
spiritual forces that mitigate ethical comportment.
The Bible translated into Bassa was published
in 1922, 1939, and 1969, giving the Bassa almost
9 decades of experience with a new religion. The
Christian idea of God as both a revengeful and
compassionate or merciful Supreme Being who
punishes wrongdoers and rewards the righteous
now permeates the psyche of the Bassa, who
equally see the Creator, Elder, as something to
nurture in every member of that society. By the
same token, because the most important personal-
ity in the village is the eldest Mbog-Mbog, the
Creator is greatest because He is the eldest.
Therefore, it is the greatest mistake to adopt
someone else’s idea of God. However, the idea of
the Christian God and that of Mbog-mbog coex-
ist in the psyche of the Bassa.
Emmanuel Kombem NgwainmbiSee alsoAncestors; Oracles
Further Readings
Phillips, H. A. (1946).Liberia’s Place in Africa’s Sun.
New York: Hobson.
Richardson, N. (1959).Liberia’s Past and Present.
London: Diplomatic Press.
BASUTO
The Basuto people live in southern Africa. They
are a nation composed of numerous Sotho-speaking
people who were organized into one nation,
Lesotho, by the legendary king, Moshoeshoe I.
Whereas the Sotho-speaking people existed prior
to the union created by Moshoeshoe I, the specific
nation of Lesotho is a direct result of the political
activity of the king.
The Basuto live in the high savanna regions of
southern Africa. Among the main groups of
Basuto are the Northern Sotho, including the
Lovedu and the Pedi; the Western Sotho, who are
really the Tswana; and the Southern Sotho, the
Basuto proper of the nation of Lesotho. Most
scholars agree that the language spoken by the
Basuto is a Bantu language similar to hundreds
of languages in southern and eastern Africa. For
example, it is closely related to Nguni, Venda,
and Tsonga. The language of Basuto is aggluti-
native because it uses affixes and derivational
and inflexional rules to build words. The name
of the language is Sesotho. It is one of the lan-
guages from which the artificial language
Tsotsitaal is derived in South Africa. It is a
unique lexicon and a set of idioms that are used
with the grammar of Sesotho or Zulu. During
the past 2 decades, it has become the language of
the Kwaito music in the townships.
Inasmuch as the European domination of much
of the Sotho culture created a serious rupture in
the traditional religion of the people at the visible
level, the language carries an enormous wealth of
information about the way the Basuto see the
world. For example, the wordmorithi, which has
the meaning of shade or shadow of a human
being, has been translated in English as spirit.
However, it is to be understood from the Basuto
perspective as also conveying the idea of dignity
or reputation and expresses the view that one can
becomemorithi, one of the ancestors after death.
There is one critical way in which the tradi-
tional religion of the Basuto has been corrupted
by the Christian interpretations brought into the
language. The Basuto wordModimomeans essen-
tially the Almighty God. One does not have a
plural for this word in the Basuto. Yet the
Europeans introduced a plural in the form of
medimo, meaning “gods,” a foreign concept in the
Sesotho language. When the Sesotho speak of the
ancestors, they use the termbadimo, the ances-
tors; the word is never used in the singular. One
speaks of a person being among the ancestors.
In the 19th century, when the whites began
their push into the interior of South Africa, pro-
ducing a domino effect on various African110 Basuto