Butha-Buthe

The colonial town of Butha-Buthe was founded in 1884 to serve a government subdistrict when a local Basotho refused to travel to Hlotse to pay taxes, since this area fell under a rival chief.

It has pleasant, tree-lined streets, a hotel, community and administrative buildings, a market place, and a mosque for its significant Indian population. A large suburb known as Likileng was constructed to provide accommodation for the workforce engaged on the tunnelling and hydropower components of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Butha-Buthe had an important role as a communications centre. It is also the starting point for the Roof of Africa Route past Oxbow to Mokhotlong, a road that was recently under reconstruction.

Butha-Buthe is one of the most significant local sites for Basotho, as it played an important part in their cultural heritage, is the flat-topped sandstone plateau that was the site of Moshoeshoe 1’s original mountain fortress up to 1824, before he moved to Thaba-Bosiu.