Why does South Africa live with two other countries enclosed within its chest? What does that reveal about power, history, and the myth of clean maps? As we consider the path paved by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), let us look and juxtapose the certainties, possibilities and needs.
Look at a map of South Africa. Really look. Please look very closely.
At first glance it’s whole — a single nation anchoring the bottom of the continent, with two oceans at its feet (Indian Ocean on the east and the Atlantic Ocean on the west). Just as you are still wondering about the oceans, then your eye catches it: two holes punched straight through the middle. Not provinces or Hole-in-the-wall or national parks but twosovereign, flag-flying, United Nations (UN)/African Union (AU) voting countries. That is Lesotho and eSwatini with the former inside the South African province of Free State whilst the latter is inside the Mpumalanga Province.
You cannot drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town without going around Lesotho. You cannot ship goods to Durban from Mbabane without crossing South African customs. They are nations inside a nation. And no, this is not a cartographic glitch.
This is colonialism’s unfinished paperwork. And we live with it every day.
What is obvious is that these enclaves were not part of the agenda in the notorious conference of European powers convened by Otto von Bismarck in 1884 that created borders between landscapes across Africa. These enclaves were created by Britain with the overall objective being to maintain their hold on power to secure their gains within the southern African region.
THE ENCLAVE PROBLEM
Geographers have a cold term for such pieces of land – enclave states. One country entirely surrounded by another. There are such areas on earth.
Look at San Marino, tucked into Italy like a medieval relic. The Vatican is too, though it’s more shrine than a state. Gambia comes close — Senegal wraps it on three sides — but it still touches the Atlantic.
Only South Africa encloses two such countries. That fact alone should make us stop. Because borders are supposed to be clean. Outside and inside. Us and them. But Lesotho and ESwatini say – it was never that simple.
So how did we get here? The answer is ugly, and we need to stop sanitising it.
THE BASOTHO AND SWAZI BLUEPRINT
Moshoeshoe Chose Mountains over Surrender
In the 1820s, while Zulu King Shaka’s armies redrew the east of southern Africa and Boer commandos pushed from the south, BaSotho King Moshoeshoe gathered his people onto the Maluti Mountain Range. It was high ground with snow in winter. Invading enemy cavalry charges died there.
Moshoeshoe lost land, yes. He ceded the fertile lowlands to the Orange Free State. But he kept the core. In 1868, with Boer guns at his throat, he made Britain his shield. “We are your people,” he wrote to Queen Victoria. “Take us, or we perish.” Britain declared Basutoland a protectorate. Not a colony. Not for sale.
That distinction matters. When Britain birthed the Union of South Africa in 1910 — stitching Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State into one white-run dominion — Basutoland was deliberately left out. So was Bechuanaland. So was Swaziland. The British High Commission ran them from Pretoria, but the paperwork said: not yours.
Eswatini’s Story Rhymes
The Swazi kings built their own buffer between Zulu and Boer power.
In 1881, the Pretoria Convention recognised Swazi independence. In 1894, the Transvaal got to “administer” it. In 1902, Britain took it back after the Anglo-Boer War. Again. It was held separate, not merged into South Africa. Why? Because London didn’t trust the Boers working with more Black subjects. Also “Protection” was a cheap way to avoid another war as indirect rule was cheaper than annexation.
Ultimately these became independent countries.
WAS THIS INDEPENDENCE?
1966 – Lesotho; 1968 – Eswatini
Lesotho secured independence in 1966 and Eswatini did the same in 1968.
The timing is material. Both transitions occurred after the 1963 Organisation of African Unity resolution that declared colonial borders inviolable. Therefore, when their sovereignty was conferred, the territorial lines were not negotiable; they were inherited and immediately fortified by continental doctrine.
The act of independence therefore functioned as triage for it stabilised the tension in the south but it did not treat the underlying condition of geographic and economic enclosure.
Apartheid South Africa possessed clear incentives for absorption. Incorporation would have yielded additional arable land, direct access to the Basotho monarchy and Swazi labour without cross-border regulation, and the elimination of customs and immigration administration.
The Union of South Africa led by Boer Commander Louis Botha in 1910 had failed to include these territories only because Britain retained them as High Commission Territories to limit Boer expansion. By the 1960s, Apartheid South Africa’s strategic calculus still favoured annexation, and its economic logic was stronger than before.
However, the institutional environment had altered. The OAU, established in 1963, codified Uti possidetis juris as continental law. The United Nations, with Lesotho and Eswatini as members upon independence, conferred the protections of sovereign statehood. In this framework, unilateral annexation would no longer be characterised as administrative consolidation; it would be classified as invasion of a member state, with attendant diplomatic and legal consequences. The cost of absorption thus exceeded the benefit.
Consequently, the territorial “holes” within South Africa persisted. The borders remained because international law made them more expensive to erase than to endure. The doctrine froze the map, preserved two countries within a country, and simultaneously entrenched their dependence.
Sovereignty was granted, but viability to these countries was not.
Let’s Introspect
Putting emotions aside, let us consider the state of affairs.When I was a student at the University of Free State, some of my best friends were from Lesotho (Just over 60 kilometres away from campus) and we were just cut from the same cloth.
Here’s what we don’t say in the glossy brochures about our history – the enclave sovereignty given to Lesotho and eSwatini is sovereignty with an asterisk as its nature was conditional. The promotional literature of the Southern African Development Community does not address the structural qualification inherent in enclave statehood.
Sovereignty for geographically encased nations is not absolute. It is contingent upon the economic and political calculations of the surrounding state. Lesotho and Eswatiniillustrate this condition with particular clarity.
Their international legal status is undisputed, yet their functional autonomy is circumscribed by hydrology, currency, trade routes and security dependence.
Lesotho’s economic relationship with South Africa is clearly exposed to all doubting Thomases by the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, which transfers approximately 780 million cubic meters annually to the Vaal River system supplying Gauteng, a province in the Republic of South Africa. The infrastructure — Katse and Mohale dams — resides within Lesotho’s territory, while the primary beneficiaries are South African municipalities and industry. Consequently, tariff negotiations, water allocation policy, and infrastructure maintenance in Pretoria have direct fiscal implications for Maseru.
Eswatini exhibits a parallel dependency profile. The absence of maritime access necessitates reliance on South African ports, primarily Durban and Richards Bay, for the majority of imports and exports. Fuel refining capacity is non-existent; petroleum products are imported. Furthermore, the lilangeni (eSwatini currency) is pegged at parity to the South African rand through the Common Monetary Area, eliminating independent monetary policy. Political conditions reflect this asymmetry.
During the civil unrest of June–July 2021, the government of King Mswati III suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations. The Republic of South Africa’s response was limited to diplomatic expressions of concern. The restraint is explicable: an absolute monarchy within a geographically encircled state presents a predictable partner, whereas a political transition introduces uncertainty regarding borders, security cooperation, and economic arrangements.
Therefore, enclave sovereignty constitutes a distinct category of statehood. The formal attributes — UN membership, defined territory, permanent population — are present. The substantive attributes — control of currency, trade routes, and security — are partial. The 1963 doctrine of Uti possidetispreserved the borders of Lesotho and Eswatini. It did not, and could not, legislate economic self-sufficiency or strategic autonomy. The result is sovereignty without insulation: legally inviolable, functionally interdependent, and politically conditioned by the interests of the surrounding state. If South Africa sneezes, eSwatini and Lesotho catch the cold.
These are not partnerships of equals. They are hostage geographies. Independence, yes but autonomy, no. You can have a seat at the AU and still need your neighbour’spermission to keep the lights on. That is the truth about eSwatini and Lesotho.
WHO ELSE LIVES LIKE THIS?
Have you ever considered the applicability of the countries within countries globally?
Italy contains two sovereign enclaves whose persistence illustrates the same structural logic observed in Southern Africa.
San Marino asserts a founding date of 301 AD and maintains that Giuseppe Garibaldi declined to incorporate the territory during the Risorgimento in deference to its historical claims.
Vatican City was established by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy under Benito Mussolini, comprising 44 hectares within Rome.
In both instances, survival is contingent upon the tolerance of the surrounding state. Italy provides security, infrastructure, customs integration, and economic access. The international system grants both entities diplomatic recognition and representation disproportionate to their territory or population because they function as symbolic institutions — one of republican antiquity, the other of ecclesiastical authority.
The Gambia presents the African counterpart to this pattern. British colonial administration retained a narrow corridor, approximately 10 kilometres on each bank of the Gambia River, extending 320 kilometres inland and entirely bisecting French Senegal. Upon independence in 1965, the territory became a sovereign state encased by a single neighbour. Senegal has periodically advocated integration, citing economic rationalisation and administrative efficiency. Gambia has consistently rejected absorption. The consequence is a persistent condition of trade friction, differential tariff regimes, and informal cross-border commerce. A Senegambian confederation was attempted from 1982 to 1989 and dissolved due to asymmetries in governance and fiscal policy.
The analytical pattern is consistent across continents: enclaves are artefacts of imperial boundary-making. They persist because the dominant power at the moment of decolonisation or state formation lacked the capacity, political capital, or strategic imperative to eliminate the enclave and integrate its population. The line was drawn, sovereignty was conferred or retained, and the cost of revision subsequently exceeded the benefit of conformity.
Thus, enclave statehood is not an anomaly but a category of post-colonial geography. Whether San Marino, Vatican City, Lesotho, Eswatini, or The Gambia, the operative variables are identical: legal sovereignty exists, economic and logistical autonomy does not. The surrounding state maintains the power to isolate, and therefore to influence. The enclave maintains symbolic or historical capital sufficient to justify its juridical continuity. The border remains because erasing it would be more disruptive than managing it.
WHAT THE HOLES IN THE MAP ARE REALLY TELLING US
How Lesotho and eSwatini Survived Apartheid
The Structural Condition
Lesotho and Eswatini, formerly Basutoland and Swaziland, attained independence in 1966 and 1968 respectively. Their sovereignty was juridical and internationally recognised. Their geography was immutable: each is entirely encircled by the Republic of South Africa. Consequently, the movement of goods, capital, and persons required transit through territory controlled by the apartheid regime.
This condition presented a fundamental question of state survival: how does a legally sovereign entity persist when its economic lifelines are administered by a hostile neighbour? The answer lay in converting structural vulnerability into diplomatic leverage, international law into protective armour, and economic dependence into negotiated interdependence. The 1963 OAU doctrine of uti possidetis juris and Cold War geopolitics were decisive in enabling that conversion.
The Law as a Shield
Britain granted Basutoland independence five years after the OAU declared all colonial borders inviolable. That sequencing was critical.
The 1963 resolution froze territorial lines across the continent. It rendered Lesotho and Eswatini legally untouchable. Annexation by South Africa would have constituted an invasion of a sovereign state, not an internal police action comparable to the 1975 raid into Mozambique.
UN membership conferred additional protection. The national flag functioned as a juridical barrier. Pretoria refrained from territorial aggression not out of moral restraint, but because violating the border would undermine its own diplomatic position. South Africa consistently invoked the principle of non-interference in “internal affairs” to deflect sanctions and criticism. To breach Lesotho or Eswatini’s borders would be to repudiate that principle and forfeit diplomatic cover in other forums. The OAU’s border regime therefore protected weak states precisely because stronger states had insisted that all borders were sacrosanct.
Economy as a Chain
The Southern African Customs Union, established in 1910, bound South Africa, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland into a single customs territory. Post-independence, Lesotho and Eswatini retained membership. The arrangement was fiscally determinative. Throughout the 1980s, SACU transfers constituted 50–60% of Lesotho’s government revenue and approximately 40% of Eswatini’s. South Africa collected duties at ports of entry, primarily Durban, and distributed shares according to a revenue-sharing formula.
Labour migration formed a second pillar. At apartheid’s peak, an estimated 40% of Basotho men and 25% of Swazi men were employed in South African mines and farms. Remittances accounted for roughly 30% of Lesotho’s GDP. The migrant labour system became an instrument of foreign policy. Both kingdoms executed bilateral labour agreements with Pretoria. They condemned apartheid in multilateral forums while processing documentation for mine workers. Sovereignty enabled negotiation of terms, a capacity denied to Bantustans such as Transkei.
Monetary integration completed the structure. The 1974 agreements pegged the loti and lilangeni at parity to the rand within the Common Monetary Area. South Africa determined interest rates and monetary policy. Maseru and Mbabane retained no independent instruments. The arrangement provided exchange-rate stability and prevented currency collapse, but it transferred macroeconomic control to Pretoria. Economic vassalage and macroeconomic stability coexisted.
Subsidised Opposition – Apartheid Pretoria’s Calculus of Stability
From the 1970s through the 1980s, the Republic of South Africa provided direct budgetary assistance to the Kingdom of Lesotho while Lesotho’s government denounced apartheid at the United Nations, the OAU, and the Non-Aligned Movement.
King Moshoeshoe II’s addresses routinely called for sanctions against South Africa. The apparent contradiction reflected Pretoria’s regional security doctrine.
The strategic objective was the maintenance of a functional buffer state. A fiscally insolvent Lesotho posed three risks: first, economic collapse would drive large-scale migration across the Caledon River into the Orange Free State, undermining influx control and urban apartheid planning; second, state failure would create ungoverned space available to liberation movements for recruitment and transit; third, a humanitarian crisis in a UN member state encircled by South Africa would intensify international scrutiny and legitimize intervention.
Financial support thus operated as preventive security expenditure. Payment ensured that Lesotho retained sufficient administrative capacity to police its territory and regulate its population. The apartheid state differentiated between rhetorical opposition and material disruption. A speech at the UN was tolerable; a base for Liberation Movements’operations was not. By funding a government that criticised it, Pretoria purchased predictability.
Stratified Sovereignty – Voice Without Leverage
Lesotho’s de jure sovereignty was established in 1966. Its de facto viability remained tied to South Africa through three mechanisms: SACU revenue, migrant labour remittances, and direct transfers. Condemnation of apartheid did not alter these dependencies and was permitted because it did not threaten them.
The relationship illustrates the stratification of sovereignty. Lesotho possessed legal statehood and a diplomatic voice. South Africa retained infrastructural, fiscal, and security leverage. Sovereignty conferred the right to speak; dependence set the limits of action. Eswatini and Lesotho adopted divergent strategies within those limits.
King Sobhuza II reportedly concluded a non-aggression understanding with Pretoria in 1982. South African liberation movement operatives arrested in Eswatini were allegedly transferred to Apartheid South African authorities. In return, Pretoria refrained from destabilising the Swazi monarchy. Eswatini pursued survival through compliance.
Chief Leabua Jonathan’s government in Lesotho hosted South African Liberation Movements’ refugees and maintained a more confrontational posture. The consequences were severe. South Africa conducted cross-border raids, including the 1982 Maseru attack that killed 42 people. In December 1985, Pretoria imposed a blockade on Lesotho, producing acute fuel and food shortages. The crisis precipitated a military coup in January 1986 that removed Jonathan from power. Sovereignty provided a platform. Dependence determined the parameters. Geography dictated strategy.
Cold War Dividends and Internal Authority
International politics reinforced survival. Western states required Lesotho and Eswatini’s votes in the UN General Assembly, particularly on matters related to communism.
Consequently, the United States, United Kingdom, and European Economic Community (predecessor to the modern EU) provided substantial aid. From 1970 to 1990, Lesotho received approximately $50 per capita annually in official development assistance, triple the African average.
The 1963 doctrine also insulated domestic authority. In Eswatini, King Sobhuza repealed the constitution in 1973 and banned political parties, a prohibition that persists. South Africa did not object; the principle of non-interference protected the monarchy. In Lesotho, a series of coups occurred in 1970, 1986, and 1991. South African intervention was selective, undertaken only when instability threatened border security. The OAU’s territorial regime thus provided external peace and, in some instances, internal impunity.
From Subsidy to Institutional Transfer
The fiscal logic established during apartheid survived the democratic transition.
A. The 1963 doctrine continued to freeze the border.
B. The practice of underwriting enclave stability persisted, though the mechanism changed.
C. Direct budgetary subsidies were replaced by institutionalised transfers through SACU and project-based arrangements.
The political rationale remained comparable. South African government prefers a stable Lesotho to a failed one. The gap between declared sovereignty and defensible sovereignty continues to define regional politics. In enclosed geography, external financial flows are not charity. They are border management.
The Unfinished Liberation: From Territory to People
The lesson is not that independence failed. The lesson is that independence without economic integration is incomplete. The 1963 generation preserved the territorial state. The present generation confronts the task of securing human development within it.
Decolonization remains partial while a Mosotho engineer must seek employment in Welkom rather than Maseru, and while a Swazi manufacturer must export through Durban rather than Maputo.
Lesotho and Eswatini survived apartheid because the international system agreed that the territorial frame mattered. They will transcend apartheid’s legacy when the international system agrees that the people within the frame matter more. The debt incurred in 1963 was not territorial. It is human. The next phase of liberation is not from Pretoria. It is from the border post.
Colonial Borders Were Never Complete
We talk about the Berlin Conference like it was absolute. It wasn’t.
The boundaries of Lesotho, Eswatini, and The Gambia are not exclusively products of European colonial inscription. Indigenous political authority substantively altered imperial designs. King Moshoeshoe I secured Basotho territorial integrity through a combination of military resistance and diplomatic petition, culminating in the British protectorate status in 1868 to preclude incorporation by the Orange Free State. King Sobhuza I and his successors employed parallel strategies of treaty and alliance to preserve Swazi autonomy against Boer and Portuguese encroachment. Along the Gambia River, local rulers negotiated distinct arrangements with British and French administrations that determined the corridor’s final dimensions.
The contemporary map therefore represents a palimpsest: European cartography provided the framework, African political resistance determined the content. The 1963 OAU resolution on uti possidetis juris subsequently froze those negotiated outcomes, converting historical contestation into international law.
The term “post-colonial” implies a temporal rupture that is not substantiated by economic data. Lesotho and Eswatiniattained formal independence in 1966 and 1968 respectively, yet the infrastructural and labour systems established during the colonial and apartheid periods remain operative. Migrant Labour mechanisms that supplied South African mining and agriculture were not dismantled; they were re-regulated through bilateral agreements and the Common Monetary Area. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project, initiated in 1986 and commissioned after 1994, institutionalised water transfer as a core export. Trade and transport corridors continue to route through South African ports and customs systems. The democratic transition of 1994 replaced national symbols and electoral regimes. It did not replace the hydraulic, logistical, and employment structures that integrate the enclaves into the regional economy.
Geography constitutes a continuous instrument of statecraft. Administrative decisions regarding border post operations, customs clearance times, and transport corridor maintenance produce extraterritorial fiscal effects. For landlocked states, the velocity of goods across the encircling territory directly influences national revenue, commodity prices, and supply security. The capacity to regulate enclosure is therefore the capacity to exercise discretionary power without formal diplomatic engagement. This power is not articulated in communiqués; it is exercised through infrastructure management and regulatory procedure. In the Southern African context, South Africa’s control of ports, road networks, and customs unions means that technical decisions function as de facto foreign policy toward Lesotho and Eswatini.
Lesotho and Eswatini possess de jure sovereignty. The Republic of South Africa possesses both de jure and de factosovereignty. The differential between these registers defines the operational domain of regional politics. Legal status establishes the right to exist as a state. Economic and infrastructural dependence establishes the conditions of that existence. Real political negotiation occurs in the gap between declared sovereignty and defensible sovereignty.
SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS TRUTH?
Stop pretending these are happy neighbours. They’re not. They’re case studies in trapped statehood.
Reintegration is not the Question. Utility is.
The Premise Requires Inversion
The inquiry into whether Lesotho and Eswatini should reintegrate into South Africa rests on a flawed historical presumption: that the 1910 Union of South Africa constituted the natural territorial order, and that independence in 1966 and 1968 represented a deviation. The record indicates the opposite. Both Basutoland and Swaziland declined incorporation in 1910, and Britain maintained their separateness to limit Boer expansion. Consequently, the pertinent question in 2026 is not whether to reverse independence, but whether the borders established in 1963 continue to serve Basotho and Swazi citizens.
Reintegration is one possible response to that question; reconfiguration of functional relationships is another. The distinction is material because it shifts analysis from cartography to human development outcomes.
The Economic and Identity Dialectic
The argument for formal integration is grounded in existing economic structure.
Approximately 85% of Lesotho’s imports and 70% of Eswatini’s originate from South Africa, and a substantial proportion of Basotho and Swazi labour is employed within South African territory.
Essential services exhibit the same pattern: Basotho patients, in large quantities, rely on Bloemfontein hospitals. A very large number of Swazi students attend South African universities. As stated above water from the Lesotho Highlands sustains the Gauteng province of South Africa.
Economic integration is therefore already operative whilstpolitical representation and fiscal parity are not. Formal reintegration would align legal status with economic reality, granting citizens of the three countries common citizenship,common electoral participation, and common budgetary allocation within a unified South African state.
From Uti Possidetis to Uti Fructus
The binary of independence versus reintegration fails to address the structural condition of enclosure. The alternative is Uti fructus – “as you benefit” – a framework that preserves juridical sovereignty while rendering the border economically and socially inconsequential. This would entail full customs and fiscal union with South African revenue-sharing, reciprocal residency and voting rights for citizens, and infrastructure development treated as domestic rather than foreign investment.
Rail extensions to Maseru and Mbabane would be constructed as PRASA lines; Lesotho Highlands Water Phase 3 would be financed as a South African national project. Monarchical institutions could be retained as cultural authorities, separating identity from administration.
The decisive metric for any arrangement is convergence in life outcomes. If a child in Mokhotlong and a child in Soweto have equivalent access to education, healthcare, and employment, then the current border regime is functional. If that child must still travel six hours to Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein then the border operates as a container of inequality. The 1963 doctrine secured territorial stability. The outstanding obligation is human development. The objective is not to reintegrate Lesotho and Eswatini into South Africa, but to integrate South Africa’s institutional capacity into the daily lives of Basotho and Swazi citizens. When the border ceases to determine life chances, the political imperative to erase it dissipates. That outcome would discharge the debt incurred in 1963: not by redrawing the map, but by improving the life within it.
The Lesotho-Swati-South African Triangle Demands Revival
If we’re serious about African integration, we start here. Without negating grand plans and AU delivered speeches, is it not time to start talking about building collaboratively actual pipes, roads, and customs codes that keep Lesotho and Eswatini revived. Revenue sharing from projects like theLesotho Highlands Project should be public, renegotiated, fairand be part of the benefits of uniting efforts. Eswatini should have guaranteed port access at Durban and Richards Bay — not as a favour, but as a logical right and as part of a collaborating community.
And South Africans need to stay alive to these truths. South Africa is a regional hegemon with two other countries enclosed. That comes with responsibility beyond just regional shopping malls. It should not be a surprise when Lesotho’s or eSwatini’s politics spill over into South Africa. This trio should accept that three of them share a house that has different rooms within it. Only working together can yield results that are beneficial to all.
The countries inside a country are not trivial. They are evidence that conquest was incomplete and that independence can be half a loaf.
Next time you see South Africa on a wall, don’t admire the outline. Look at the holes. Ask who made them. Ask who benefits. Ask what it would take to fill the holes — not with annexation, but with justice.
Because a border inside a border isn’t just geography. It’s a question that we haven’t answered yet.
Zikomo!