Africa-Press – Lesotho. Rethabile Mokete, better known as Khosi Mosotho Chakela, was a singer — and a Sotho, the ethnic majority in Lesotho, a former British colony and an enclave within South Africa with a population of 2.1 million.
Chakela grew up in South Africa’s townships. After years of living on the street, then working on building sites, in his 30s he recorded the album Motsamai le Chakela no 1 (Shear Record Company, 1999).
It was the start of a successful career in famo, a traditional musical genre in Lesotho. Though his songs still feature on streaming platforms’ Lesotho playlists, when Chakela died of Covid in January 2021, his death went largely unnoticed on the international music scene.
It was, however, widely discussed in the so-called Accordion Triangle — three villages in Lesotho’s Mafeteng district which have produced several generations of famo musicians — and among the 180,000-plus Lesothans living and working in South Africa.
Chakela was a notorious ‘musician gangster’ in the words of Rataibane Ramainoane, founder and editor-in-chief of Moafrika FM. a privately owned Sotho-language radio station. Chakela had been due to appear before Lesotho’s High Court this March, as a co-defendant in the trial of former prime minister Thomas Thabane.
Thabane and his second wife, Maesaiah, were charged with ordering a hit on his estranged first wife, Lipolelo, who had refused to divorce him, and reportedly asked a group of famo musicians including Chakela to carry out the contract.
The charges were dropped in July as prosecutors could no longer locate a key witness. Ramainoane told me he himself had been on Chakela’s hit list from 2006 to 2011.
‘Without God’s help, the accordion cowboy could have killed me several times.
’ (He is also a pastor in the Nation of God Apostolic Church.
) Famo was once the music of Sotho shepherds who had gone to work in the mines near Johannesburg. Famo singers performed in illegal drinking dens in the townships.
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