Roofing in Lesotho

Lesotho is a mountain kingdom where cold winters and summer thunderstorms shape the house. The traditional Basotho house is the round mokhoro, with stone or mud walls and a conical grass-thatched roof; the rectangular house with a corrugated metal roof has largely overtaken it.

Climate and hazards

Highland winters are cold and summers bring thunderstorms. A thick thatch over heavy walls moderates indoor temperature, and the steep cone sheds summer rain (see Rondavel).

Roofing history

Many round houses in the region now have corrugated iron or other sheet-metal roofs in place of thatch, which are quicker to fix but hotter and noisier in rain.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Mokhoro (Basotho round house): a cylindrical wall of stone or mud, bonded with mortar of sand, soil and cow dung, under a conical roof of radial poles and ring purlins thatched with grass sewn on in bands from the eaves up. Floors are finished with a dung mixture. This is the Lesotho form of the rondavel.
• Rectangular houses: stone or block walls with corrugated metal or thatched pitched roofs.

Roofing today

In the unweighted 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey sample (8,847 households with a recorded roof):

Main roof material (HC5)	Share of sampled households
Metal / corrugated (zinc sheets)	68.5%
Thatch / palm leaf	27.5%
Ceramic / clay tiles	3.0%
Other (asbestos, cement, wood, shingles, no roof)	1.0%

Local roofing terms

• mokhoro (Sesotho): round, conical-roofed house; the Lesotho rondavel.

Sources and gaps

Detailed archaeological or documentary evidence specific to Lesotho's roofs: published information is limited. No national roofing standard was identified. No information on domestic roofing manufacturers was found in published sources. No roof-specific heritage listings were identified.

Survey shares are unweighted counts in the MICS sample. Sesotho thatching vocabulary, data from the 2016 census and documentation of Basotho thatching grasses: published information is limited.