A fact from Motsoalle appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 June 2016 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that motsoalle is the term for socially acceptable, long-term relationships between Basotho women in Lesotho?
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resisting heteronormativity resisting recolonisation: affective bonds between indigenous women in southern Africa and the difference(s) of postcolonial feminist history by William J. Spurlin in Feminist Review No 95
“Friend and Lover”: The Erotics of Female Friendship in Christiansë's Unconfessed and Ntshingila's Shameless by Kaelyn Kaoma in Research in African Literatures Vol 47 No 2
At the beginning: "Motsoalle relationships have, over time, begun to disappear in Lesotho." Then at the end, "Today, motsoalle relationships have largely disappeared." So which is it? <> Alt lys er svunnet hen (talk) 21:00, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there; there are several factual problems with the article. First is the definition/translation of motsoalle given; it's wrong. The correct English equivalent of the Sesotho word "motsoalle" is "friend". It's that simple. What's been given as the definition in the article would be equivalent to best friend in English. The definition given in the article can be misleading to non-native speakers of Sesotho, given that the word itself is gender-neutral and has no connotations of romance or sexuality whatsoever. In fact, strictly speaking, motsoalle would, in English, translate to (platonic) friend.
The rest of the article seems to be hinged upon one main source/reference, with additional sources being from presumably non-native speakers of Sesotho. I'm not disputing the existence of such relationships in the past — however, supplying more distinct references to corroborate the "widespread" existence of such relationships back then would shed more light on the matter, I think. —Mohahlaula (talk) 10:27, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
