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Motsoalle is the term for socially acceptable, long-term relationships between Sotho people women in Lesotho. Motsoalle can be translated from Sotho language loosely as "a very special friend." The word, motsoalle, is used to describe the other woman, as in "she is my motsoalle;" and a motsoalle relationship describes the bond between the two women. Motsoalle relationships are socially sanctioned and have often been celebrated by the people of Lesotho. These women's relationships usually occur alongside otherwise conventional Heterosexuality marriages and may involve various levels of physical intimacy between the female partners. Motsoalle relationships have, over time, begun to disappear in Lesotho.
Motsoalle relationships differ from a Western world perspective of queer or lesbian relationships. Women in motsoalle relationships "marry men and conform, or appear to conform, to gender expectations." Women in these relationships do not have a different social identity even though they are in a committed relationship with another woman. Women in motsoalle relationships also differ from western ideas of heterosexual female friends. Researcher, William J. Spurlin, stresses that "it is important not to simply translate into English language 'M'atsepo Nthunya's use of the Sesotho word motsoalle ... as lesbian." Nevertheless, Spurlin does state that "it might be possible to place motsoalle relationships on the lesbian continuum to discuss, debate, and imagine them theoretically as possible sites of lesbian existence, given the close emotional and intimate bonds between the women, but with the stipulation that the relationships not be reduced to western understandings of 'lesbian.'"
Part of the difference between a motsoalle relationship and a lesbian one is due to the Sesotho notion of sex. Many Sotho people of older generations in Lesotho did not consider an act a sex act if one partner was not male. Therefore, anything women did together was not considered sex, even if it involved erotic components. Because of the social situation in rural Lesotho and the lack of a concept of lesbianism, motsoalle relationships were once widespread, but not seen as an "alternative to heterosexual marriage." Nthunya described it like this: "When a woman loves another woman, you see, she can love her with a whole heart."
As Lesotho became more modernized, those communities exposed to western culture were also more likely to become exposed to homophobia. Kendall hypothesizes that as Western ideas spread, the idea that women could be sexual with one another, coupled with homophobia, began to erase the motsoalle relationships. By the 1980s, the ritual feasts that were once celebrated by the community for motsoalles had vanished. Today, motsoalle relationships have largely disappeared.
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