Litema

thumb|Traditional Tema pattern with inversion and rotation of the model base Litema, spelled Ditema in South African Sesotho orthography (; Singular: Tema, Sesotho for "text" or "ploughed land") is a form of Sotho mural art composed of decorative and symbolic geometric patterns, commonly associated with Sotho tradition today practised in Lesotho and neighbouring areas of South Africa. Basotho women generate litema on the outer walls and inside of homesteads by means of engraving, painting, relief mouldings and/or mosaic. Typically the geometric patterns are combed or scratched into the wet top layer of fresh clay and dung plaster of the wall, and later painted with earth ochers or, in contemporary times, manufactured paint. Patterns most often mimic ploughed fields through a combed texture, or the patterns refer to plant life, and more occasionally to other aspects of the natural world, such as referring to clan totem animal. Litema are transient; they may desiccate and crumble or be washed away by heavy rain. It is common for women of an entire village to apply litema on such special occasions as a wedding or a religious ceremony.

==Etymology== As Gary van Wyk (1993:84) pointed out in his analysis of the etymology of the Sesotho noun denoting "Sesotho mural art," litema also refers to the associated concepts of "ploughed lands", and the decorative tradition is symbolically linked to cultivation in many ways. It is derived from the verb stem -lema (in the infinitive, ho lema "to cultivate"), which is a reflex of the Proto-Bantu root *-dɪ̀m- "to cultivate (esp. with hoe)". The orthographic in li- (Class 10 noun class prefix for Sesotho nouns) is pronounced [d] in Sesotho since [d] is an allophone of /l/ occurring before the close vowels, /i/ and /u/. The orthographic can have three possible values in Sesotho: /ɪ/, /ɛ/, and /e/. In is pronounced /ɪ/, as per the Proto-Bantu root.