Litema are the geometric wall murals of the Basotho people of Lesotho and the Free State, made by women who comb and scratch dense symmetric patterns into wet clay-and-dung plaster, then pick out the cells in earth ochres called letsoku. The tradition predates 1900 and continues today as a communal, seasonal renewal of the homestead.
The ground is never a neutral backdrop — it is the ochre-brown mud-plaster wall itself, still bearing the finger-combed relief of its making. Compositions stay disciplined: usually just two colors, most often red ochre against the yellow-brown of the wall, arranged in tight alternating cells rather than free ornament.