Challenged by the granting of institutional autonomy to his institution - the Lesotho National Teachers Training College (now Lesotho College of Education) - the author explores the professional identities of teacher educators in Lesotho. Considering and analysing Lesotho's socio-political historical and institutional contexts of teacher preparation from a postcolonial perspective, he argues that very many factors circumscribe education, in general, and teacher education in particular in Lesotho. Autonomy from the state could therefore mean subjection of the college to these other factors. The socio-political history of Lesotho, chiefly its doublecolonisation through French missionary social and cultural sectarian subjection and British political and economic subjugation, renders it a highly heterogeneous society in subtle and subterraneous ways.