'Mantsopa was born in 1793 in Likotsi or Ramakhetheng,[a] west of the Caledon River in the present day Free State province of South Africa.

She was a talented storyteller and travelled to the lowlands of her cousin King Moshoeshoe I's territories, rallying the people against Christian missionaries and calling on them to support their high chiefs and uphold Basotho traditions.

[3][2] Eight years later, French Protestant missionary leader Eugène Casalis recorded 'Mantsopa's prophecy, writing: "In 1851 war had become inevitable... Manchupa [sic], a woman until then unknown, informed the chief she had fallen into a trance and that a being, whom she designated in no other way than by the words He and Him, had charged her to tell the whole tribe to stand on the defensive, that the enemy would come, and would be destroyed in a contest so sharp, and of such short duration, that it would be called the Battle of Hail.

[2] She also told the Moshoeshoe the day in October 1853 that he would attack his old rival Batlokwa chief Kgosi Sekonyela and bring his fortress to ruins.

French missionary and reverend Theophile Jousse made the claim that he had converted 'Mantsopa to Christianity at Thaba Bosiu in Lesotho in 1868.

During the ramp-up to the Basuto Gun War of 1880–1881, she was accused of "spawning crowds of female prophetesses, who harassed mission stations and inveighed against the Cape colonial authorities.

[7] After her death, a legend emerged that 'Mantsopa had lived in the walled-in cave at St. Augustine's Mission, which had formerly been a shelter and a private chapel.

[5] David B. Coplan, in the Dictionary of African Biography, writes that "'Mantsopa stands out as not only as a symbol, but indeed as a still influential embodiment of gendered female spiritual leadership and power linking the postcolonial present to the precolonial past.