Khomo Lia Oela

Canteens, Brothels and Labour Migrancy in Colonial Lesotho, 1900–40

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8980943
AutoresTshidiso Maloka (University of Cape Town, autor de correspondencia)
Año1997
Volumen38
Número1
Páginas101-122
Fecha de publicación1997-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s002185379600686x
OpenAlexW2128044118
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9

A MONG the most critical effects of labour migrancy on a labour reserve economy in southern Africa are the psychological and economic implications the dependence on migrants' earnings, and the prolonged absence of men at the labour centres, have for women. Lesotho is one such case. But Basotho women, for their part, developed various survival strategies in response to their social and economic predicament. Judy Kimble and Philip Bonner have pioneered the study of these responses, but they made no effort to look at the strategies of the women remaining at home. When scholarly attention has been given to the latter category of women, the focus has been on the period after 1940. This study, by focusing on the engagement of Basotho women in commercial beer-brewing and prostitution in Lesotho before the Second World War, intends to address this lacuna. An attempt will also be made to link the rise of these phenomena to social and economic changes in colonial Lesotho, particularly the deepening of dependency on the migrant labour system

Colonial period · Colonialism · Earnings · Economic history · Economics · Political science · Sociology · World War II · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · South African History and Culture