The Thaba Tseka Project and its Failures

Traditionalism or Common Sense?

4/30/2020 'Tradition' or Common Sense?

1

Thaba Tseka as a ‘Traditional’ Village

     CIDA staff evaluated the region’s major resource to be developed as its cattle.

Thaba Tseka seen as a ‘traditional’ village, where cattle were not commericalized and where markets were absent.

Hence, it concluded that cattle commercialization and range management would be the best way t’ o ‘develop’ the village.

Use of cattle in Thaba Tseka seen as ‘irrational’, overgrazing a problem.

The project staff created the following objectives for the project:   Develop appropriate marketing outlets for livestock Convince ‘peasants’ to sell their non-productive stock.

   Develop a program of grassland improvement that involved controlling the use of grassland to a ‘sustainable’ level.

Reduce arable acreage to allow an adequate output of subsistence crops for local consumption.

Increase amount of acreage given over to fodder to raise healthier cattle 4/30/2020 'Tradition' or Common Sense?

2

Implementation of Project Goals

     Range management project: division of 32,800 Hc. Into 8 controlled grazing blocks.

Grazing Association: 10% of the top cattle graziers invited to join, thought to provide a demonstration effect. Land to be scientifically managed, acquired from the government.

Grazing Control: involved a culling program to offset overgrazing.

Livestock Marketing: Introduction of cattle auction in which owners would be persuaded to sell off their less productive and older cattle.

Introduction of Improved Stock 4/30/2020 'Tradition' or Common Sense?

3

Failures of the Project

     Range management project never implemented due to hostility against taking over common lands for the project.

Grazing Association: Only 10 agreed to join and 6 months later, only 5 agreed to put their cattle in the enclosure. Grass inside the enclosure grew and the few cattle were not enough to keep it in check. Trespassing became common, local court decided against CIDA because it violated Basotha land laws.

Range management involved destocking and culling which no-one in Losotho supported, not even Ministry of Agriculture officials.

Introduction of improved stock resisted because they were less hardy than local stock and required fodder to survive, which was too expensive.

Cattle markets resembled a ‘funeral’ as the only cattle that was sold was under distress conditions. CIDA staff saw the reluctance to sell off cattle as evidence of ‘traditionalism’ and ‘ignorance’ of markets, although cattle had been bought and sold in that region at least a century.

4/30/2020 'Tradition' or Common Sense?

4

The Bovine ‘Mystique’



Examples of Thaba Tseka cattle owners refused to sell even in drought conditions.

 “Better that people should be wiped out rather than have to live without animals…it means our entire way of life is finished”.

 Cattle are not treated as purely economic assets, led CIDA officials to see this as traditionalism.

 But this is the starting point of analysis, not its end point, according to Ferguson.

4/30/2020 'Tradition' or Common Sense?

5

Role of Cattle in Thaba Tseka

 Cattle constituted by institutions of:  Bridewealth: cattle is the major form of wealth transferred from the husbands’ to the wives’ families.

  Gender relations and the division between contestable wealth (cash) and incontestable wealth (cattle and other domestic animals). Small animals and fowl are women’s goods, cattle are men’s goods.

Sociablity: An older man with many cattle is regarded as being a morui, a respected elder who can share his cattle with others for ploughing and for bridewealth.

 Age patterns and migrant labour:  Mostly young men work in the mines, a period during which they acquire cash income. They typically invest part of this cash income in cattle which are then rented out to older men who farm and graze cattle.

 There is no retirement fund from work in the mines so cattle constitute the major form of savings.   4/30/2020 There is also a transfer of wealth from young men with cash to older men with cattle. The purchase of cattle or the payment of bridewealth constitutes the major way in which wealth is transferred within the ocmmunity from younger to older men and households.

Hence, cattle have multiple functions and their own ‘economic’ logic and rationality which can only be understood by talking to local people, which CIDA staff did not bother to do.

6