A new history of the Basotho migrants in Zimbabwe that illuminates identity politics, African agency and the complexities of social integration in the colonial period.
Tracing the history of the Basotho, a small mainly Christianised community of evangelists working for the Dutch Reformed Church, this book examines the challenges faced by minority ethnic groups in colonial Zimbabwe and how they tried to strike a balance between particularism and integration. Maintaining their own language and community farm, the Basotho used ownership of freehold land, religion and a shared history to sustain their identity. The author analyses the challenges they faced in purchasing land and in engaging with colonial administrators and missionaries, as well as the nature and impact of internal schisms within the community, and shows how their ‘unity in diversity’impacted on their struggles for belonging and shaped their lives. This detailed account of the experiences and strategies the Basotho deployed in interactions with the Dutch Reformed Church missionaries and colonial administrators as well as with their non-Sotho neighbours will contribute to wider debates about migration, identity and the politics of belonging, and to our understanding of African agency in the context of colonial and missionary encounters.
Joseph Mujere is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Zimbabwe and Research Associate, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.
Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa
Inhoudsopgave
Introduction: The Basotho and the Politics of Belonging in Southern Rhodesia
Evangelists, Migrants and ‘Progressive Africans’
Colonial Displacements and the Establishment of Native Purchase Areas
‘
Kubhetere’: Bethel Farm and the Basotho’s Belonging in the Dewure Purchase Areas
Building a Community School: The Rise and Fall of Bethel School
Adherents and Rebels: The Basotho and the Dutch Reformed Church Missionaries
Epilogue: Uncertainty and the Basotho’s Quest for Belonging
Over de auteur
Joseph Mujere is Lecturer in Modern History after 1750 at the Department of History, University of York. He previously worked at the University of Zimbabwe and the National University of Lesotho. He is the author of Land, Migration and Belonging: A History of Basotho in Southern Rhodesia c.1890-1960s (2019).
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