The moon is dead! Give us our money! : the cultural origins of an African work ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843-1900

Author / Creator

Atkins, Keletso E. author

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Summary

This book is a major contribution to the literature focusing on the formation of the South African working class, emphasizing African cultural practices and African resistance as a shaping force. G...

This book is a major contribution to the literature focusing on the formation of the South African working class, emphasizing African cultural practices and African resistance as a shaping force. Gathering information from source materials as varied as the James Stuart oral history collection, documents from government and municipal archives, missionary accounts, travelers' diaries, settler memoirs, colonial newspapers and other popular literature of the day, the author manages to tell the account of black workmen from their point of view and, wherever possible, in their own words. Zulu-English phrasebooks, overlooked by most historians, proved to be documents of critical social importance - offering insights into such things as how tasks were structured, how workmen kept track of their time, and so on - exposing some of the everyday concerns and struggles of black workingmen in colonial Natal. Thoroughly original and African centered in its approach, this book makes clear that black workers in this period exhibited a set of patterned responses, and were guided by a body of corporate values and shaped by structural practices that unmistakably constituted an African work ethic.

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