The Thaba Tseka Project
and its Failures
Traditionalism or Common
Sense?
7/17/2016
'Tradition' or Common Sense?
1
Thaba Tseka as a ‘Traditional’
Village
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7/17/2016
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
'Tradition' or Common Sense?
2
Implementation of Project Goals
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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
7/17/2016
'Tradition' or Common Sense?
3
Failures of the Project
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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.
7/17/2016
'Tradition' or Common Sense?
4
The Bovine ‘Mystique’
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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.
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7/17/2016
'Tradition' or Common Sense?
5
Role of Cattle in Thaba Tseka
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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.
 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
7/17/2016 CIDA staff did not bother to
'Tradition'
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do. or Common Sense?
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