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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Capitalist transformation, thievery and cross-border cattle rustling on the Kgatleng/Transvaal frontier, 1920-1960 |
Author: | Molosiwa, P.P. |
Year: | 2007 |
Periodical: | Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies (ISSN 0256-2316) |
Volume: | 21 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 200-218 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | Botswana South Africa Southern Africa |
Subjects: | illicit trade cattle theft colonial period History, Archaeology Cattle stealing capitalism Botswana--History |
Abstract: | Colonial Botswana was witness to a new type of crime: that of commercial stock theft and illicit rustling of cattle across borders. Informal transactions in cattle constituted an economic activity that operated underground, circumventing border regulatory laws, economic controls and governmental taxation. The perpetrators often exploited inherent lapses in law enforcement. The primary objectve of this paper is to discuss issues of stock theft as a component of cross-border smuggling. It also examines the frequency and extent of cattle theft, as well as the carving of alliances between two border-frontier communities of Bakgatla-baga-Kgafela and the Boers, as a commercial enterprise. The study adds to the historiography of Botswana the phenomenon of cross-border cattle smuggling in the Bakgatla Reserve (now Kgatleng District) area. Since the Bakgatla Reserve was, and still is, an area of negligible European settlement, the study therefore uncovers the truth about the role of the Africans in the act of cross-border cattle smuggling. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract] |