A01=Joseph Mujere
African Agency
Author_Joseph Mujere
Basotho Migrants
British Institute
Category=NHH
Colonial Administrators
Colonial Period
Community Farm
Cultural Dialogues
Eastern Africa
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Ethnic Groups
Identity Politics
Land Migration
Minority Ethnic
Southern Rhodesia
Product details
- ISBN 9781847012166
- Weight: 466g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 15 Feb 2019
- Publisher: James Currey
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa
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).
