Migrant labour and the Peasantry in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, 1930-1965

Abstract

This article grapples with issues that have largely remained outside the realms of migrant labour studies in colonial Botswana: the positive input of migrant wages to agricultural production and the effects of migrant wages on the differentiation of the peasantry. Although this article endorses the conventional view that migrant labour had detrimental effects on crop production and animal husbandry, it departs from previous studies in that it argues that the extent to which migrant labour led to `underdevelopment’ has not been suf® ciently demonstrated. It is also argued that migrant labour made it possible for those at the lower level of society to rise through the emerging strati® cations of the Tswana, and contributed positively to the general economies of the peasantries in Botswana’ s reserves