The Thaba Tseka Project and its Failures

1
The Thaba Tseka Project and its Failures

• Traditionalism or Common Sense?

2
Thaba Tseka as a Traditional Village

• CIDA staff evaluated the regions 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

3
Implementation of Project Goals

• 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

4
Failures of the Project

• 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.

5
The Bovine Mystique

• 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 animalsit 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.

6
Role of Cattle in Thaba Tseka

• 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 womens goods, cattle
  are mens 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 CIDA staff did not bother to do.