Struggles over water, struggles over meaning: cattle, water, and the state in Botswana
Peters, P.E.
Working Paper, African Studies Center, Boston University 88: 24
1984
Document Number: 232273
The paper describes the introduction of deep bore-wells (boreholes) under a group form of private ownership into the African areas of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the early 1930s. The analysis goes back in time, into the precolonial Tswana chiefdom, and forward, into present-day Botswana. The paper demonstrates that the political control of the key resources of water and pasture land, engaging state action in the precolonial, colonial, and post-independence eras, may be elucidated by conceptualizing the processes involved as struggles over meaning as much as struggles over resources, and as an oscillation between the contradictory needs for incorporation and exclusion.