AMONG the most critical effects of labour migrancy on
a labour
reserve economy in southern Africa are the psychological and economic implications
the dependence on migrants' earnings, and the prolonged absence of
men at
the labour centres, have for women. Lesotho is one such case. But Basotho
women, for their part, developed various survival strategies in response
to
their social and economic predicament. Judy Kimble and Philip Bonner have
pioneered the study of these responses, but they made no effort to look
at the
strategies of the women remaining at home. When scholarly attention has
been given to the latter category of women, the focus has been on the period
after 1940. This study, by focusing on the engagement of Basotho women
in
commercial beer-brewing and prostitution in Lesotho before the Second
World War, intends to address this lacuna. An attempt will also be made
to
link the rise of these phenomena to social and economic changes in colonial
Lesotho, particularly the deepening of dependency on the migrant labour
system.