Catalogue

Women in sub-Saharan Africa have always been far more effective and central to indigenous economic and social development than their widespread underrepresentation in traditional and modern national political decision-making arenas would suggest. This is particularly so in the Sotho-speaking communities of Botswana, South Africa, and tiny Lesotho. Epprecht (Queen's Univ., Ontario) shows, not unexpectedly, that women in Basutoland and Lesotho have been important actors and unsung contributors to the destiny of their country ever since the colonial period. They were more assertive than their colonial rulers preferred, defined their own zones of autonomy, found significant places in mission and independent churches, were primary breadwinners, and were the central motivators of Lesotho given the prolonged absences of so many male contract mine workers. Women in Lesotho (and elsewhere in Africa) have never received the recognition they deserve at home. Foreign scholars pay attention, as this book shows, but the men at home are largely oblivious or derogatory. This would have been a much more lasting contribution to the study of Africa if readers had been spared endless authorial sanctimony and overly politically correct attention to the rhetoric of gender consciousness. Faculty and specialists. R. I. Rotberg Harvard University