The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money!: The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843-1900

by Keletso E. Atkins

Major contribution to the literature focussing on the formation of the South African working class, emphasizing African cultural practices and African resistance as a shaping force. Using a range of archival sources, diaries, memoirs, colonial newspapers and Zulu-English phrasebooks, Atkins is able to track, wherever possible in their own words, how workmen kept track of time, how tasks were structured, revealing everyday concerns and struggles as well as a set of patterned responses that unmistakably constituted an African work ethic. North America: Heinemann

Genres: History

206 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Kimathi Muiruri · Rating 5 out of 5]

My entire undergraduate thesis was an aspirational project to write as well as Keletso Atkins because when I read this book for the first time I felt like I was genuinely in the barracks at Durban and on the African tenant farms of colonial Natal.

[Josh Buermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable history of 19th century Zulu labor organizing in colonial Natal, South Africa.