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

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, the author 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.