Women's Cattle Ownership in Botswana
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Women’s cattle ownership in Botswana Rebranding gender relations? Andrea Petitt Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences Department of Urban and Rural Development Uppsala Doctoral Thesis Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Uppsala 2016 Acta Universitatis agriculturae Sueciae 2016:35 Cover: Newly branded heifer, a gift to the author from a friend in the Kalahari. (Photo: Andrea Petitt) ISSN 1652-6880 ISBN (print version) 978-91-576-8572-8 ISBN (electronic version) 978-91-576-8573-5 © 2016 Andrea Petitt, Uppsala Print: SLU Service/Repro, Uppsala 2016 Abstract Cattle are often portrayed as a male affair in Botswana. However, venturing out into the Kalahari countryside to scratch the surface of this state of affairs, another picture emerges. There are in fact many women from different socioeconomic background who own, manage and work with cattle in different ways, and their farming is defined by both the connection to the EU beef market and interlinked local processes of power. Cattle are ever-present in Botswana and play a paramount role in the economy, in politics and in the rural landscape of the country, as well as in many people’s cultural identity, kinship relations and everyday routines. I study women’s involvement in cattle production in Ghanzi District to think about how peoples’ relations to certain livestock species produce, reproduce and challenge established patterns of material and social relations. More specifically I investigate how access and claims to livestock are defined by intersections of gender, ethnicity, race and class within broader contexts associated with the commercialisation of livestock production. The objective of this thesis is to explore how different women are able to benefit from their cattle ownership in terms of their social positions and material welfare in Botswana within the broader political, economic and sociocultural contexts associated with the commercial beef industry. Through ethnographic fieldwork and an intersectional analysis of gendered property relations to grazing land and cattle, I show how women do benefit from both subsistence products and monetary income from cattle sales. An increased need for cash together with the possibility to sell cattle stimulated by Botswana’s beef trade with the EU have motivated women to seek control over cattle. There are women who, encouraged by gender equality messages from the Ministry of Gender Affairs, make use of the government’s loans and grants designed to facilitate entrepreneurship to start up their own cattle operations and make claims to the cattle market. Many of these women, who have control over their cattle also benefit in terms of social status and a number of those women who engage in cattle production in ways seen as new and different speak of more equal gender relations. Key words: gender, women, livestock, cattle, ownership, property, commercialisation, change, intersectionality. Author address: Andrea Petitt, SLU, Department of Urban and Rural Development, P.O. Box 7012, SE-750 07 Uppsala, SWEDEN E-mail: [email protected] Acknowledgements My heartfelt gratitude goes out to all you cattle owners, managers and cattle-hands who took the time to talk to me and let me participate in your daily life. Thank you for your hospitality, openness, knowledge and thoughts. And thank you all you cattle and goats for your tolerance with my limited herding skills and milking technique. Thank you all at the Charleshill RAC house for your patience with my questions, your help with practicalities and for letting me tag along to various cattle happenings. And thank you GBFA for letting me sit in on your meetings and providing me with information. A big thank you to my power team of women in my supervision committee, Seema Arora-Jonsson, Cecilia Waldenström, Alice Hovorka and Onalenna Selolwane. You have supported me and challenged me in so many ways that I have lost count. In different ways you have all taught me so much and I could not have written this thesis without you. Thank you Louise Fortmann, Gunilla Bjärén, Gudrun Dahl for your thorough readings and insightful comments. Thank you fantastic colleagues at SLU for all the discussions and chats at seminars, in corridors and during walks. Special thanks to Kjell, Örjan and Flora for reading drafts of my manuscript and chapters at different stages. Your comments and questions helped me shape my work. Klara, your laughter and friendship has meant so much, and Camilla, you have been my academic guide and an amazing friend – where would I be without your support, humour, lunchboxes and adventures? Thank you Stina for your encouragement and wise words on how to approach the final stages of this endeavor. Thank you colleagues at administration, and especially Anni for your invaluable effort in getting this thing to the printer. Thank you Thato, for your diligent translations, for never complaining about rising before dawn to drive hours on a bumpy sand track, and for your enthusiasm for cattle and field work. Thank you Ditiro for your interpretation of not only languages but also social contexts. You have saved me more than once from embarrassing situations. I am grateful to my colleagues at University of Botswana, Botswana College of Agriculture and Okavango Research Institute and I am so grateful for all the feedback from researchers and students there. Your input has greatly helped me to think further. Thank you Treasa for the long breakfasts discussing finding and methodology, and thank you Dolly for lending me a room while in Gaborone. Thank you Mats, Julia, Pär and all the BOTSFA gang for inspiration, discussions and tips. I want to thank Guelph University for letting me come as a visiting PhD for a semester and thank you Team for welcoming me into the group and for all the discussions on our common interest of animals in Botswana, and for all the laughs, encouragements and chai. Without the field work funding I received from Kungliga Skogs och Lantbruksakademien, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien, Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Natural Resource Management & Livelihoods in International Development Research School and Helge Ax:son Johnssons stiftelse, I would not have come far – I greatly appreciate your support. I could not have done this without my family. Mum, Dad and Sister, you have picked me up when I’ve been low and thrown me even higher when I’ve been up. You have been there to listen, talk, laugh, cry and make endless cups of tea. Thank you for all your love, time and support. Thank you Robin for your patience, and for coming to the Kalahari with me. Thank you friends near and far who have encouraged me in so many ways. Your messages, letters and packages have meant so much to me throughout these years. It has been a fantastic and challenging journey and I have met so many wonderful people in Sweden, Botswana, Canada and beyond. I am grateful to all of you for cheering me on. Contents List of abbreviations and glossary 11 List of tables 13 1 Venturing into gendered cattle country 15 Research Objective and Questions 17 Exploring the questions 18 Thinking with women and cattle in Ghanzi 18 Gender, property and ownership 19 Gender, cattle and commercialisation 20 Intersectionality as a tool 21 Contributions 22 Structure of the thesis 22 2 Theoretical framework and concepts to think with 25 Introduction 25 Gender and cattle ownership 26 Women’s cattle ownership 26 Gender and commercialisation of livestock production 29 Gender and property relations 33 Gender and property rights 33 Gendered access to resources and assets 35 Gendered property relations and personhood 40 Intersectionality as a tool 41 Gender 42 Ethnicity 44 Race 46 Class 48 3 Methodology and Methods 51 Introduction 51 Preparing for an ethnographic methodology 52 An ethnographic methodology 52 Pilot study showing complexity 53 Ghanzi District 55 Setting up field work and conducting interviews 58 Selecting informants for interviews and kraals for participant observation 58 Interviews 59 Translation and translators 62 Participant observation and key informants 63 Participating in cattle work, daily chores and meetings 63 Other key informants 64 Being part of the research 65 Ethical considerations 67 Analysing the data 68 Analysing field notes and interviews from core informants 68 Analysing key informant and pilot interviews 69 4 Cattle and Gender in Botswana 71 Introduction 71 Botswana’s cattle history 72 Longstanding history of unequal cattle relations 74 Colonial developments with implications for ethnicity, race and class 76 Developments of the beef export after independence 79 Cattle production systems in Botswana 80 Commercialisation of cattle production in Botswana 84 Consequences of EU trade 86 Gender and cattle in Botswana 90 Women’s participation in livestock production in Botswana in the past 90 Property legislation affecting women 92 Intersectionality of cattle production in Botswana 95 Conclusions 96 5 Women and cattle in Ghanzi District 99 Introduction 99 Narrative: A day at the kraal 100 Four ideas about how women relate to cattle 104 Widows do not really count 105 Rich, white women 109 Herero as different 110 Only ‘Motswana women’s’ participation could challenge the ‘rule’. 110 Women with cattle on fenced and non-fenced farms in Ghanzi District 112 Fenced grazing land 114 Non-fenced, communal grazing land in Charleshill sub-district 119 Different starting points for women cattle owners in Ghanzi 122 Labour relations linked to gender, ethnicity,