Genders and Generations Apart: Labor Tenants and Customary Law in Segregation-Era South Africa, 1920s to 1940s (Social History of Africa)

South African segregation policies presaged the establishment of apartheid in 1948. Regimes of customary law and the institution of labor tenancy were essential to the state's efforts to control Africans. Each regime attempted to reinforce the hierarchies of gender and generation around which they revolved. Yet both regimes left openings for African dependents to undermine the authority of their African fathers and white settler farmers, exposing weaknesses in the wider structures of social control.

This book explores the intersections of labor tenancy and African customary law with the tensions of gender and generation, focusing on the province of Natal (now Kwa-Zulu Natal). McClendon utilizes court records, oral interviews with labor tenants, and South African archives to address historical issues that continue to affect the present. The result is a stimulating multidisciplinary integration of legal analysis, social history, and studies of rural dispossession and social change.