ABSTRACT
Co-operative, extra-familial labour in the form of 'work parties' or other forms of voluntary productive collaboration is historically widespread in Southern Africa and other parts of the continent. Although only one form of labour among many, and sometimes insignificant, in many areas cooperative labour plays an important contemporary role, particularly in agriculture, and in recent years it has been the subject of some careful analyses by anthropologists. Work-parties in Africa are organized for a wide variety of purposes, in which agricultural work features prominently. Co-operative labour exists, large variety of forms, which vary according to factors such as ecology and type of economy, as well as in terms of historical and socio-cultural factors. In Southern Africa the evidence indicates the primacy of neighbours in co-operative labour, though territorial units are seldom formally used to define the boundaries of work groups, and precisely which neighbours are asked or invited to work is less clear but of obvious importance.
