ABSTRACT
The Bathonga are a Bantu people settled on the eastern coast of South Africa extending from the neighborhood of St. Lucia Bay on the Natal coast up to the Sabie River to the north. The basis of economic life in Bathonga is in agriculture and husbandry of livestock, the latter occupation being solely the work of the boys and young men, the former chiefly the labor of women. The essentially noncompetitive economic organization in Bathonga can be demonstrated in the ownership of agricultural land and in the storage of food supplies. The Bathonga social structure is built on a hierarchy of age and rank. The Bathonga are endogamous within the local group, but a wife must be taken from another village, preferably from the village where the mother came from. Bathonga education is specifically directed toward fitting the child into the cultural framework, to develop the appropriate attitudes of respect to the elders, to the chief, and to the gods.
