ABSTRACT
Watson has pointed out how the concentrated and relatively fixed and stable settlements of the Mambwe have provided a firm base from which large numbers of men have been able to migrate to work in the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt and then return home, diffusing among the tribe the material benefits of industrialism.448 The traditional system of co-operative labour maintains food production for a village even in the absence of a substantial number of its male inhabitants.449 The same could be said of the other members of the ethnic cluster described in this volume, since they all, like the Mambwe, live in concentrated settlements and practise subsistence agriculture supplemented by a certain amount of cash-cropping.
