ABSTRACT

In recent decades, historians’ understanding of colonialism has been significantly enriched, going beyond the central concepts of resistance and negotiation. Several works have been produced on various aspects of African lives in colonial cities. Yet African organisational life and networks of solidarity in such ‘restrictive’ urban spaces have been largely overlooked. In this article, we examine African ‘informal’ leisure parties known as tea parties (matiyipati) and their role as economic circuits for the African underclass in Harari Township in Salisbury. Although Africans in urban areas were offered few opportunities in the colonial economy, they were capable of exploiting the crevices in the colonial system to create an alternative, underground economy that enabled them to survive in the city. Drawing on archival sources and oral interviews, this article argues that not only were tea parties arenas for alcohol consumption and cultural resistance but they were also essential platforms for chatting new livelihoods. The moral discourse of both the organisers and patrons was founded on the premise of the right to subsistence livelihoods. As a result, the exchange at these parties remained embedded in wide socio-cultural systems of which reciprocity formed an integral part.

摘要

近几十年来，历史学家对殖民主义的理解大大丰富，超越了抵抗和谈判的核心概念。已经制作了几部关于非洲殖民城市生活各个方面的作品。然而，在这种“限制性”的城市空间中，非洲的组织生活和团结网络在很大程度上被忽视了。在本文中，我们研究了非洲“非正式”休闲派对，即茶会 (matiyipati)，以及它们作为索尔兹伯里哈拉里镇非洲下层阶级经济回路的作用。尽管城市地区的非洲人在殖民经济中获得的机会很少，但他们能够利用殖民体系中的裂缝创造另一种地下经济，使他们能够在城市中生存。利用档案资料和口头访谈，本文认为，茶话会不仅是饮酒和文化抵抗的场所，而且还是聊天新生计的重要平台。组织者和赞助人的道德话语都建立在维持生计权的前提下。结果，这些聚会的交流仍然植根于广泛的社会文化体系中，互惠是其中不可或缺的一部分。