Let us return, then, to the signs and categories of modern Tshidi consciousness. We begin with the root contrast between work and labor.5 In setswana, go dira means "to make," "do" or "cause to happen." It includes a wide range of activities, from cultivation, cooking, and creating a family to pastoralism, politics, and the performance of ritual. As in the past (Brown 1931:308), tiro is generally translated as "[a] work" and stresses the act of fabrication. It yields value in the form of persons, things, and relations, although it may be undone by sorcery and other malign forces. But tiro is not an abstract quality or a commodity to be exchanged. It cannot exist as alienable "labor power." We were told more than once that, in the remote past (bogologolo), even the energies of a serf were only available to his master as part of a total bond of interdependence. They could not be given over