It will be patent, now, why the contrast of work and labor carried with it such a wealth of associations: why tiro connoted socially contextualized production that "built up" persons, generated value, and was realized in such stable media as cattle-while bereka occurred "out- side," destroyed and emasculated, and was paid in the capricious coin, which has "no real owner." Let us be clear about the status of these oppositions, however. We hold that, far from being neutral signs, they were ideological forms produced by the Tshidi engagement in a con- tinuous history. Specifically, they emerged out of the colonial encounter, a process that incor- porated the Tswana peoples into a contradictory social order, and gave rise to a discourse of contrast. Tiro and bereka, it turns out, are setswana and sekgoa in the active voice, the practices that made a difference in a world of cultural distinction and social inequality. As such, we repeat, these terms have not been static-just as the relationship of black South Africans to their rulers has not gone unchanged. Indeed, it may be that the contrast itself is yielding in some contexts: for example, amongst younger wage earners oriented primarily toward the city, and those in Botswana less caught up in the radical divisions of the South African political economy