of the 19th century. If not wholly invented (Ranger and Hobsbawm 1984), it was at least to be objectified; to be made into a heritage with imagined reference to the past but with its signs oriented toward the present. Moreover, setswana emerged in complementary opposition to sekgoa ("the ways of the European"), itself also a product of the encounter between Protestant imperialism and Africa. As this suggests, the discourse of contrast-of work and labor, cattle and money, and so on-had its roots deep in the colonial process itself. That process, of course, was to shape the political geography of South Africa, dividing yet binding the city and the coun- tryside, white and black, the industrial workplace and the scheduled "native" reserve. And it was to bring the Tshidi face-to-face with the three interlocking agencies that were most active in remaking their social predicament and their historical consciousness: the mission, the market economy, and the colonial and postcolonial state