Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Basutoland.

Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of Basutoland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    One trusts that the falling off in the number of admissions is indicative of good work done by the Leprosy Health Inspectors, who may be on the verge of a gleaning process ; and there would seem to be hope that such is the case when it is seen that the early cases are now so much in predominance over the late variety. Only a small proportion of the patients accepted adequate treat¬ ment, the inadequacy being chiefly due to irregularity in attendance for injections. The treatment has been becoming more and more unpopular from year to year, most of the patients having lost faith in the value of the injections. A detailed Annual Report on Health is published separately. CHAPTER V. HOUSING. Basutoland is a purely native Territory. There are no factory or industrial undertakings and the problem of the proper accommoda¬ tion of workers has not therefore arisen. The natives live in villages under tribal authority and their huts are, on the whole, healthy if primitive. These huts are invariably built of sods or stone, with a mud floor and a thatched roof ; and from the figures taken at the 1921 census the average number of persons to each hut occupied was 2 • 84. The small European population consists of civil servants, missionaries, and traders, and is, as a rule, well housed in buildings of cut stone or brick. CHAPTER VI. PRODUCTION. There are no fisheries ; and no mining operations are carried out in Basutoland. Production is dealt with under two heads, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. Agriculture. No land in Basutoland is cultivated by Europeans with the exception of a few fields in the vicinity of mission stations, which are used for demonstration purposes ; these are held under the same land tenure system as those of the natives. Cultivation is, in the main, carried out by individual native agriculturists who are given lands by the chiefs on which to grow food for themselves and their families. It is estimated that approximately one-fifteenth of the country is under the plough. The chief products of the Territory are maize, kaffir corn, and wheat. Peas, beans, barley, oats, pumpkins, potatoes, and other
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