Enclave Rustenburg: platinum mining and the post-apartheid social order

Abstract

In the absence of a levelling out of income and resources, as well as arbitrary violence in everydaylife, the post-apartheid social order is characterised by the formation of various enclaves. In the platinum mining town of Rustenburg these enclaves are constructed on the foundations of the apartheid categories "suburb", "compound", "township" and "homeland". Such OverviewThe last three decades have witnessed the decline of many of South African mining areas. By contrast, Rustenburg has over the same period experienced a massive expansion in investment, infrastructure and population fuelled by the platinum boom. As a result, the town became the global centre of platinum mining, a status that has become less certain since the Marikana Massacre in 2012. Rustenburg's population increased from just under 400 000 in 2001 to almost 550 000 in 2011.Alongside this influx of people, often migrant workers, there was pressure on mining firms to reduce the number of workers who resided in mining compounds from the colonial and apartheid eras.1 This paper is part of a larger research project based on research in the mining areas of Welkom, Carletonville, Rustenburg, Kathu/Postmasburg and the rural town of Tsolo in the Eastern Cape. In this project we are working towards producing a book manuscript on the changing landscape of the mining industry and its hinterland. We would like to acknowledge Ray Bush, Dunbar Moodie and Gavin Capps, as well as the journal's anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at seminar hosted by Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town in May 2014. We would like to thank participants for insightful comments. We would also like to acknowledge Vito Laterza and Søren Jeppesen, both who share an interest in enclaves and enclavity, for exchanges and conversations. Enclave is used here as a concept to describe and understand these complex socio-spatial formations of the post-apartheid order that have been established in the absence of a state that is able to impose its authority and to regulate the daily lives of citizens. The term has been used in a number of literatures. Relevant for the argument here is the use of the term to describe the ability of mining firms to exploit natural resources in Africa and other developing parts of the world by actively creating the conditions for mines and mining areas to be insulated and isolated from national regimes of authority and regulation (see Bush

The Institutional Work of Exploitation: Employers’ Work to Create and Perpetuate Inequality

“…The first opportunity is to resolve the problem [of the union's demands…] the unions demanded this… The second opportunity, which is rather hidden , is to get rid of the compounds (interview 3M3, emphasis added).As a consequence of liberalizing and outsourcing work, employers benefited from lower costs and responsibilities and increased labour market efficiencies, but mineworkers suffered increasing competition for jobs, greater precariousness in their work, worse employment conditions (including lower wages in many instances), and unexpected negative consequences of the LOA in terms of their living conditions. In the decade following implementation of the LOA, there was a massive growth of slum settlements that was clearly linked temporally and/or causally to the LOA by a range of interviewees (including managers and government and NGO representatives: e.g., interviews 1G1, 3C1, 3M1, 3M3, 3N1) and is also documented in municipal reports and scholarly studies (Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu, ). A human resources manager noted, ‘When we started issuing… the living out allowance we created the squatting camps around the mines’ (interview 3M3).…”

“…After 1994, employers often highlighted that mineworkers’ wages were above the minimum wage stipulated by the democratic government. However, fervent strike action (including the Marikana Massacre) illustrates the desperation of migrant mineworkers in lower pay‐brackets, struggling to make ends meet (e.g., Alexander, ; Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu, ).…”

State violence, party formation, and electoral accountability: The political legacy of the Marikana massacre

“…We use the Western Limb to spatially define the communities most intimately connected to the massacre, and the surrounding area. This area describes, albeit imperfectly, the communities connected to the the platinum mines located in this area, the workers and their families and friends who live in largely informal settlements in the vicinity of the mines (Venter et al, 2012;Manson, 2013;Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu, 2015;Moodie, 2015;Godfrey, 2018). The Western Limb of the BIC includes the Marikana-Lonmin mine and the communities most intimately connected to the Massacre in 2012, such as the towns of Wonderkop and Marikana itself.…”

Centring labour in financialization

“…In the platinum belt, the influx of new workers, coupled with the privatisation and marketisation of housing and local infrastructures, produced a crisis of social reproduction in platinum belt communities, as stagnant or falling wages ran up against spiraling living costs and strains on local infrastructure. Less than 10 percent of workers at Lonmin's Marikana facility, for instance, were housed in hostels or other company-built housing in 2013 (Chinguno 2013: 10), while upwards of 40 percent of the total population in the Rustenberg Local Municipality lived in informal settlements (Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu 2015). A notable consequence here was a boom in predatory lending in the platinum belt, and correspondingly, of indebtedness among mineworkers (see Bond 2013;James and Rajak 2014).…”