The extrusion of foreign labour from the South African gold mining industry

Crush, Jonathan

doi:10.1016/0016-7185(86)90021-7

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Faced with the loss of two of the major labour-sending regions, the Chamber of Mines turned to domestic sources for the first time in a generation. 39 Domestic labour sources were primarily the areas known as bantustans. Some mines experimented with recruiting African workers from urban areas, but this was unsuccessful, as urban residents had options other than the low wages and grim communal housing offered by the mining companies.…”

Section: The Transkei and The Migrant Labour System From The 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Not Wholly Justified’: The Deferred Pay Interest Fund and Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Gold Mining Industry, c.1970–1990

Glover

Money

2021

Journal of Southern African Studies

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A little-known feature of the vast migrant labour system that supplied South Africa's gold-mining industry was the Deferred Pay Interest Fund. For much of the 20th century, a portion of the wages owed to African mine workers was deferred and remitted to them only at the end of their contracts. This is well-known, but what happened to the interest that accumulated on these deferred wages remains virtually unknown. Mine workers did not receive this interest; it was, instead, deposited into a fund controlled by the mining industry. This article examines the operations of this fund in the Transkei in the context of the crisis in the migrant labour system precipitated by newly independent states refusing to supply further migrant labour to South Africa. This prompted the Chamber of Mines to reorient labour recruitment towards the South African bantustans, and the Transkei quickly became the most important source of labour for the mines in the 1970s and 1980s. Although the fund had a mandate to spend on welfare projects in labour-sending regions, we argue that patterns of spending clearly show how it was used to support the reproduction of the migrant labour system. Payments were used as patronage for local elites, upon whom recruitment depended, and for distributing propaganda for the mining industry. In contrast, payments were consistently directed away from education for able-bodied students, because education would reduce the pool of unskilled labour on which the gold industry relied. Money that, arguably, rightfully belonged to mine workers from the Transkei was used to perpetuate their dependence upon migrant labour to the mines.

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Section: The Transkei and The Migrant Labour System From The 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Not Wholly Justified’: The Deferred Pay Interest Fund and Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Gold Mining Industry, c.1970–1990

Glover

Money

2021

Journal of Southern African Studies

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“…29,30 The population of migrant workers who originated from neighboring countries steadily grew, peaking at almost 80 percent of the migrant gold miner workforce in 1973, followed by a sharp decline over the next five years to roughly 50 percent. 31,32 As the number of migrants grew, so did the rural economy’s dependence on remittances by the migrant family members. In the mid-1930s, income farming had accounted for 40 to 50 percent of all rural family income, but by 1970, that figure had dwindled to a mere 10 percent.…”

Section: The Stabilization Of the Mining Workforcementioning

confidence: 99%

Those Who Don’t Return: Improving Efforts to Address Tuberculosis Among Former Miners in Southern Africa

Smith

Blom

2019

New Solut

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Despite increasing awareness regarding the role of oscillating migration in the mining industry as a major driving force in the spread of tuberculosis (TB) throughout southern Africa, very little work has focused on the historical and contextual factors which may contribute to former migrant miners’ present-day risk of TB. Most research regarding migration-related and occupational influences on TB has been done on current miners still employed by the mining industry. Through both a historical and contemporary lens, this paper explores and elucidates the need to address the TB epidemic among former migrant mine workers and provides considerations to improve current interventions among this critical population.

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“…The domestic labour recruitment arm of the South African Chamber of Mines, the Native Recruitment Corporation (renamed The Employment Bureau of Africa, or TEBA, in 1977), responded to the decrease in the supply of foreign workers by setting up recruitment branches close to several former homelands. The majority of the workers came initially from Transkei in 1975 with increases also in Bophuthatswana, Ciskei and Kwa-Zulu in 1976 (Crush 1986, Crush et al 1991. The number of South Africans employed in the industry increased from 76 523 in 1974 to 228 109 by 1978, an increase of almost 200 %.…”

Section: Mining Industry Employment and The Shock To Domestic Labour mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Agricultural employment peaked in 1962 (Feinstein 2005 p 195) and began to decline thereafter in response to mechanisation and the decline in labour tenancy (Crush 1986, Feinstein 2005. Although employment in the manufacturing sector was growing, the sector was unable to absorb the massive supplies that had begun to accumulate in the homelands and unemployment rates in the homelands grew.…”

Section: Mining Industry Employment and The Shock To Domestic Labour mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fathers’ Employment and Sons’ Stature: The Long-Run Effects of a Positive Regional Employment Shock in South Africa’s Mining Industry

Mariotti

2015

Economic Development and Cultural Change

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I exploit the sudden increase in employment in 1975, 1976 and 1977 in four former South African homelands to compare the long term adult outcomes of children benefitting from the employment increase to those not subject to it. Using a standard difference in difference approach I find that there was severe malnutrition in the homelands resulting in stunting in African men born during the shock providing support to the foetal origins hypothesis. The employment shock did not affect other long term outcomes such as education and general health, although there is some evidence of an improvement in long term health. This study provides previously unmeasured individual level information on the quality of life in the homelands during apartheid, an era when African living standards were neglected but unmeasured because of a lack of data collection.

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The extrusion of foreign labour from the South African gold mining industry

Cited by 12 publications

References 21 publications

‘Not Wholly Justified’: The Deferred Pay Interest Fund and Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Gold Mining Industry, c.1970–1990

‘Not Wholly Justified’: The Deferred Pay Interest Fund and Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Gold Mining Industry, c.1970–1990

Those Who Don’t Return: Improving Efforts to Address Tuberculosis Among Former Miners in Southern Africa

Fathers’ Employment and Sons’ Stature: The Long-Run Effects of a Positive Regional Employment Shock in South Africa’s Mining Industry

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