This paper describes the living conditions of mine workers from eight mines in South Africa in 2014, and assesses changes made over the previous decade.
South Africa's demand for mine workers extended to the whole of Southern Africa and beyond, to countries as far as Libya, Uganda, and China. Using the migration diplomacy framework, this article analyses the role and impact of migrant mine labourers in facilitating South Africa's diplomatic relations with Botswana and Lesotho.
Migrant labourers across Southern Africa, from the Transkei (modern day Mthatha) and Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe), undertook lengthy jouneys from the kraal to gold and diamond mines seeking employemnt. Migrant labourers were accomodated in hostels on the outskirts of townships.
They also share another distinct feature: during the last century, they sent a large numbers of migrant workers to South African mines. This paper examines whether participation in mining in a ...
Mozambique has been a major site for the export of labour to South Africa for close to 250 years. The development of a vast system of migrant labour to the diamond and gold mines has dominated this story. What is less well known is the history of Mozambique as an exporter of labour to the south-western tip of Africa where the …
mineworkers) of relative flexibility.1. The development of new forms of migrant behaviour has. important implications for the delivery of alternative forms of. accommodation on the mines.2 First, for the mining companies, the. advantages of a more stable and regulated migrant workforce are obvious.
Analyzes changes in the origins and characteristics of migrant workers from the late 19th century to the present. Explains the political and economic advantages to the government and the mines of using migrant labour on short-term contracts and its relationship with apartheid, the decreasing reliance on labour from neighbouring countries during the …
Whereas foreign migrant labour's share in mine employment increased to 72% by 1970 (peaking at 78% in 1974), it fell to 42% by 1989, due to the withdrawal of cross border migrant workers by several independent regional governments (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Angola) and downsizing, as reflected in declining numbers of South …
Swaziland and Lesotho have the highest HIV prevalence in the world. They also share another distinct feature: during the last century, they sent a large numbers of migrant workers to South African mines. This paper examines whether participation in mining in a bordering country affects HIV infection rate. A job in the mines means …
Migration has deep historical roots in South and Southern Africa and to this day continues to be highly prevalent and a major factor shaping South African society and health. In this paper we examine the role of migration in the spread of two diseases ...
The regional forum facilitated in‐depth discussions among stakeholders on critical issues affecting migrant workers in the mining industry from Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland.
The Mineral Revolution in South Africa started with the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in 1867, and intensified with the discovery of deep-level gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886. By the time that gold was discovered, African kingdoms had lost their independence. During the gold-mining revolution, patterns of land and labour were …
This chapter discusses South Africa's migrant labour system. It traces the history of this labour system from its origins in the diamond mines during the 1870s. It details the organization of labour supply to maintain the monopsonistic power of the Chamber of Mines, which became a central feature of South Africa's emerging industrial economy; …
The Museum is Housed in an Old Migrant Labour Hostel Compound and documents the History of South Africa's Migrant Workforce, from the first arrivals to Unionisation. The original Dormitories, concrete Bunks, and Punishment Room at the Old Compound Building reveal the Workers' hardships under the Migrant Labour System.
19 January 2006. The Department of Labour has vowed to settle all outstanding pensions and. compensation claims of former Lesotho migrant workers who were employed in. South Africaâ s mines. This emerged at the meeting between the Lesotho Minister of Employment and. Labour Mpeo Mahase-Moiloa and South Africaâ s Labour Minister …
THE HISTORY AND HEALTH OF A NINETEENTH-CENTURY MIGRANT MINE-WORKER POPULATION FROM KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA
The migration of low-skilled workers to South Africa increased in the 2000s and in 2006, migrants accounted for 30 per cent of all Basotho migrant workers in South Africa (IOM, 2017).
Production and profit in the South African gold mining industry have long been based upon the employment of cheap black migrant labor. The central institution in the migratory labor system is the compound or hostel. Over 97% of the mine workforce of 500,000 currently live in these single-, regimented barracks.
On the geographical logic of mine recruiting policy, see W. James, 'Migrant Labour Selection in South Africa's Metal Mining Industry', Paper presented at Canadian Association of African Studies Meetings, Queen's University, Kingston, 1988.
At least a half million migrant workers have been employed in the African mining industry at any one time during the last 2 decades. 11 In large mining countries like South Africa, over 40% of these workers have been foreign, 18 which can lead to transmission of TB from miners to others in their home populations.
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…
A story of South Africa: Mining, Migration, Misery. Mining and migration have gone hand in hand since the Neolithic era, but the special impact of industrial strength mining and Apartheid brought ...
Objectives: Between the 1980s and 2000s, an epidemic of silicosis was identified in migrant black goldminers, many from neighbouring countries, on the South African gold mines. This studies aimed to use the newly available employment database of a large goldmining company to demonstrate how a sustained rise in employment …
Sectors or types of work that generally employ high numbers of mobile and migrant workers in southern Africa are: Mining, Commercial Agriculture, Transport, Construction, Domestic Work, Military and Uniformed Services (such as military personnel and immigration oficials), Informal Cross-Border Trade, Fisheries, and Work.
The history and health of a nineteenth-century migrant mine-worker population from Kimberley, South Africa.South African Archaeological Bulletin 65(192): 185–195.
Arrival of Chinese labourers in South Africa. A labour shortage at the gold mines on the Rand resulted in the importation of Chinese labour in 1904. This situation, in part, was the result of the …
World Development, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 301-316, 1991 0305-750X/91 $3.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Press plc Depopulating the Compounds: Migrant Labor and Mine Housing in South Africa J O N A T H A N CRUSH Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario and WILMOT JAMES* University of Cape Town Summary. - - Production and …
Abstract. Production and profit in the South African gold mining industry have long been based upon the employment of cheap black migrant labor. The central institution in the migratory labor system is the compound or hostel. Over 97% of the mine workforce of 500,000 currently live in these single-, regimented barracks.
Basotho and the Mines is the first major study of migrant labour in Lesotho, dedicated to the period 1890 to 1940. It examines the position of Basotho migrant workers in South Africa, Lesotho's dependency on migrant labour, and the social and cultural consequences of sending so many men away to work.
Many undocumented women choose to become live-in domestic workers for South African families, which offers them many benefits, but also costs them greatly. Women are highly concentrated in this sector, with 80% of domestic workers in South Africa being . [2] The benefits afforded through this arrangement include cash …
For more than a century, 90 percent of those employed in the mining sector in the Republic of South Africa were black and about 60 percent were migrant workers from Lesotho and Swaziland (Lucas, 1985; Harington, McGlashan and Chelkowska, 2004).
A legacy of the South African gold mining industry, now in decline, is a large burden of silicosis and tuberculosis among former migrant miners from rural South Africa and surrounding countries, particularly Lesotho and Mozambique. This neglected population faces significant barriers in filing claims for compensation for occupational lung …
Burden of Silicosis in the South African Mining Sector and its Effects on Migrant Labor from Neighboring Countries
The 'pass laws' and migrant labour of apartheid in South Africa today have their origins in the policies designed to control the black workers in the diamond mines a century ago. Racial discrimination in South Africa is based on the migrant labour system. Unlike other South Africans, Africans are treated as foreigners outside strictly defined ...
Despite the decline in the number of foreign African migrant laborers coming to South Africa, foreign-born Africans remain highly motivated to acquire employment in this country.
The migrant labour system was an historical system, manipulated by capitalist, colonial and apartheid powers as a means of reconciling the conflicting needs for cheap labour in the mines and cities of "white" South Africa, with the desire to restrict black people to rural areas far away from the "white" cities.
The migrant labour system was an historical system used to reconcile the conflicting need for cheap labour in the mines and cities, with the apartheid ideology that workers should not reside there ...
According to Mukumbang, Ambe. and Adebiyi (2020), an estimated 2 million foreign-born migrants of working age (15–64) were. living in SA in 2017, repr esenting 5.3 % of the South African labour ...
Contemporary records show that, in the mid-1880s, more than two thirds of the workers being recruited for the Kimberley mines were from Pedi and Tsonga speaking areas of northeastern South Africa and adjacent Mozambique, with smaller numbers coming from rural Sotho-, Zulu-speaking and other African farming communities.
