Input Structures, Output Functions, and Systems Capacity: A Study of the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia

In this article, we study the attempts of the Government of Zambia to render the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia an agency for implementing development policies. The Union was founded in 1948. Although its emergence resulted in large part from indigenous industrial grievances, it also grew out of the efforts of the colonial government to forestall the attempts of European miners to organize their African counterparts. Not only did the government fear the power of a comprehensive mineworkers' union, it also recognized that a major objective of the European miners was to prevent the economic and racial advancement of the African workers that would result from an independent African union. The new African union made rapid progress. By 1956, it had increased earnings by more than 200% for its highly paid members and by more than 400% for its members at the bottom of the pay scale.' The Union also became increasingly militant. When in 1956 it initiated a series of "rolling" strikes-over the companies' recognition of an African staff association-the colonial administration arrested and detained nearly all its leaders. Following these detentions, the Mineworkers' Union slowly regained its position of strength in the copperbelt. Its power was best revealed in the successful attempts of its leaders to repel the efforts of the nationalist movement to gain control over the Union. In the post-