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From Compounded to Fragmented Labour: Mineworkers and the Demise of Compounds in South Africa
Author(s) -
Bezuidenhout Andries,
Buhlungu Sakhela
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00758.x
Subject(s) - demise , agency (philosophy) , centrality , state (computer science) , control (management) , democracy , social control , political economy , political science , sociology , economy , economics , law , social science , management , mathematics , algorithm , combinatorics , politics , computer science
At the core of colonial and apartheid social engineering was a spatial strategy based on institutions and infrastructure linking together rural homesteads and villages, and mining centers and towns. In the case of the mining industry, single‐sex compounds were set up as the foundation of the infrastructure of control over black labor. In this paper we examine how various forms of control operated. We locate our contribution within the labor geography literature. We argue that it was not only state institutions and major corporations that shaped landscapes of control. In this regard we highlight the centrality of workers’ agency, specifically the way in which the National Union of Mineworkers captured the compounds and subverted the logic of employer control. However, the union's successes as well as the advent of democracy have resulted in profound changes, thus presenting the union with new challenges.