By 1994, analysts expected the system of migrant labour, so fundamental to the architecture of the apartheid state and its colonial predecessor, to be dislodged from the structure of South African society. With the formal desegregation of space, it seemed plausible, if somewhat idealistic, to hope that a system of racialised labour exploitation would disappear organically.
While there have been changes to migrant labour in post-apartheid South Africa, the migrant labour system remains central to its society and economy.
Perhaps one of the most significant shifts is the product of lobbying by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the late 1980s. It was argued that single-sex compounds and hostels, the epitome of apartheid planning, could not remain. NUM argued that providing mine labourers with a living-out allowance (LOA) granted them the freedom and agency they deserved and would allow them to move into the surrounding towns with their rural-based families. As a result, the character of migrant labour on the mines changed quickly. What policy-makers failed to recognise was that migrant labour remained fundamental to rural economies, ideologies and the fabric of southern African society. The demolition of single-sex accommodation and its replacement with limited married accommodation and LOAs had no prospect of transforming this reality. These policies simply allowed industrialists, politicians and unionists to wash their hands of the matter, while migrant workers battled to overcome the additional burdens and pressures that these poorly thought-through policies engendered. The pervasive failure of effective service delivery at local government level compounded the mounting problems that migrants confronted. The additional failure to develop or implement a meaningful rural development strategy has ensured that there are few new economic opportunities in rural areas, other than the rapid growth in social transfers.
Table 0.2 South African mine labour recruitment 1990–2000
| Year | South Africa | Botswana | Lesotho | Mozambique | Swaziland | Percentage Foreigners |
| 1990 | 199 810 | 14 609 | 99 707 | 44 590 | 17 757 | 47 |
| 1991 | 182 226 | 14 028 | 93 897 | 47 105 | 17 393 | 49 |
| 1992 | 166 261 | 12 781 | 93 519 | 50 651 | 16 237 | 51 |
| 1993 | 149 148 | 11 904 | 89 940 | 50 311 | 16 153 | 53 |
| 1994 | 142 839 | 11 099 | 89 237 | 56 197 | 15 892 | 55 |
| 1995 | 122 562 | 10 961 | 87 935 | 55 140 | 15 304 | 58 |
| 1996 | 122 104 | 10 477 | 81 357 | 55 741 | 14 371 | 58 |
| 1997 | 108 163 | 9 385 | 76 361 | 55 879 | 12 960 | 59 |
| 1998 | 97 620 | 7 752 | 60 450 | 51 913 | 10 336 | 57 |
| 1999 | 99 387 | 6 413 | 52 188 | 46 537 | 9 307 | 54 |
| 2000 | 99 575 | 6 494 | 58 224 | 57 034 | 9 360 | 57 |
Source: J Crush, V Williams and S Peberdy, ‘Migration in Southern Africa’. A paper prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration, September 2005, p. 8
The ANC government developed a range of black economic empowerment (BEE) laws and policies, which led to an increasingly cosy relationship between mining companies, the state and sections of the new black bourgeoisie. The key debate in this context was how to increase black ownership, rather than about potentially destabilising reforms of labour supply. The maxim, resonating with that of earlier elites, remained ‘don’t rock the boat, you might spill some of the cash’.19 Some unions – perhaps most significantly NUM – also established an increasingly comfortable relationship with mine management, which led some of their officials to become remote from and distrusted by workers. As Micah Reddy’s Chapter 18 shows, this deepening gulf contributed to the emergence of rival unions and the tragedy at Marikana. Following the life and experiences of a rural Pondoland migrant working on the platinum belt in the North West province, Reddy shows the dual rural-urban existence that many migrants on the mines continue to live.
Kally Forrest’s research has emphasised the significance of changes to mining recruitment agencies. The Wenela of Dlamini’s chapter is barely recognisable in the contemporary period. With the passing of various laws emphasising the importance of localising labour in the early 2000s, Teba’s tentacles contracted to some degree. (Compare Table 0.2 below with Table 0.1.) In 2005, Teba separated from the Chamber of Mines and, while still acting as a recruitment agency, it did so with a clear profit motive and bypassed some of the regulations that had previously governed its operations.20 One of the results was the increasing contractualisation of work – also the product of the inability of the mines to create jobs – mimicking changes in the labour landscape across much of South Africa. Forrest argues that this pitted contracted migrants on the mines against permanent workers, further limiting the possibility for worker solidarity.
These changes, far from empowering migrant workers, have left them to deal with the harsh legacies of the system and the consequences of very high levels of unemployment on their own. For example, as James and Rajak so devastatingly show, one of the unintended consequences of the LOA has been the spiralling debt cycles that migrants, particularly on the mines, have found themselves in. The expansive post-apartheid credit industry preys on the lives of poor migrants, exploiting their need to maintain two families: one rural, one urban. Often as the only breadwinners, there is a particular pressure that burdens many migrant workers, pushing them into a ‘debt-bondage cycle’, as they support multiple dependants. As both Reddy and Beinart show, despite the changes in the post-apartheid period, many migrants remain wedded to their rural homes and to maintaining rural livelihoods in some form.
There