Teba blacklisting.pdf

British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2007

South African Historical Journal, 2020

South Africa’s system of migrant labour is widely accepted as being an exploitative system that was based on the degree to which the Chamber of Mines could derive a profit from cheap labour. The exploitation and suffering that mine labour and recruitment produced, however, tells us only part of a story. Why were people so willing to become migrant labourers – particularly on gold mines – in the first place? This is all the more important because it has been shown that African peasants responded very positively to market forces in the last third of the nineteenth century, and thus would have all the more reason to remain in their rural homes. As in the Caribbean, the Chamber of Mines in South Africa realised that active recruitment was required to launch large-scale migration from one region of Africa into another. But what did this active coercion involve? This paper primarily uses archival and pictorial records to explore how workers could sell their labour so cheaply at the expense of their families and rural homes. Extensive use has been made of the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) and Native Recruiting Corporation (NRC) archives at the University of Johannesburg, as well as personal accounts of ex-traders in the Transkei. These have been used to inform an exploration of how the larger phenomenon of migration was propped up by false advertising, debt and extortion of mineworkers in the Eastern Cape.

To cite this article: Paul Stewart & Dhiraj Kumar Nite (2017) From fatalism to mass action to incorporation to neoliberal individualism: worker safety on South African mines, c.1955–2016,

The argument of the moral economy of mines claims to illuminate the consent and associational power of mineworkers, and thereby the real foundation of social exchanges between management and black mineworkers. Our collection of life histories shows how the moral economy was fragile and its codes not widely accepted. As a tool of analysis it does not include certain facets of the workers' experience, feeling and human essence. The moral–economic relationship was conducive to surplus extraction by eliminating the non-conformist but industrious or sick workers in the labour system. It contributed to morbid sexual and emotional ways of life. The life histories further reveal how the rank-and-file generally endorsed and participated in what Moodie depicts as a positive class compromise struck between management and the workers' union from the 1980s to the 1990s. It brought to them conditions for a regular family life and 'advancing humanity'. This notwithstanding, our narrators found that the norm of apartheid gave way to that of discrimination and differentiation between black workers. Management replaced white 'boss-ism' by economism and a corporatist model of labour–management relationship. It engendered the spirit of new ways to secure opportunity.

Journal of Historical Sociology, 1997

International Review of Social History, 1994

SummaryIn 1953 Southern Rhodesia's…

Extractive Industries and Society, 2014

This is the published version of the draft that also appears in this list. Cite as: Thornton, Robert J. 2014. Zamazama 'illegal' artisanal miners misrepresentedc by South African Press and Government. Extractive Industries and Society 1:127-129. Abstract:-- Contrary to views of South African government officials and the media, illegal miners (zamazama) in South Africa are better described as ‘artisanal’ miners and entrepreneurs who create significant numbers of jobs and economic value for many local communities. For the most part, they are not ignorant desperados, nor especially violent. They have unusual non-standard mining skills and knowledge that is distinctly different from industrial miners. They exploit gold resources that major mines cannot access and interact directly with global markets. With better legislation and, possibly, training, they could be economic assets and elements of the national heritage.

South African Historical Journal, 2020

South Africa’s system of migrant labour is widely accepted as being an exploitative system that was based on the degree to which the Chamber of Mines could derive a profit from cheap labour. The exploitation and suffering that mine labour and recruitment produced, however, tells us only part of a story. Why were people so willing to become migrant labourers – particularly on gold mines – in the first place? This is all the more important because it has been shown that African peasants responded very positively to market forces in the last third of the nineteenth century, and thus would have all the reason more to remain in their rural homes. As in the Caribbean, the Chamber of Mines in South Africa realised that active recruitment was required to launch large-scale migration from one region of Africa into another. But what did this active coercion involve? This paper primarily uses archival and pictorial records to explore how workers could sell their labour so cheaply at the expens...

Illegal Mining: Organized Crime, Corruption, and Ecocide in a Resource-Scarce World, 2020

Informal gold miners in South Africa are not “illegal" because they mine gold. They are criminalized from the start, and mine gold because the substance makes it difficult for police and private industry to forensically track and trace them. My chapter on “Zama-Zamas” (criminal miners) who take big risks to avoid surveillance, in a new United Nations sponsored book that contains writing from leading experts on crime and corruption inside the global mining industry.

Labour / Le Travail, 1998

SOUTH AFRICA' S TRUTH and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is meant to purge the evil of the apartheid era from the nation's body politic. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, police, medical doctors, government ministers, and anti-apartheid activists have so far all volunteered graphic testimony of torture, assassinations, destabilization of neighbouring countries, and other crimes against humanity. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, no one from the business community has volunteered to apologize for the enormous profits that were made from institutionalized racial segregation, profits that were taxed to finance apartheid structures and that were paid for in the ill-health and early death of African workers. As one critic noted, an estimated 68,000 men died in mine accidents alone since