Sanitised spaces : the spatial orders of post-apartheid mines in South Africa

Abstract

This comparative study investigates how new in the democratic South Africa monitor and control labour in the workplace, how labour responds and relations between mining communities and mining companies. The study is inspired by the fact that labour studies scholarship in South Africa has focused on mines established during colonial and apartheid periods. Research on the old gold, platinum and some coal mines has been on labour disputes often expressed through protected and unprotected strikes. However, not much has been undertaken on new mines established in the democratic era in terms of workplace organisation, workplace relations and how management monitor and control labour. Deploying the lenses of labour geography and a mixed methods approach underpinned by an extended case method, this study found out that Kolomela and Zibulo have come up different innovative ways of organising work and workplace relations. This I term sanitised workplace order in that it is characterised by the consistent application of rules and regulations and innovations that are negotiated and re-negotiated, contested and manipulated as both capital and labour battle to control space to fulfil their respective interests. Control of this space demonstrates power. Furthermore, Kolomela mine has also developed a housing strategy that I term sanitised residential space, where the mine has built houses for its mineworkers to rent while it retains ownership. This has resulted in conflict as workers refuse to settle utility bills while the community feels like the mine excludes them favouring ‘non-locals’ in terms of job and business opportunities and access to housing. On the other hand, findings show that Zibulo follows a different strategy in which it does provide favourable housing and travel allowances which is attractive to the mineworkers and side-step conflict with local communities. In light of the above, the comparative study depicts a significant shift from past workplace practices at old mines; while new interventions have yielded contradictions as depicted by the sanitised residential space; provision of housing and transport allowance and the sanitised workplace order. These different spatial orders seem to break with past traditions of workplace ungovernability since both operations seem to have created some form of workplace stability.