The ‘scorecard’ and ‘kubotereka’ spatial orders : a comparative study of mine housing strategies at Amandelbult (South Africa) and Unki (Zimbabwe) platinum mines

Abstract

Spatial orders in mining communities are fiercely contested arenas. In spite of their overall control of housing policies, planning and designs, mining firms are at times aggressively challenged by workers as a collective and as individuals on housing issues. This ‘tug of war’ involves not only capital and labour but the state and local communities are inevitably drawn in. This study compared the spatial orders of mining settlements at two platinum mines owned by Anglo-American Platinum (AAP). It answered the following research question: What is the rationale behind the housing strategies of AAP in post-apartheid South Africa and in post-independence Zimbabwe? The study employed methodological triangulation. Secondary data from official documents, official websites and newspapers, verbal data from interviews, visual data from photographs and maps as well as data from observation field notes were triangulated. This study reveals how the South African and Zimbabwean governments play instrumental roles in the unmaking and transformation of historically racialised geographies of mining communities. It further shows how the mining firm concerned seized the initiative to socially engineer spatial orders to their benefit by investing large amounts of money into housing and the development of infrastructure in communities where they operate. Workers, on the other hand, display their agency in many ways as they make meaning of these spaces (see Rogally 2009). In some instances, they have embraced the reconfigured space, and in other cases, they rejected the mining firm’s attempts to house them in particular locations. Even in instances where they accepted company-provided housing, they attach different meanings to these spaces from what the company intended. Finally, I introduce the concepts the ‘scorecard spatial order’ and the ‘kubotereka spatial order’ to frame the discussion and analysis of the geography of the platinum mining communities in the two mining towns concerned.