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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Migratory Labour System and the Social Conditions of BLS Migrant Workers on the South African Mines |
Author: | Milazi, Dominic |
Year: | 1980 |
Periodical: | Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies (ISSN 0256-2316) |
Volume: | 2 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 37-62 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Botswana Lesotho Swaziland - Eswatini |
Subjects: | miners labour migration subsistence farming Labor and Employment Urbanization and Migration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
Abbreviation: | BLS=Botswana-Lesotho-Swaziland |
External link: | https://d.lib.msu.edu/pula/49/OBJ/download |
Abstract: | Traversing the much trodden area of migrant mine workers from Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, this paper focuses on what has specifically been termed 'the mass of hitherto peasant populations' now turned 'a depressed 'temporary' proletariat class of the capitalist Social System'. It is shown that for some, mining employment is seen as superseding farm income and farm activities as supplementing it. Put another way, subsistence agriculture alone no longer provides enough for 'migrant' families and, whatever farm household income there is, does not suffice for adequate family maintenance so that off-farm income sources are taken to be a necessity. The theme under consideration is limited to: the migration cycle; the advantage of the Chamber of Mines to regulate migrant labour; the options available to supplier states within the migrant system in terms of extracting major economic benefits from a 'commercialised' migration policy; and the case for unionisation of foreign mine workers. App., bibliogr., notes, tab. |