Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home Africana Periodical Literature Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Worker agency in colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid gold mining workplace regimes
Author:Phakathi, Timothy SizweISNI
Year:2012
Periodical:Review of African Political Economy (ISSN 0305-6244)
Volume:39
Issue:132
Pages:279-294
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:labour policy
gold mining
miners
labour history
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2012.688806
Abstract:This paper locates the understanding of the organization of work and worker agency on South African gold mines within the context of the racialization and deracialization of the economic and labour market strategies of the colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid mining regimes. It argues that as much as racial and coercive labour practices profited the gold mining companies, they were not sustainable. The mineworkers were not passive acceptors of racial and coercive forms of labour control. The post-apartheid work order led to the restructuring of the gold mining workplace towards efficiency, productivity and equity. This signalled a shift from worker coercion to consent in the day-to-day running of the production process inside the pit. The paper calls attention to workers' subjective orientation, agency and resilience to repressive and contemporary work structures - not just as recipients but also as shapers of such work structures within the politics, limits and contradictions of capitalist production systems. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
Views
Cover