A Century of Migrancy from Mpondoland

Abstract

Migrant mineworkers from Mpondoland came into the news as the victims of the shootings at Marikana platinum mine in August 2012. Fourteen out of the 45 people who met their deaths over the two weeks of turmoil at Marikana came from this area and another 16 from other former Transkeian districts in the Eastern Cape province. Evidence suggests that workers from such rural communities, which have been sending long distance migrants to the mines for over a century, are still migrating in some numbers and were central in the strike. This article outlines changing patterns of migration over the long term and suggests that these did not entirely undermine agricultural production, at least till the later decades of the twentieth century. It aims to explore aspects of agency and identity from the perspective of workers who returned to the Mpondoland districts and to suggest how new solidarities and associations emerged from the interactions between changing rural and urban contexts. It also discusses some of the generational and gender tensions that reflected the circulation of earnings. Migrants from Mpondoland have been characterised in both historical literature and contemporary journalism as traditionalist and fiercely attached to their rural homes. It is important not to ethnicise a diverse segment of the South African workforce, and we need to allow for many different individual trajectories, as well as changes over time. However, I will suggest that a sense of collective identity has in part shaped their responses over the long term and seem to be evident, alongside unions, in new expressions of worker solidarity.