Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the persistence of migrant labour as crucial to understanding the enduring reality of apartheid and the violence of racial capitalism depicted so graphically in the Marikana Massacre.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to problematize the connection between land and labour in the South by highlighting the enduring duality in the lives of migrant labourers in South Africa, particularly on the platinum mines. Labour in the South differs fundamentally with the North in one crucial aspect - many workers retain access to land. While this access is clearly shrinking, even the semblance of access, as in South African reserves, profoundly shapes the nature of work and the process of proletarianisation. Therefore, the land question is intimately connected with the labour question. The distorted version of the communal land tenure system in the reserves buttressed by a corrupted chieftaincy were two of the critical pillars of apartheid. Not only do they remain intact in democratic South Africa, they have been reinforced and shored up to create a situation of extreme vulnerability, persistent unevenness and deepening inequality.