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Paper short abstract

This paper describes and analyses how imaginings of the rural home shape everyday interactions and moral actions among isiXhosa speaking migrants, especially people from rural Eastern Cape on the platinum belt in the North-West province.

Paper long abstract

This paper describes and analyses how imaginings of the rural home shape everyday interactions and moral actions among isiXhosa speaking migrants, especially people from rural Eastern Cape on the platinum belt in the North-West province. I highlight the centrality of rural homestead politics in shaping collective actions and a particular moral politics that has come to characterise the existence of migrants, especially amongst low-skilled mineworkers and other migrants from Eastern Cape. The rural home, workplace (platinum belt) link is implicated in the pursuance of dignity, moral and social order and the shape collective action take as people grapple, with the vagaries of life on the platinum belt. My paper is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the informal settlements of Marikana and occasional journey to various rural districts in the Eastern Cape.