1 - Introduction: Setting the scene

Summary

In 1987 the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called a national mineworkers strike: an epic twenty-one-day showdown between the five-year old NUM and the far more established South African mining industry backed by the might of the apartheid state. One of the many consequences of this strike was that some forty thousand workers lost their jobs. The dependence of South Africa’s mining industry on migrant labour meant these workers returned to homes scattered across the sub-region, with the largest numbers returning to the rural Transkei, in South Africa, and the small neighbouring mountain Kingdom of Lesotho.

In the aftermath, and as a response to these events, a job creation unit was established within NUM, but the job losses from the strike proved to be just the start of a period of restructuring in the mining industry during which over three hundred thousand jobs were shed over the next fifteen years. This period also coincided with dramatic changes in South Africa. At the start of the period, the political system of white minority rule known as apartheid was still in place; by the end of it, South Africa’s transition to democracy was nearly a decade old. Over the same period, democratic struggles were also unfolding in neighbouring states such as Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland – with their fates closely tied to events in South Africa.

While this book relates the story of one particular job creation initiative in a particular southern African and historical context, it nevertheless has wider implications and contemporary relevance for enterprise development strategies that aim to create jobs and reduce poverty in developing contexts. A core part of this challenge involves grappling with the role of markets in development, and whether and under what conditions enterprise development strategies in rural and peri-urban contexts can provide pathways out of poverty: or simply serve to lock people into it instead. These issues remain a current development priority.

The story that unfolds in this book is told from a particular perspective: I joined NUM in 1988, tasked with heading the new job creation unit and creating alternative forms of employment for workers dismissed in the strike.