Description
This paper focuses on the ‘mine’ as the space in which rural and urban economies meet. Specifically, I discuss the colonial migrant labour system to cast light on the ways in which the Marikana mine in South Africa acts as an important marker on people’s movement from rural to urban spaces. The meeting point between rural and urban economies is a zone of transition and precariousness, shaped by intersectional inequalities. The case study of the Marikana mine reflects on the extent to which racialised histories are continued in the present, whilst equally shaping gender and class relations. A mnemonic reading of the ways in which migrant labour is interpreted by the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum will reflect the extent to which the control of mobilities is not just a remnant of history, but continues to operate in the country’s post-apartheid neo-liberal system. I suggest that the change from colonial to neo-liberal economies has not significantly alleviated gendered, classist and racialised inequalities, but instead risks perpetuating them. It is particularly in urban peripheries, such as the mines, that the frictions between rural and urban economies meet and produce a specific set of mobilities and immobilities.
