Miners’ wages have grown, but so have social burdens
The past decade has seen the rise of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, which have become all the fashion in corporate circles.
Driven by investor concerns and the wider public – and class-action suits such as the multibillion-rand silicosis claim spearheaded by Richard Spoor against the gold sector – South Africa’s mines have in this age of ESG issues become far safer and healthier places to work in.
One example of many: in the first six months of this year, for the first time ever, no South African miner was killed in a fallof-ground incident in a gold or platinum mine.
One reason for this has been a pivot to mechanisation where the geology allows, and mechanised mining is simply much safer for the obvious reason that machines replace humans. Mechanised mining also requires higher skills and pays better wages than in conventional mines.
Marikana and subsequent waves of strikes and unrest were also a trigger on this front as companies such as Amplats and Gold Fields strove to reduce their exposure to labour-intensive operations.
Failing state, failing economy
The bottom line is that miners are much better paid and work in safer and healthier conditions than they did when the tragic events around Marikana unfolded a decade ago.
There have also been improvements in housing conditions with the phasing out of the hostel system, which was designed to control a migrant labour force.
Other trends linked to state failure and its evil twin, economic failure, have undermined these impressive gains.
In 2016, the Minerals Council South Africa estimated that a South African mine worker had on average between five and 10 dependants. Such a wide range suggests a thumb-suck, but the general consensus is in that park.
And while there is no hard data on this issue, since 2016 one can only assume that the number of dependants relying on the mining sector’s wages has risen. Population growth has exceeded woeful economic growth, while unemployment and poverty have been on the rise.
At the end of 2016, the unemployment rate was 26.5%. In the first quarter of this year, it was 34.5%, having hit a record 35.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. The unemployment rate by the wider measurement – which includes discouraged job seekers – is 45.5%.
Poverty has also spread since the start of the pandemic. The often poorly conceived lockdowns to contain it destroyed many businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Malnutrition has been climbing and children have starved to death in the Eastern Cape.
Areas of deprivation include former “labour-sending” areas, where older miners especially would still have dependants. Earlier this year, Stats SA released a report on food security that estimated that the percentage of South Africans experiencing “severe” food insecurity had more than doubled to 14.9% in 2020 from 7% in 2019.
“Lockdowns triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic caused major economic disruptions and contributed to loss of livelihoods and income. Between 2017 and 2020, household unemployment (no member of the household was employed) in SA increased,” Stats SA said.
The Eastern Cape and the North West were two of the provinces with the highest percentage of households without an employed person – 47.3% and 43.0% respectively.
Mine workers not only provide for their own households but also wider kinship networks, and many such dependants would be found in both provinces.
The report also noted a decline in household food production in rural areas. Fewer than 20% of South African households now produce their own food, and many of these would also be found in the old “labour-sending”
areas in the former homelands.
“In the past, mine workers would have a life at the mines, and in the rural areas where they came from, like the Eastern Cape, they had a plot of land and cattle. But that rural economy has been completely collapsed,” Crispen Chinguno, a senior lecturer at Sol Plaatje University, told DM168.
It seems safe to assume that some among the swelling ranks of the hungry will depend on a mine worker for food on the table.
So while miners may be taking home more pay, they almost certainly have growing burdens. Inflation in June accelerated to 7.4%, its highest level in 13 years, fanned by rampaging food and fuel prices. Miners may be better off than they were a decade ago, but it may not always feel that way.