scholarly journals The use of external perceived injustices by AMCU in the South African Platinum Mining Industry

Author(s):  
Albert Wöcke ◽  
Jana Marais

Social movement theories applied to industrial relations are insufficient to explain recruitment and collective action focused on perceived injustices that are external to the workplace and that an employer has a limited ability to influence. The South African platinum mining industry has been characterised by increased collective action and the emergence of a new independent union at the expense of the incumbent union. The new union has mobilised primarily on external injustices that employers cannot directly influence. 299 Union members were interviewed of rival unions to examine the effect of using external perceived injustices as the main driver for collective action in the platinum mining industry in 2012//2013. The findings extend prior research on social movement theory and industrial relations and discuss the implications for unions allied to government and employers.

2001 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gay Seidman

Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article explores some of the reasons why researchers might avoid discussing armed struggle, including some discomfort around its morality. Then it considers how more systematic investigation of armed struggle might change our understanding of the anti-apartheid movement, including its legacies for post-apartheid politics. Finally, it suggests that these questions may be relevant for social movement theories.


Author(s):  
R.I. David Pooe ◽  
Khomotso Mhelembe

As with most mining activities, the mining of manganese and phosphate has serious consequences for the environment. Despite a largely adequate and progressive framework for environmental governance developed since 1994, few mines have integrated systems into their supply chain processes to minimise environmental risks and ensure the achievement of acceptable standards. Indeed, few mines have been able to implement green supply chain management (GrSCM). The purpose of this article was to explore challenges related to the implementation of GrSCM and to provide insight into how GrSCM can be implemented in the South African manganese and phosphate industry. This article reported findings of a qualitative study involving interviews with 12 participants from the manganese and phosphate industry in South Africa. Purposive sampling techniques were used. Emerging from the study were six themes, all of which were identified as key challenges in the implementation of GrSCM in the manganese and phosphate mining industry. From the findings, these challenges include the operationalisation of environmental issues, lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing, proper application of monitoring and control systems,lack of clear policy and legislative direction, the cost of implementing GrSCM practices, and the need for strong leadership and management of change. On the basis of the literature reviewed and empirical findings, conclusions were drawn and policy and management recommendations were accordingly made.


Author(s):  
F.J. Glisson ◽  
D.H. Kullmann ◽  
A.E. Vidal da Silva

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Charles van Onselen

The South African mining industry profited from the slave- and forced-labour regimes that preceded it in the adjacent Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Many of the earliest migrants were part of a labour force ‘recruited’ through coercion. Black Mozambicans later preferred to work as cheap, indentured migrant labourers rather than face working for no or low wages in their own country. The chapter explains how this helped underpin the illusion that black labour was somehow free, mobile and voluntary. But as southern Mozambique became progressively more underdeveloped economically, the need to coerce black labour became less necessary and the system was said to be operating on a wholly voluntary basis as part of an economy dominated by ‘market forces’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 184-198
Author(s):  
Charles van Onselen

Black Mozambicans consistently resisted the oppressive labour regime that used steam locomotives and the rail network to deliver them as indentured labourers to the South African mining industry. Some used the system to transport them to the best labour markets and then deserted to find other, better employment. The railways formed an integral part of a highly coercive system of industrial exploitation and, in that, differed from other historical situations where transport systems were used to further genocidal agendas. Yet, so deeply traumatic were the rail journeys to and from the mines that they became incorporated into the modern witchcraft beliefs of Africans which speak of trains without tracks and the recruitment of workers for forced labour in a zombie workforce. The scarring caused by the Night Trains is still with us, whether in songs, such as Stimela, or in witchcraft beliefs that reflect death through over-work at sub-subsistence wages.


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