Administration and Casual Employment in South Africa

In 2014 I was working as a researcher at Wits University's African Centre

for Migration and Society. With Dr. Aurelia Segatti, we were leading a

multi-year research and policy programme on labour migration in several

sectors including mining. As part of the fieldwork, our team visited an

industrial gold mine. It was the first time I had been inside a mine, and on

the drive west out of the city we passed neat rows of homes with beautiful

gardens and fences. Everything orderly, everything in its place. At the

entrance to the mine, the security guard found our names on a clipboard,

checked our identity cards, and waved us through. We were scheduled to

interview a manager, and he was a friendly Afrikaans man, neatly pressed

trousers, perfectly trimmed moustache, affable and paternal Much of our

discussion centred on security and the future of mining. How difficult it

is for the mine to remain profitable, and how much the company spends

on security to prevent illegal mining in its shafts. After similar interviews

at another two companies, it was clear to us that a broader field of study

of informal mining was desperately needed to understand labour mobility.

What followed was 6 years of work that has culminated in this book.

Trained as an anthropologist, my overall approach was to do an

ethnography of informal mining. After Aurelia left to eventually take up a

position with the International Labour Organisation on labour migration,

I put together a team of researchers: graduate students, including now,

Dr. Janet Munakamwe, who was then a doctoral student, and everyday

members of the community who we trained in basic research techniques.