Compound (migrant labour)
Encyclopedia
A migrant worker compound is a key institution in a system such as that which regulated labour on mines in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 from the later nineteenth century. The tightly controlled closed compound which came to typify the phenomenon in that country originated on the diamond
Diamond
In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

 mines of Kimberley
Kimberley, Northern Cape
Kimberley is a city in South Africa, and the capital of the Northern Cape. It is located near the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The town has considerable historical significance due its diamond mining past and siege during the Second Boer War...

 from about 1885 and was later replicated on the gold mines. This labour arrangement, regulating the flow of male workers from rural homes in Bantustans or Homelands
Homelands
Homelands was a British music festival which consisted mainly of Dance music, both live acts and famous DJs. The event was held at Cheesefoot Head near Winchester, Hampshire, and was one of the most popular British festivals of this genre. It was run by Live Nation UK.A Scottish edition of the...

 to the mines and jobs in urban settings generally, became one of the major cogs in the apartheid state. The single-sex hostels that became flash points for unrest in the last years of apartheid were a later form of compound.

Compounds at Kimberley

An earlier form of compound developed in South Africa in response to copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 mining in Namaqualand
Namaqualand
Namaqualand is an arid region of Namibia and South Africa, extending along the west coast over and covering a total area of 170,000 square miles/440,000 km². It is divided by the lower course of the Orange River into two portions - Little Namaqualand to the south and Great Namaqualand to the...

 in the 1850s. However, the systems of control associated with labour compounds became more organized in the context of diamond mining at what became Kimberley from the early 1870s.

By 1872 more than 50 000 people had converged on the Diamond Fields. The newspaperman R.W. Murray characterized the labour market in 1873 as containing ”the oddest gathering of human things that were ever seen anywhere upon the face of the globe. We have men from every civilized country in the world, and a type of every native tribe, from the diminutive Bushman to the fine brawny, stalwart Mohow.”

Africans journeyed far to work on the mines, in some cases up to 1500 km, and established a pattern of migrant labour which would later be a major feature of the gold mines as well.

“They generally come in hundreds,” reported R.W. Murray: “Few of them remain longer than is sufficient to earn enough money to buy fire-arms, gunpowder, and lead. About eight hundred trek from the Fields at every full moon, and as many come in again in their places...They seldom bring their women with them.”

From 1872 migrant labour on the Diamond Fields was controlled by a pass system. Access to firearms by men returning from the mines was soon curtailed and the institution of closed compounds, designed inter alia to stem IDB (illicit diamond buying), heralded much tighter controls from 1885 onwards.

Controlling labour in urban situations

The Lwandle single sex hostel near Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

, now preserved as a museum, was established in 1958 as a hostel type accommodation facility for workers in the nearby fruit and canning industry. As such it was like scores of similar hostels around South Africa that were part of the migrant labour system under apartheid, with pass-regulated influx control, and it typifies the living conditions the system imposed. Hostels such as this were intended for single men only. They provided very basic accommodation with four to six men occupying a small, confined space, and an entire block sharing rudimentary ablution facilities. In the 1980s, as the control of the flow of people from rural areas was eased, these hostels became even more overcrowded. Facilities were not provided to sustain the increased population.

Labour Hostels in post-apartheid South Africa

Siyambonga Heleba looks into the implications of the perpetuation of apartheid style single sex hostels in the post-1994 period in South Africa.
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