Miners in the colonial and post-colonial Africa

Résumé du document

After the abolition of the slave trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Europeans intensified their capital penetration in the African continent and 'established mercantile links between West Africa and Europe', as part of the 'legitimate' commerce. Indeed, natural resources of Africa attracted a large amount of capitalists. These capitalists employed the cheap West African labour force not only to extract the resources from the mines, but also to build the infrastructures necessary for the trade of ores (such as railways), and thus maximized their profit. So West Africans, who were farmers by a majority, were transformed 'from peasant to workers', either by choice, or by constraint (manipulated by the colonial state). Some historians describe these West African miners as a new kind of working class. But this essay will discuss an opposite point of view, that the miners were basically peasants obliged to work for a wage in order to both pay the taxes imposed by the colonial state and to overcome the unstable economic situation they had to face.

Extraits

[...] First and foremost, miner was a very dangerous job. Indeed, some mine workers had to go underground in order to extract ore while others were confronted to blasting every day. So the probability for an accident at work to occur was very high. Furthermore, a large majority of mine workers underground suffered from respiratory problems. The mines were not well ventilated at all. What is more is that “rumour associated the mines with contagious disease”[11]. For instance, the 1918-1919 influenza epidemics in Ghana “killed a considerable number of mine workers”[12]. [...]

[...] “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903- in Journal of African History, XXII p.77. W.M. Freund. “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903- in Journal of African History, XXII p.79. Jeff Crisp, Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles, 1870-1980”. London: Zed Books p.37. W.M. Freund. “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903- in Journal of African History, XXII p.75. Carola Lenz and Veit Erlmann, working class in formation? Economic Crisis and Strategies of Survival among Dagara Mine Workers in Ghana”, CEA 113 (1989), p.75. [...]

[...] “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903- in Journal of African History, XXII p.74. W.M. Freund. “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903- in Journal of African History, XXII p.75. W.M. Freund. “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903- in Journal of African History, XXII p.81. Carola Lenz and Veit Erlmann, working class in formation? Economic Crisis and Strategies of Survival among Dagara Mine Workers in Ghana”, CEA 113 (1989), p James Ferguson, “Mobile Workers Modernist Narratives: A Critique of the Historiography of Transition on the Zambian Copperbelt”, in Journal of South African Studies, XVI p.339. [...]

[...] “Labour Migration to the Northern Nigerian Tin Mines, 1903-45”, in Journal of African History, XXII p.79. Jeff Crisp, Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles, 1870-1980”. London: Zed Books p.43. Jeff Crisp, Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles, 1870-1980”. London: Zed Books p.61. Jeff Crisp, Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles, 1870-1980”. London: Zed Books p.78. James Ferguson, “Mobile Workers Modernist Narratives: A Critique of the Historiography of Transition on the Zambian Copperbelt”, in Journal of South African Studies, XVI p.388. [...]

[...] But mine work was unpopular. The wages were very low compared to the danger of the job. At the end, “work in the mine meant a total commitment to wage labour”[18], and once the mine workers had earned enough money, they went back home, in rural areas. While a lot of Africans had migrated in urban areas to get jobs during the gold boom, only few stayed in town when the decline of the mining industry occurred. Therefore, it is hurried to link miners with a new kind of working class (proletariat) and permanently urbanized if we take into account the high rate of turnover and the short term migrations, “forever in during the colonial and the post colonial period. [...]