Work, mining, and neoliberalism: ethnography of Zambian mineworkers in the 21st century

On 1st April 2000, the Swiss multinational Copper trader Glencore successfully purchased two former Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) assets, Nkana and Mufulira, and formed Mopani Copper Mines (MCM). Since then the company has drastically changed its labour policies in terms of: the promotion of safety culture among its workers; the withdrawal or reduction in social benefits given to workers; facilitating workers’ access to loans; persistent retrenchment of labor in line with fluctuations of global commodity prices; reduction in the number of direct employees who are replaced by a growing number of contract workers; and the employment of women miners (though still far fewer than men). How have these changes affected mineworkers’ subjectivity? This thesis responds to this question from three perspectives: protection (safety and loans); stability (retrenchments, and subcontracting); and gender and family dynamics.
The thesis examines how Mopani Copper Mines, a Zambian company owned by the Swiss multinational company Glencore attempted to create Mopani subject— an easily controllable, responsible, dependent, vulnerable, and loyal employee through the various changes to the organisation of labour it has implemented since 2000. Drawing on a Foucaultian approach, the thesis shows however that the MCM’s corporate power only structured a “field of possibilities” inside which workers had more or less freedom. While the MCM policies influenced workers’ subjectivity, to a larger extent, workers’ subjectivity, the shimaini subject was a product of the workers own moral code or rules of conduct they assigned to themselves. This subjectivity manifests itself in a series of ways related to safety regimes and practices, indebtedness and credit, precarity and changing work trajectories, gender practices, and changes to family relations.
It draws upon the ethnographic research I conducted on the Zambian Copperbelt between 2016 and 2019. I conducted this research in two former mine townships-Wusakile (in Kitwe) and Kankoyo (in Mufulira). It utilizes various approaches including: participant observation by working in two undergrounds as a helper and by observing miners in their homes and communities; over 150 interviews with miners, their families, managers, and union leaders; a simple survey; photographs; and a review of company and union data.