Enclave Rustenburg: platinum mining and the post-apartheid social order

Abstract

In the absence of a levelling out of income and resources, as well as arbitrary violence in everyday life, the post-apartheid social order is characterised by the formation of various enclaves. In the platinum mining town of Rustenburg, these enclaves are constructed on the foundations of the apartheid categories ‘suburb’, ‘compound’, ‘township’ and ‘homeland’. Such enclaves include security villages, converted compounds with access control, and informal settlements with distinctive gender, linguistic and class formations. The article draws on David Harvey's formulation of absolute, relative and relational space and the case of Rustenburg to elaborate the concept of enclave further.

[L’enclave Rustenburg : la mine de platine et l’ordre social post-apartheid.] En l’absence d’un nivellement des revenus et ressources, en plus d’une violence arbitraire dans la vie de tous les jours, l’ordre social post-apartheid est caractérisé par la formation de différentes enclaves. Dans la ville des mines de platine de Rustenburg, ces enclaves sont construites sur les fondations des catégories de l’apartheid « suburb » (ou banlieue), « compound » (habitations dans un enclos), « township » (bidonville) et « homeland » (bantoustans ou foyers nationaux). Ces enclaves comprennent des villages sécurisés, des compounds convertis avec un contrôle d’accès, et des implantations informelles avec des formations distinctives de genre, de langue et de classe. L’article se base sur la formulation de David Harvey de l’espace absolu, relatif et relationnel et sur le cas de Rustenburg pour détailler davantage le concept de l’enclave.

Keywords:

• enclaves
• South Africa
• mining
• Rustenburg
• post-apartheid

Mots-clés:

• enclaves 
• Afrique du Sud
• exploitation minière 
• Rustenburg 
• post-apartheid 

Acknowledgements

This article is part of a larger research project based on research in the mining areas of Welkom, Carletonville, Rustenburg, Kathu/Postmasburg and the rural town of Tsolo in the Eastern Cape. In this project we are working towards producing a book manuscript on the changing landscape of the mining industry and its hinterland. We would like to acknowledge Ray Bush, Dunbar Moodie and Gavin Capps, as well as the journal's anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this article was presented at a seminar hosted by the Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town in May 2014. We would like to thank participants for insightful comments. We would also like to acknowledge Vito Laterza and Søren Jeppesen, who both share an interest in enclaves and enclavity, for exchanges and conversations.

Notes on contributors

Andries Bezuidenhout teaches Sociology at the University of Pretoria. He is co-author (with Edward Webster and Rob Lambert) of Grounding globalization: labour in the age of insecurity (Blackwells 2008).

Sakhela Buhlungu is Dean of Humanities at the University of Cape Town and author of A paradox of victory: COSATU and the democratic transformation in South Africa (UKZN Press 2010).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. RDP houses derive their name from the ruling African National Congress's Reconstruction and Development Programme, which was unveiled in 1994. They are basic low-cost housing structures modelled on the apartheid government's so-called ‘matchbox’ township houses, but they are generally smaller and the building materials and workmanship are often sub-standard. Nearly a million RDP houses have been built since 1994 and virtually every city and town in South Africa has an RDP section.

2. See Capps and Mnwana in this issue for an overview of the historic constitution of ‘tribal’ land relations within what would become the Bophuthatswana homeland, its relationship with the development of the platinum industry, and the contemporary dynamics of these royalty-to-equity conversions by the Bafokeng, Bakgatla and other local tribal authorities.