Mining, capital and dispossession in post-apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT

Some Marxist political economists use accumulation by dispossession to explain processes in which natural resources are enclosed and their users dispossessed through extra-economic means. However, accumulation by dispossession takes an overly omnibus and materialistic approach in trying to cover a wide range of global processes. This article therefore distils accumulation by dispossession’s three central features of coercion, non-voluntary consent and corruption to enhance its local explanatory power of material and incorporeal dispossession in post-apartheid South Africa. This approach magnifies how a triumvirate of traditional leaders, state officials and Ivanplats platinum mine dispossessed people living on customary land in Limpopo, with detrimental effects.

RÉSUMÉ

Certains économistes politiques marxistes utilisent le terme « accumulation par dépossession » pour expliquer les processus dans lesquels les ressources naturelles sont enclavées et leurs utilisateurs dépossédés par des moyens extra-économiques. Cependant, l’accumulation par la dépossession adopte une approche trop omnibus et matérialiste en essayant de couvrir un large éventail de processus mondiaux. Cet article distille donc les trois caractéristiques centrales de l’accumulation par dépossession - la coercition, le consentement non volontaire et la corruption - pour renforcer son pouvoir explicatif local de la dépossession matérielle et incorporelle dans l’Afrique du Sud post-apartheid. Cette approche illustre comment un triumvirat composé de chefs traditionnels, de fonctionnaires de l’État et de la mine de platine Ivanplats a dépossédé les personnes vivant sur les terres communales dans le Limpopo, avec des effets néfastes.

KEYWORDS:

• Accumulation by dispossession
• capitalist
• land
• livelihoods
• mining
• South Africa

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Accumulation par dépossession
• capitaliste
• terre
• moyens de subsistance
• exploitation minière
• Afrique du Sud

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the partnership and support from Nkuzi Development Association and also the funding for fieldwork received from the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC). However, the views expressed in this article are entirely mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A fuller description of the research methods, the studied villages and period of fieldwork follows in the next section. A list of the institutions, traditional councils and names of the individuals interviewed is given at the end of the article, after the reference list. These are the real names of the interviewees, with their full consent. Some of the respondents preferred to use the local language, prompting the author to carry out interviews with the assistance of a professional translator from Nkuzi Development Association. The personal interviews featured in this article are in date order according to when the interview was conducted.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phillan Zamchiya

Phillan Zamchiya is a senior researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in Development Studies from the University of Oxford. He studies state politics, democratisation and contemporary trajectories of land and agrarian change in southern Africa. He serves on the editorial advisory board of Oxford Development Studies Journal.