Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration (Perspectives on Southern Africa)

Perspectives on Southern Africa

by T. Dunbar Moodie, Vivienne Ndatshe (Collaborator)

This book tells the story of the lives of migrant black African men who work on the South African gold mines, told from their own point of view and, as much as possible, in their own words. Dunbar Moodie examines the operation of local power structures and resistances, changes in production techniques, the limits and successes of unionization, and the nature of ethnic conflicts at different periods and on different terrains of struggle. He treats his subject thematically and historically, examining how notions of integrity, manhood, sexuality, work, power, solidarity, and violence have all changed over time, especially with the shift to a proletarianized work force on the mines in the 1970s. Moodie integrates analyses of individual life-strategies with theories of social change, illuminating the ways in which these play off each other in historically significant ways. He shows how human beings (in this case, African men) build integrity and construct their own social order, even in situations of apparent total repression.

Genres: History

372 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 1994

Reviews

[Steve Mayberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gives a surprisingly full account of twentieth century life on mines, via lots of first-hand accounts and source material, many from interviews w/ ex-miners conducted in the 1980's by co-author Vivienne Ndatshe. But mostly sociological perspective, not a history. Fair warning: veers in and out of very dry academic-talk, e.g. the first paragraph of the conclusion:

"Within the limits of one particular South African industry, this book has touched on many notions central to contemporary social theory. Personal integrity and social responsibility, power and authority, communal identity, political resistance and accommodation, masculinity and femininity, collective violence and nonviolent contestation, all have informed the account of the particularities of this historically and institutionally bounded case. Different narratives from a wide range of sources have also unearthed a series of 'genealogical' changes in the substantive meanings of each of these terms over time and in different socioeconomic aspects."