Read how Zambia's copper mines continue to run through a system of racism, with the best-paid skilled jobs reserved for white workers.
Zambia’s Copperbelt has been a centre of the world copper industry for almost a century. When mining began on an industrial scale in the 1920s, the mines employed both migrant white and African workers. By the time of Zambia’s independence in 1964, around 7 500 white workers and 38 000 African workers were employed on the mines.
This presented the Copperbelt mining companies with a problem. White mineworkers were paid very high wages and the dismantling of racial divisions meant these wages and benefits could be extended to Africans, with frightening implications for operating costs. Even the term “expatriate” was chosen to emphasise that wages received by white workers were unattainable for African workers.I have been researching the mining industry and, in particular, the Zambian Copperbelt. My main interests are in labour, race, the ways in which the mining industry connected seemingly disparate and distant places across the globe and the consequences that emanated from this.
I also became interested in how “expatriate”, a term that has become a normal part of the industry, developed. the time when the industry has an opportunity to set the pattern and get matters the way they would like them. Large scale industry rarely gets this sort of opportunity and it is not likely to be repeated.
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