So, wage growth in the mining sector almost doubled the rate of inflation between 2001 and 2020. In 2001, the average earnings per employee per year stood at R59,874. By 2020, that had reached R335,096, a five-and-a-half-fold increase. But it comes off ...
A decade since a wildcat strike at Lonmin culminated in the Marikana Massacre on 16 August 2012, when police shot 34 miners dead, South Africa’s mine workers by almost any measure are better off. And in the decade before the mayhem, their lot was also improving.
So, wage growth in the mining sector almost doubled the rate of inflation between 2001 and 2020. In 2001, the average earnings per employee per year stood at R59,874. By 2020, that had reached R335,096, a five-and-a-half-fold increase. This wage decline for black miners was first uncovered by Francis Wilson in the late 1960s. The 1970s would see the initial sprint of growth in real wages, spurred by a range of trends including competition from the manufacturing sector and a growing need in the face of technical change to retain skilled miners.The end of apartheid clearly played a role, setting in motion tectonic political and economic shifts.
And then an interesting thing happened – worker debt levels became more burdensome, not less, despite swelling income. But the Marikana massacre and its aftermath, including Amcu’s militancy and periodic bouts of violent labour unrest, had unintended consequences that also drove wage growth. The past decade has seen the rise of ESGs – environmental, social and governance issues – which have become all the fashion in corporate circles.
Other trends linked to state failure and its evil twin, economic failure, have undermined these impressive gains. Poverty has also spread since the start of the pandemic. The often poorly conceived lockdowns to contain it destroyed many businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
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