Mpatamatu

The re-privatisation of Zambia's copper sector in 1997 marked the end of a paternalistic era in the mine towns of the Copperbelt. From the beginnings of industrial mining under corporate colonialism in the late 1920s to the state-owned company Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) in the 1980s and 1990s, the mines as a place of work and life had resembled a total social institution.

Social control over mineworkers and their families was exercised from the depth of the mine shaft to every corner of the mine house. At the same time, the infrastructures extending from the mines and the economic privileges granted to mineworkers first cemented racial segregation in Northern Rhodesia and later the distance between mineworkers and other parts of the Zambian labour force.

Read more...