Mining
Another potential avenue for development in Bophuthatswana and KwaZulu is mining. Bophuthatswana is known to have reserves of platinum, nickel, vanadium, asbestos, iron, limestone, diamonds, chrome, granite, calcite, manganese, and fluorspar. KwaZulu may have important coal, titanium, and gold resources, but presently only dolerite, sand, kaolin, stone, and coal are being extracted.
The Bantu Mining Corporation was instituted in 1969 to guide greater white and black exploitation of homeland mineral resources. Many of the homelands had not been systematically surveyed for mineral wealth, and mineral rights were held by individual blacks, tribal communities, the Bantu Trust, and sometimes by the state. The Bantu Mining Corporation was to oversee existing operations and act as agent for individual Africans and communities in their negotiations with white companies. Only South African companies were to be permitted into the homelands. In addition, the homeland governments were not empowered to negotiate on behalf of themselves or their citizens. The Bantu Mining Corporation could undertake explorations on its own account and could establish its own enterprises or permit white firms to operate on an agency basis. It was also to encourage black ownership and to train Africans to assume control of at least some mineral firms.
The corporation has acted in its brief history principally to give white mining interests access to homeland mineral deposits. As with industry, mineral development is a vital national interest of the Republic, and the homeland governments have no say regarding mineral leasing or the terms of exploitation. In the underdeveloped world, mining is at best a classic enclave industry, employing local workers at minimal wages held down by the threat of imported or recruited migrant labor. Unless special efforts are taken by an independent government, raw minerals or semiprocessed ores are often shipped away to processing centers outside the country. There are few internal forward linkages into processing and fabrication. The homeland governments are not, however, in a position to regulate the operations of mines, nor can they easily try to develop processing and fabricating industries that would be based on ore production.
In mid-1974 there were sixty-three mines operating in the homelands; of these twenty-five were in Bophuthatswana and nine were in KwaZulu. Approximately 78,000 African workers were employed, earning an aggregate payroll of R31.8 million. Of these 61,000 or 78 percent were working in Bophuthatswana, where they earned R27.0 million.
Through 1974 the Bantu Mining Corporation had granted prospecting and mining rights to 145 applicants. It appears that these numbers do not
include firms that had been mining actively prior to the formation of the corporation in 1969. In 1973 only four Africans had prospecting rights, and one African was mining, although what he was mining has not been stated.[43] The corporation is supposed to encourage African mining, but it is apparent from statements in its annual reports that the corporation envisages Africans as small-scale miners using labor-intensive methods on residual holdings that whites are not interested in developing. The assumption is that Africans are satisfied with lower levels of income or profits than whites. Yet the corporation explores on its own account, and, if it chooses, could presumably develop a discovery in a relatively short time for an African takeover.
There are eleven times as many workers in Bophuthatswana's mines as in Babelegi; there are eighty-seven times as many mine workers as persons engaged in commercial farming on Bantu Investment Corporation projects. KwaZulu's mineral resources employed only 307 workers, who earned R128,000 in fiscal 1973/74.[44] The most sought after mineral in Bophuthatswana is platinum, the extraction of which engages 58,349 African miners or 95.6 percent of the mining labor force. Very few Tswana work in the three platinum mines in the homeland, and it is said that this low rate of participation is due to "cultural reasons." The real reason may be that wages in relation to working conditions are superior for most Tswana in the Pretoria-Brits-Rustenburg area. Production of platinum has risen sharply since 1972 to meet the needs of American automobile producers, who use the metal in emission control devices and who have signed contracts worth several hundred million rand with the mine operators. There are very poor linkage effects from these and other mines to the Tswana economy.
At present the Bophuthatswana government receives only indirect and marginal benefits from these ventures, which remain under the control of the Bantu Mining Corporation, an agency of the Republic, and the licensee firms. The terms of the contracts, insofar as they are known, are not favorable to the homeland when contrasted with agreements reached normally between foreign investors and independent nations. The royalties paid are small and go mostly to the Fokeng, and to the Bantu Trust. There are limited employment and income multiplier effects, because few Tswana are employed and the workers do not spend the bulk of their funds in Tswana shops or stores. The power of the white mining unions is such that they have been able to enforce job reservation in the homeland mines despite the government's general policy that discrimination will not be allowed in the homelands.
[43] Bantu Investment Corporation, Homelands, 2nd ed., 85.
[44] Ibid., 85–87.