The migrant labour system in Southern Africa remains a contested terrain in terms of both theoretical explanation in academia and policy responses by affected states of the region. The interface of labour migration with gender relations of production has become part of this rich epistemological discourse. Three broad theoretical approaches have dominated discourse on migration so far. These are the neo-classical (rational choice) theory; the neo-Marxist (structuralist) theory; and the structuration (structure-agency) theory.
The neo-classical (rational choice) theory explains migration as a process driven by individual choice of migrants based on observed employment and income differentials between regions or between countries (Ketso 1991). Ketso observes that "implicit in this argument is a strong assumption that the resulting process of development will necessarily see to its (migration) phasing out" (1991, 54). For the neo-classical thesis, therefore, the human agency is crucial as a push-pull factor in migration. Proponents of this school argue that early Basotho migration to the emergent capitalist economy of South Africa in the 19th century was marked by the desire on the part of migrants to acquire guns and cash (discretionary migration), but was later compelled by deteriorating socio-economic conditions (compulsory migration) (Eldredge 1992, 1993).
This explanation of the migration phenomenon is inextricably located within the modernisation theory, which propounds that the modern capitalist economy (South Africa) attracts abundant labour from the traditional and backward economy (neighbouring states such as Lesotho). This process is seen to be mediated primarily by individual choice in response to economic incentives offered by the modern capitalist sector relative to the depressed economic conditions in the traditional sector. This perspective fits quite neatly in the Lewisian dual economy model which suggests that the unlimited labour supply in the traditional sector has, of necessity, to migrate to the modern capitalist sector in response to economic stimuli of job opportunities and higher income. Arthur Lewis (1954) postulates that the introduction of capitalism in the less developed societies brought about a dual economy: the subsistence sector and the capitalist sector. The former was seen to be characterised by surplus labour and disguised unemployment. The latter was characterised by acute labour shortage and therefore high labour demand, which could be sourced from the subsistence sector.
The economic impulse of demand and supply and individual discretion are seen by this model to be critical in pushing labour out of the subsistence sector to the capitalist sector as migrants seek to better their lives. As Kabeer forcefully argues "the simplifying core of neo-classical theory ... is the assumption of rational choice, so that all human behaviour is explained as the attempt to maximise individual utilities in the face of economic scarcity" (1994, 97). Rutman clearly espouses this modernisationist perspective when he posits that:
... the decision to migrate is a rational response to economic incentives, i.e., it is a means for the village African to improve his income. His [sic] decision to leave (permanently or temporarily) the low productivity indigenous sector for jobs in the higher productivity modern sector is simply an expected response to better opportunities. From an individual's point of view, the decision to migrate amounts to an investment because it involves an expenditure of resources for which there is a rate of return in the form of an increase in the stream of lifetime earnings (1974, 26).
Rutman's argument is undoubtedly representative of the basic tenet of the rational choice approach which puts more emphasis on the individual migrant's personal discretion to migrate rather than systemic forces compelling him or her to do so. Spiegel corroborates this argument by observing that male labourers make a rational decision to migrate "far from home in order to earn wages with which to build up the rural homes which they leave"(1981, 1). These men end up living in two worlds: the rural homestead which they must maintain and sustain for future retirement and the urban workplace which they need to support their rural social base. This theoretical model, like the modernisation paradigm of which it is an adjunct, does not treat the implications of male labour migration for gender relations in the rural economy. It overemphasises the human agency as a key locomotive for male migration and, unlike the neo-Marxist school, downplays the systemic factors. The explanatory value of neo-Marxism gives the pride of place to economic processes rather than the human agency.
Contrary to the neo-classical school, the (neo-) Marxist structuralist theory draws its analysis of migration not so much from individual discretion, but from systemic factors and structures of production and reproduction. It focuses on three important systemic processes that drove the migration phenomenon: penetration of capitalism in Southern Africa; commodification of production which in turn undermined subsistence production; and the proletarianisation process which was a new feature of the African social order. This approach places a high premium on the processes of capital accumulation and class formation (Arrighi 1970; Magubane 1972; Wolpe 1972; Cliffe 1978; Kimble 1982; Murray 1981; Bundy 1988).
According to Kimble, the critical determinant of migration in Lesotho during the 19th century was "the increasing commoditisation of production. In the wider context of colonialism and imperialism, this process represented an important phase in the primitive accumulation of capital and the uneven development of capitalism" (1982, 120). Kimble's thesis is that the demand condition (push factors) for migration was driven by the uneven penetration of capitalism while the supply trajectory (pull factors) of this process was shaped by a constellation of interests of the ruling Koena lineage and the colonial state (1982, 136). Eldredge (1993) takes issue with Kimble's argument which she sees as inadequate. She sees the major deficiencies of this thesis as structural determinism, which is a cancer of all Marxist epistemology - it ignores migrants' own individual choice and discretion. For her, it is not correct to "assume that individual homesteads were so controlled by obligations to chiefs that they were unable to make individual choices concerning participation in migrant labour" (Eldredge 1993, 183).
The most popular version of the neo-Marxist approach to labour migration in Southern Africa has been the articulation of modes of production thesis. The thesis views labour migration in Southern Africa as a product of various social forces and processes that have shaped the region's political economy since the discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa during the 19th century. Of crucial importance were the development of capitalism and the evolution of apartheid in that country. The emergence of capitalism and its uneven penetration in Southern Africa led to the formation of a regional sub-system in which the principal loci of capital accumulation were in South Africa. The neighbouring territories, including Lesotho, were subordinated to serve the labour needs of South Africa; to provide a ready market for its products and to supply needed raw materials for its manufacturing sector. This process attests to the validity of Samir Amin's characterisation of the Southern Africa region as `Africa of the labour reserves' (Amin 1981, 29).
Furthermore, the institutionalisation of apartheid in South Africa decidedly dehumanised the African majority and marginalised them from the centres of economic power. Through the creation of the so-called native reserves, apartheid barricaded Africans inside the four walls of the impoverished and overcrowded rural areas and townships as a reliable source of cheap migratory labour. It is this labour, together with that from beyond the borders of South Africa, that has contributed immensely to the expansion of the mining industry. In this pocess, South Africa became a regional economic powerhouse while its neighbours were to be relegated to labour reserves with fragile economies inextricably integrated into, and highly dependent on, South Africa. The encroachment of capitalism in the region re-shaped the African pre-capitalist social formations. The entrenchment of capitalism triggered a contradictory process of arresting the growth potential of the subsistence-based African mode of production, although it did not destroy it completely.
The articulation of the capitalist mode with the pre-capitalist modes of production was such that the former dominated, exploited and underdeveloped the latter's productive forces and transformed their relations of production. Proletarianisation of the Basotho peasantry became a critical feature of this transformation. Basotho peasants were confronted with two basic options: either to engage in commodity production on a large scale so as to effectively compete with the white settler farmers or to engage in wage employment as cheap labourers for South African capital. Since the former was well nigh impossible, Basotho peasants opted for the latter; hence the long history of Lesotho's engagement in the oscillatory labour migration to South Africa's mining industry.
As the migrant labour system was set in train, a contradictory, albeit dialectical, articulation of the capitalist and pre-capitalist modes emerged. Some scholars refer to this type of articulation as the `conservation-dissolution duo' (Walker 1990). It facilitated dissolution of certain aspects of Lesotho's pre-capitalist modes, while at the same time it conserved those institutions and social (including gender) relations of these modes so long as they did not present a threat to the emergent capitalist mode. For Walker, therefore,
The relationship of migrant labour to rural African society was essentially parasitic, feeding on and eventually drastically weakening, if not killing, its host. This apparently contradictory process has often been noted - on the one hand the `conservation' of traditional institutions as the basis of the system's reproduction, on the other hand the `dissolution' of traditional institutions as the basis of the system's reproduction, on the other hand the `dissolution' of these same institutions and relations under the pressure of prolonged absence of key members of society and the decline of the local economy. In fact these twin processes constitute the two sides of the same coin (1990).
Like the neo-classical approach, outlined in the previous pages, the neo-Marxist school has been criticised for its `gender blindness' (Wright 1995, 776-777). While the neo-classical approach is completely silent on female migration, the neo-Marxist school generally views women as `mining widows' left behind in the impoverished reserves to take care of the daily subsistence needs of rural households. Furthermore, both theories have been criticised for being functionalist and reductionist. Wright cogently argues that "where the neo-classical model is open to the charge of functionalism for placing too much emphasis on the benefits of migration to individuals, the structuralist model is open to the same charge with respect to the benefits of migration to capital" (1995, 778). It is important to explain migration and its interface with the ever-changing rural gender relations of production through a theory that provides a synthesis of both human agency and systemic factors or the socio-economic structure. This is the epistemological thrust of the structuration model "which privileges neither structure nor agency as explanatory factors but their complex interaction" (Wright 1995, 771).
About a decade ago, a new approach which attempts to resolve the tension between the neo-classical and the neo-Marxist schools of thought emerged. This is generally referred to as the structuration model. It is predicated on earlier work by Anthony Giddens (1979), who posits that agency and structure are not mutually exclusive in the process of social change. Social structures and institutions are driven by human beings, much as human behaviour is influenced by social structures (Hyden 1996, 32). Clearly then the two forces (agency and structure) are mutually intertwined and play a critical role in social engineering and social change. Privileging one over the other only leads to deformed scholarship and a one-sided analysis of trajectories of social change in Africa in general and Lesotho in particular. Structuration, according to Wright, is a concept employed "to express the mutual dependency, rather than opposition of human agency and social structure" (1995, 771). It is useful, therefore, to conceptualise migration and gender relations on the basis of direct and indirect interactions between structure and human agency.
Application of the structuration model in analysing migration in Lesotho will reveal, quite lucidly, that not only were women involved in migration as much as their male folk, but also that the process was propelled by a complex interplay of both human and structural factors. There is no gainsaying that migration affected gender relations in various ways since time immemorial. Individual discretion on the part of males and females as well as deteriorating economic conditions in Lesotho have driven the migration phenomenon. There have, however, been structural and institutional constraints placed by both colonial regimes, traditional authorities and males themselves to curtail, if not to eradicate, female migration over the years (Thabane 1997). This trend fitted perfectly well within what Mama (1996) terms the `ideology of domesticity' which was, and still is, a
way of ensuring that women's reproductive work remained outside the public sphere, so enabling the appropriation of labour that had been so integral to the development of Western capitalism. That this sometimes resonated with indigenous African traditions of female domesticity is amply demonstrated in the literature on African households (Mama 1996, 28).
Not surprisingly, therefore, the British colonial government in Basutoland (present-day Lesotho) made various overtures to control women migration. As early as 1915, the Basutoland and Native Women Restriction Proclamation was promulgated. This law prohibited women migration without prior consent of either the husband, father or natural guardian (Roste and Sexwale 1987, 13). Contravention of this law would lead "to a fine of five pounds or in default of payment to imprisonment with or without hard labour for a period of three months" (Roste and Sexwale 1987, 14; Epprecht 1995, 35). This and other pieces of legislation that followed had a limited effect and, as Gay notes succinctly, "it has only been with the development of South African legislation after the National Party came into power that the movement of African Women to urban areas of South Africa has been halted" (1980, 46).
Of crucial importance was the effective curtailing of female migration to South Africa in 1963, when that country passed the Aliens Control Act "which made it an offence for foreign Africans to enter South Africa without a travel document. This law was reinforced by the Black Law Amendment Act which made it difficult for foreign Africans to enter South Africa for work except those recruited to work in the mines and farms" (Kishindo 1993, 7). The major concern of the apartheid regime in South Africa was "to keep women out of the towns and industrial centres in order to prevent permanent African urbanisation" (Wright 1995, 785). This move was undoubtedly politically motivated for it was meant to deepen institutionalised racial discrimination which became the hallmark of the National Party rule in South Africa since 1948. The idea was "to keep the resident urban African population as small as possible without scarring the urban economy. The Nationalist government found the prospect of an ever-enlarging urban proletariat politically alarming, looking upon the townships as hotbeds of `communistic' dissent and agitation" (Posel 1997, 203).
Although the South African Native Affairs Department (NAD) was prepared to allow male migration to the mines and other key sectors of the urban economy, it was
intent on prohibiting rural migrants from settling in the cities on a permanent basis with their families. While the continued, but controlled, growth of the migrant work force was accepted as economically necessary, further African urbanisation was not. The NAD found the stream of women entering the towns from rural areas particularly disturbing, because it boosted the number of children born and bred in the cities. The NAD was perturbed, too, by the growing independence of what it called `undesirable' women who had escaped the authority of parents or husbands (Posel 1997, 203).
Despite the legislative and structural constraints, which aimed at restricting Basotho women within the confines of the domestic rural economy, some have continued to engage in `illegal' migration to South Africa in order to find some means of survival. It is estimated that about 10-30,000 Basotho women work illegally in South Africa as domestic, factory and farm workers (UNICEF 1991, 158). This figure may have been drastically reduced due to accelerated repatriation of illegal immigrants in South Africa particularly since the political changes of the 1990s. Table 1 depicts this trend during the period 1988-1995.
Table 1. Repatriation of illegal Basotho immigrants
in South Africa, 1988-1995
Year |
Figure |
1988 |
4,400 |
1989 |
4,728 |
1990 |
3,832 |
1991 |
4,440 |
1992 |
6,235 |
1993 |
2,090 |
1994 |
4,073 |
1995 |
4,087 |
Total |
34,885 |
SOURCE: Crush 1997, 21
It has not been easy for the authors of this report to desegregate the above figures in order to establish how many of the repatriated `illegal aliens' are males and how many are females. However, the critical point, which is of key importance for this study, is that repatriation of female migrants to South Africa reinforces Mama's thesis of the `ideology of domesticity', which is traceable to the pre-colonial days but which also became much more pronounced with the penetration of capitalism in Lesotho. She argues that the inculcation of the ideology of domesticity accompanied the development of a cash economy. Acting in consonance, these two changes had profound effects on women: their productive work and their contributions to both the wider economy and the sustenance of their households became less and less visible, and increasingly uncounted and unremunerated (Mama 1996, 28-29).
This development continues to shape and define the intricate interface between migration and gender in rural Lesotho, as the next section will highlight.
Although historically both males and females have engaged in international migration to South Africa, a larger majority of women have been restricted from doing so and thus been left behind. Rural women have had to tend to a multiplicity of reproductive and productive tasks in the absence of their male folk. Gender relations became more complex as women began to manage agricultural production as their men engaged in wage employment in South Africa's buoyant capitalist economy. Although subsistence, and, to a limited extent cash crop, production became the preserve of women, children and the superannuated, crucial decision-making rested with the absent migrant husband who still remains a de jure head of household.
Two contradictory processes have attended to this: migration has in some instances curtailed the power of women while it has bolstered that power in other circumstances. For instance, the absence of migrant workers has increased women's participation in real production, and, in that way, their power has been relatively enhanced (the empowerment dynamic). Conversely, their participation is governed by the whims and caprices of their absent husbands who still wield de jure decision-making power and authority: this and the control of women by the husband's agnates kin tend to disempower them (the disempowerment dynamic). Even though women gain some amount of autonomy in the absence of their migrant husbands, that is severely constrained. Mafeje demonstrates this clearly as follows:
[t]he longer the male heads of households stay in the Urban areas, the greater the autonomy of the women but also the greater the burden of work and responsibility and not uncommonly the greater the sense of insecurity. There is always the chance of women being deserted by their migrant spouses. When this happens, not only do they lose remittances from the men but also their rights in land are jeopardised and the household property put at risk of being claimed by husband' agnates kin. Under these circumstances we cannot think of the autonomy gained by women by default as liberation in any real sense of the word (Emphasis added) (1991, 28).
One of the costs of migration is labour shortage for agricultural pursuits, rural development projects and many other off-farm income-generating activities in the affected communities. This has, in most instances, threatened the very survival of rural households. As Murray observes "the economic viability of the rural household depends, above all, on the distribution of paid and unpaid labour... small female-headed households are at a striking disadvantage in respect of their direct access to the earnings of migrant labourers, since they predominate in the category of households without paid employees" (1981, 154). Kwesi Prah (1989) observes that the absence of male labour has a detrimental effect on the rural economy. He concludes, "most of the heavy rural farm work is done by women and children. The yield per hectare of key grains has over the past two decades been in steady decline" (1989, 120).
Migrants' employment contracts rarely take into account peak seasons of subsistence activity in the labour reserves, although the labour reserves are supposed to reproduce and maintain the mine labour force. The problem of labour shortage has to be understood also in the context of a variety of functions (including household chores, social reproduction, and other on-farm activities) that women perform, all of which compete for limited time and resources. These include, inter alia, weeding, harvesting, maize shelling, threshing, winnowing, bagging, milling and preparing food (UNICEF 1991, 151).
It can be safely argued that when women were restricted in the overcrowded and unproductive reserves, multifarious benefits were to flow to the mining houses. First, women's involvement in subsistence production would provide a convenient economic base for production, reproduction and renewal of extra-cheap male migrant labour without employment benefits except a poor pension package and some compensation against mine accidents. Secondly, this would, then, strengthen the mining houses, justification for meagre wages paid to migrants who are, in fact, treated as singly men without families and housed in low cost single-sex compounds. Thirdly, the migratory and semi-pesant nature of this workforce would undermine trade unionism and workers' bargaining power with employers. Finally, the female-based sub-subsistence production helped the mining houses to turn the labour reserves into dumping grounds for redundant labour.
The mining industry's strategy of keeping mine labour both migratory and extra -cheap was publicly enunciated by its spokesperson as early as 1944 with the following words:
It is clearly to the advantage of the mines that native labourers should be encouraged to return to their homes after the completion of the ordinary period of service. The maintenance of the system under which the mines are able to obtain unskilled labour at a rate less than ordinarily paid in industry depends on this, for otherwise the subsidiary means of subsistence would disappear and the labourer would tend to become a permanent resident upon the Witwatersrand with increased requirements (Emphasis added) (Davies, O'Meara, and Dlamini 1988, 9).
The gender division of labour was fashioned in such a way that it accords with this strategic goal of the mining houses geared largely towards profit maximisation and cost minimisation of their business concerns. This, however, should not suggest that the gender division of labour was purely a creation of capitalist penetration and accumulation. Other internal forces were clearly at work. As Bozzoli captures this process:
[b]ecause female oppression performs certain functions for capitalism, this does not mean that it was a pure creation of capitalism. To pose this would be to deny the history of female oppression in other, non-capitalist, and societies...This functionalist tendency in Marxist attempts to cope with female oppression reflects an anti-historical and economical bias (cited in Eldredge 1993, 183).
Besides commoditisation, the power relationship in gender division of labour was defined by patriarchal ideology embedded in the socialisation, production, reproduction and household patterns of Basotho society. One critical aspect of patriarchal ideology in Lesotho is the facile characterisation of women as conservative, apathetic, passive, naïve, submissive and weak (Epprecht 1995). It was partly due to this perception that women's voting rights became such a heated issue during the 1965 pre-independence election. The `radical' Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) vehemently opposed the "franchise for women" (Epprecht 1995, 49) on the grounds that they lacked political maturity and did not pay tax. The BCP argued that women need to learn politics first and would vote sometime after independence. One of its stalwarts felt that granting a franchise to women "'would be an insult to the people of Basutoland... Here in Basutoland we know that a woman is a child and is a property of her husband' (Epprecht 1995, 50). Perception that portrays women in these patronising and condescending terms should be dismissed. Women have played a positive and progressive role in Lesotho" society, economy and politics either quietly or publicly.
While capitalism and patriarchy help us understand why women were left behind as their male counterparts migrate, they do not tell us the full story. Eldredge (1993, 193) identifies other crucial factors. First, women were required by chiefs, husbands and the colonial state to provide both productive and reproductive labour in the reserves. As for the latter, bearing and upbringing of children were the crucial factors. Children were also perceived as an economic asset and social security in old age. Eldredge sums it up:
African men and women could count in social security in their old age only if they had land and children. The association of children with social security in old age is a universal one, and even modern welfare systems do not provide adequate security for elderly people without children. Gaining control over biological reproduction in order to have children was a compelling reason for Basotho men to control their wives (1993, 194).
Secondly, "women represented for men the provision of social security throughout their lives especially in their old age" (ibid.). Thirdly, women's continued use of agricultural land allotted their absent husbands with crucial guarantee against confiscation of such land by chiefs on grounds of non-use.
Both the customary and common law provided legal and social justification for this configuration of power that essentially defined women as minors, thus curtailing their rights and social mobility. For instance, access by women to all assets including fields, homesteads, property and cash income is usually through men. Under customary law, a woman is considered a perpetual minor. Before marriage she is the responsibility of her father/male guardian, upon marriage the responsibility of her husband and the paternal male affine, and if widowed the responsibility of her elder son and the paternal male affine.
Under common law a woman is a minor until she reaches age 21- the majority age. This has deepened male domination in almost all facets of social life which, for our purposes in this paper, is vividly marked by the amount of power and authority that the migrant miner wields over his wife vis-à-vis subsistence decisions in the reserves. Men are, therefore, the final decision-makers in their households even in their absence, when the homestead is managed by women. It is rather ironic that a de facto household head "who not only runs household chores, but also has at times to take important decisions in connection with children, fields, cattle, should be accorded the status of a minor" (Mamashela 1985, 166). Patriarchal ideology is so entrenched in Lesotho that women's own self-concept, attitudes and values consciously or unconsciously embrace and reproduce this ideology that is the very basis of their oppression and exploitation (Kimane 1985, 185). Kimane then concludes that "Basotho women have to develop a positive image of themselves in which they view themselves as persons of worth, whose talents and capabilities are unique in their own way. It is with this positivism that women can sufficiently assert themselves in society..." (Kimane 1985, 186). Roste and Sexwale argue that:
With the changing property relations and legal structures, the women tend to be oppressed under both Roman-Dutch and customary laws which have their basis in different modes of production and periods of time. Patriarchal ideologies based on pre-capitalist and pre-colonial relations are carried over under the cloak of tradition...(1987, 6).
The most glaring effect of male migration has clearly been the assumption by a majority of women of the roles of household managers in the rural economy. This has bestowed upon them a plethora of obligations and responsibilities in the context of limited decision-making power and authority unless they are separated or widowed, but even they still have to a consult paternal male affine. So, we are presented here with a vicious cycle of the domination/subordination syndrome that shapes and governs gender relations in Lesotho's social milieu. It is inaccurate to argue, as Foulo does, that the explanation for agricultural decline in rural Lesotho lies on the assumption that women are ill suited for farming (Foulo 1996, 15). It is not that women are ill suited for farming but rather that there are various socio-cultural stereotypes and legal inhibitions that constrain women's potential as efficient farmers.
A recent UNICEF report observes that although women are very often in charge of the day-to-day managing of the family and the farm, "it is crucial to realise that major decisions on crop and livestock production and on investment are often delayed by the absence of the male head of the family" (1994, 215). This has had a negative impact on women's efforts at increasing productivity of the subsistence sector in the rural economy. This has also inhibited their engagement in cash crop production and adoption of new farming techniques. According to Kishindo, "the fear of a veto or criticism may be a cause of poor response to new practices and technologies by women managing holdings on behalf of their absent husbands" (1993, 9). Does the currently changing character of migration affect this situation positively or negatively? The next chapter will investigate the changing pattern of migration to the South African mines and will also interrogate the implications of this for gender relations in Lesotho's rural political economy.
