Modernity on Credit: The Experience of Underground Miners on the Zambian Copperbelt

Abstract

This article explores the borrowing practices of Copperbelt underground miners in the context of growing debt consumption since the privatisation of the country's mining sector. It explores why Zambian mine workers borrow and how they use loans. It shows that growing debt consumption among mine workers is related to the labour practices of the privatised mining companies. The payments in kind that typically accompanied mining employment in the 20th Century, such as housing, children's education, water and electricity, have been withdrawn and meeting these costs now accounts for a significant proportion of miners' income. Employers have effectively shifted responsibility for social welfare on to their workers, who receive increasingly low wages. At the same time, mass layoffs since privatisation have placed increased pressure on miners to look after retrenched and unemployed family members, while inflation has eroded their wages. The growth of credit markets has accompanied and facilitated these transformations. For contemporary mine workers, debt consumption is an attempt to reproduce the economic, social and cultural conditions of a 'modern life', which mine workers on the Copperbelt have associated with urban living since the colonial period. They invest borrowed money in housing, in family education and in businesses. Given the rising cost of living and the increasingly precarious nature of mine employment, this 'modern life' is primarily about 'getting by' and securing a post-employment future. Miners realise that they cannot live without debt. As such, they employ various coping strategies to manage their indebtedness.

Subsidising Extraction: Care at Work in Zambia's Copper Mines

“…They also manifest interdependence across these hierarchies, shaped by rather fragile differentiations in wealth based on temporary jobs or access to costly credit. While miners claim to be individuals seeking to 'move' up social 'levels', they do so through relations of care, unpaid communal labour, intra-community resource transfers, and debt (Musonda 2021a;McNamara 2021b;Haynes 2017). In the words of one miner, 'we feel each other's heartbeat' and hence the obligation to care for their co-workers and community members.…”

“…For more of Musonda's ethnography of Copperbelt domestic life, seeMusonda (2021aMusonda ( , 2021bMusonda ( , 2022.…”

Inside mining capitalism: The micropolitics of work on the Congolese and Zambian Copperbelts

“…To compensate for low wages, several mining companies have signed agreements with banks to provide loans to workers. As in South Africa, this new credit market has led to the emergence of a culture of borrowing among workers, especially in Zambia (Musonda 2021; see James and Rajak 2014). Aspiring to a better life, a more sustainable economic base for their families, or a middle-class lifestyle, many take loans they are unable to repay and fall into the trap of over-indebtedness.…”

The union has reoriented towards entrepreneurship: neoliberal solidarities on Zambia’s Copperbelt

“…Because HR gave the unions access to members' payrolls, they could offer branch stores, payday loans, and insurance at lower interest rates than other private providers, with instant deductions from members' pay packets reducing defaults. Demand for these loans was immense, with almost all miners having a consumption loan and still needing additional credit (Musonda 2021). Through controlling miners' debt, the unions reduced the minimum salary needed to live in Kitwe.…”