Mr Lungelo Ndzimande

Overview

MA: "Peaks and Valleys": The Nature and Effects of Perennial Shortages in the Supply of southern African Labour to the Gold Mines of South Africa (1956-1969) Anticipated PhD: Seeing that the migratory patterns of Black labour were, until the 1980s, sporadic and often difficult to predict, what kind of "predicitive" modelling – quantitative and qualitative – did the gold mining industry use to: 1) make recruiting more predictable and, 2) reduce labour turnover? This is what I will attempt to interrogate. I did both my honours and master's in history at the University of Johannesburg under the supervision of Dr Stephen Sparks, so I am thoroughly the product of this department. My master's dissertation looked at the recurring labour shortages that the gold mining industry in South Africa experienced in the domestic market and had to contend with in the middle of the twentieth century. However, in looking at how and why these shortages occurred, the majority of my research focused on the relationship that African men, the industry's main source of labour, had with the rural economy and how this relationship was chiefly responsible for these labour shortages.