The President still sees foreign investment as the key to economic growth. Unfortunately for the small farmers, land reform is not attractive to foreign investors. For a hundred years Gold Fields have maintained workers in appalling conditions, broken up families through the migrant labour system and built their vast empire on the blood, sweat and toil of black workers in South Africa . ConsGold s enormous wealth is built on the migrant labour system that its founder Cecil Rhodes helped to establish. Workers are caught between destitution at home and low-paid, dangerous work in the mines.
Conditions are primitive, with workers mining tiny shafts.
ConsGold shuns publicity about its South African connection and is being coy about its centenary celebrations. It also disclaims responsibility for its associate South African company in which it has a 48 per cent stake. But ConsGold is in effective control. The specific needs of Chinese people have also not been acknowledged by the welfare services. Chinese concepts of health are based, for example, on the balance of the life forces yin and yang.