geographic proximity, the countries providing the most foreign labor have been Lesotho and Swaziland, followed by Mozambique and Botswana. Lesotho, because of the country’s narrow resource base, sent the largest number of migrant workers in the mines. From 1986 to 1996, Basotho workers accounted for over 40 percent of the total labor force employed in the South African mining sector (Harington, McGlashan and Chelkowska, 2004).<sup>5</sup> Over this period, almost all able-bodied males could obtain a contract as a novice to work in the mining industry. Foreign workers were hired on contracts varying in length from six months to two years, according to their country of origin. Due to the restriction of movement legislated under Apartheid, foreign workers were not permitted to bring their families and, at the end of their contract, employees were required to return to their countries of origin. Non-white workers were recruited through a single agency called The Employment Bureau of Africa (TEBA).

[Insert figure 2] The total number of migrant workers employed in the gold mines increased until 1987 (Crush and James, 1995). Since 1987, and particularly after the August 1987 miners’ strike, this was no longer the case (see figure 2).<sup>6</sup> With the heightened opposition to South Africa's apartheid regime, the mechanization in gold mining and the decrease in the price of gold, the number of migrant miners have dramatically declined. The total number of workers employed in Wage Bands 1-8, the categories historically reserved for black workers, fell from 546,112 in 1986 to 327,305 in 1993, a decline of about 40 percent of the 1986 total (Crush and James, 1995). After this retrenchment, there was a very limited re-employment of former miners in their country of origin because of their high level of illiteracy, suggesting a potential correlation between former miners and currently unemployed people.

Mining in South Africa now accounts for about 7.3% of the GDP, down from around 14% in the 1980s (OECD, 2007). Having been the world’s biggest gold producer for more than a century, South Africa has fallen behind China, Australia and the United States. Some of its mines are nearing the end of their productive lives. But gold continues to be an important contributor to the economy, earning 49 billion rand (about 6 billion US$) in foreign exchange in 2009. That makes gold the country’s second-biggest export after platinum, where South Africa is the global leader (The Economist, 2010).

Within Lesotho and Swaziland, the contribution of mining to the economy has been very limited thus far. In Lesotho, most of the initial feasibility studies conducted at the exploration stage showed that diamond mining could not be sustained and commercialized. The oldest diamond mining site, the Letseng diamond pipe, was officially opened in 1977, but then closed after five years because of the diamond market recession. Mining's role in Swaziland's economy has been declining over the years, accounting for only 1.4 percent of the GDP in 2000/01. On the contrary, in Zimbabwe,

> 5 The historical origins of the Basotho labor migration phenomenon dates as far back as the formation of Lesotho as a nation (circa 1824), when most of the Lesotho workforce found employment in the South African agricultural sector. This period was characterized by the movements of families as opposed to male-labor movements. With the discovery of diamonds in 1867, male Basotho employees began to be so numerous that the RSA authorities started to enforce policies aimed at alienating black workers. Thus, a series of regulations and laws essentially prohibiting permanent residence of black persons in the RSA’s urban areas had been promulgated. The upshot of these regulations has been to make black mineworkers oscillate between their home country (where their families are based) and the RSA’s areas of employment (Central Bank of Lesotho and Bureau of Statistics, 1995).

> 6 The 1987 nationwide strike involved more than 300,000 black miners and it raised the spirits of the anti-apartheid movement against white domination (Battersby, 1987).

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