Raw encounters: Chinese managers, African workers and the politics of casualization in Africa's Chinese enclaves

China Quarterly

Volumn , Issue 199, 2009, Pages 647-666

  Lee, Ching Kwan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CAPITAL FLOW; COPPER; EMPLOYMENT; INVESTMENT; LABOR RELATIONS; MIGRANT WORKER; MINING INDUSTRY;

AFRICA; CHINA;

EID: 77249176693     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: 14682648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0305741009990142     Document Type: Article

References (61)

1. The Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, US Congress, "China's influence in Africa," serial no. 109-74, 28 July 2005, http://www.house.gov/international-relations; "Age of the dragon: China's conquest of Africa," Spiegel (online), 30 May 2007; "Chinese influx revives colonial fears," The Guardian Weekly (online), 3 August 2007.
2. I have attended two continent-wide trade union conferences in the past two years on "China in Africa" and both highlighted casualization as the main challenge for African workers employed by Chinese companies.
3. Jamie Monson, Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihood in Tanzania (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).
4. Gail A. Eadie and Denise M. Grizzell, "China's foreign aid, 1975-1978," The China Quarterly, No. 77 (1979), pp. 217-34.
5. James Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 6.
6. Miles Larmer, Mineworkers in Zambia: Labour and Political Change in Post-Colonial Africa (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007);
7. Neo Simutanyi, "The politics of structural adjustment in Zambia," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1996), pp. 825-39.
8. Alastair Fraser and John Lungu, For Whom the Windfalls? Winners and Losers in the Privatization of Zambia's Copper Mines (Lusaka: CSTNZ, 2006).
9. John Loxley and John S. Saul, "Multinationals, workers and the parastatals in Tanzania," Review of African Political Economy, No. 2 (1975), pp. 54-88.
10. Fraser and Lungu, For Whom the Windfalls? p. 21.
11. Ibid. appendix 4, p. 73.
12. Interview with the human resource manager at NFCA, 28 August 2007. For instance, in 2002, they employed 627 casuals and 306 contracts; in 2004, the respective figures were 588 and 232.
13. Fraser and Lungu, For Whom the Windfalls? p. 23.
14. Interviews with Urafiki management, 22 August 2007.
15. Data compiled by the Urafiki branch secretary of Trade Union of Industrial and Commerical Workers (TUICO), 15 December 2007.
16. George Kebelwa and Josaphat Kweka, "The linkage between trade, development and reduction (TDP): a case study of cotton and textile sector in Tanzania," Economic and Social Research Foundation (June 2006), p. 13.
17. Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), ch. 2.
18. Interview with Urafiki management, Dar es Salaam, 24 August 2007. Thanks to Jamie Monson who pointed out to me that this salary payment practice was already in place in the 1960s and 1970s.
19. See for instance, Frederick Cooper, "Colonizing time: work rhythms and labor conflict in colonial Mombasa," in Nicholas B. Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 209-45;
20. Keletso Atkins, '"Kafir time': preindustrial temporal concepts and labour discipline in 19th century colonial Natal," Journal of African History, No. 29 (1988), pp. 229-44.
21. In Tanzania, during the construction of the Tazara, the Chinese also demanded and demonstrated an ethics of "hard work," a desire for haste and for accomplishing tasks ahead of schedule, in the name of the superiority and efficacy of socialism. Monson, Africa's Freedom Railway.
22. Interview with Urafiki management, Dar es Salaam, 23 August 2007.
23. Interview with Urafiki management, Dar es Salaam, 22 August 2007.
24. Interview with NFCA management, Chambishi, 1 July 2007.
25. Interview with NFCA management, Chambishi, 28 August 2007.
26. Jamie Monson described a similarly insulated living arrangement, relentless work pace and an ethics of hard work among the Chinese sent to build the Tazara in the 1970s. See her Africa's Freedom Railway.
27. Interview with Urafiki management, Dar, 24 August 2007.
28. Interview with a union representative, Chambishi, 29 August 2007.
29. James Brennan, "Blood enemies: exploitation and urban citizenship in the nationalist political thought of Tanzania, 1958-1975," The Journal of African History, Vol. 47, No. 3 (2006), pp. 1-25,
30. and Ronald Aminzade, "From race to citizenship: the indigenization debate in post-socialist Tanzania," Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2003), pp. 43-63. There are differences in African perceptions of Chinese as compared with European, South Asian and white domination, but this will require a separate analysis.
31. Interview with a female electrical engineer at Urafiki, Dar es Salaam, 20 October 2007.
32. Interview with a female weaver at Urafiki, Dar es Salaam, 12 December 2007.
33. Interview with a male technician at Urafiki, Dar es Salaam, 15 October 2007.
34. Interview with a construction department worker at Urafiki, Dar es Salamm, 10 December 2007.
35. Interview with a miner, Chambishi, 29 August 2007.
36. Interview with a worker in the concentrator, Chambishi, 28 August 2007.
37. Interview with a shop steward, Chambishi, 28 August 2007.
38. Interview with a NFCA miner, Chambishi, 28 August 2007.
39. Copper prices have been stable for many years. In fact, from the late 1990s to 2003, the London Metal Exchange copper price sat below US$2,000 per ton. It climbed sharply in 2004, peaking in mid-2006 at almost $9,000 a tonne. More recently it has traded between $5,000 and $7,000. It's worth noting that the average price between 1998 and 2003 was only $1,650 a ton. Paul Stathis, "What's really driving the price of copper?" 20 August 2007, http://www.electricalsolutions.net.au/feature- article/article.asp?item=1435.
40. Interview with a miner at NFCA, Chambishi township, 28 August 2007.
41. Interview with the union branch secretary at NFCA, Chingola, 4 December 2007.
42. Ibid,.
43. Interview with a miner at NFCA, Chambishi township, 4 July 2007.
44. This is a Swahili saying for those who are oppressed but cannot access any help. When fish cries, tears are washed away by water so no one can notice that it is crying. Interview with a male technician at Urafiki, 15 October 2007.
45. Interview with a worker at Urafiki, Dar es Salaam, 10 December 2007.
46. Interview with a union branch secretary at Urafiki, 10 December 2007.
47. Dudley Jackson, "The disappearance of strikes in Tanzania: income policies and industrial democracy," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1979), p. 251.
48. By 1980, expatriates represented only 4.7% of the workforce, down from 16% in 1964. Zambians earned between half and two-thirds of the wages of expatriates doing the same job, the latter also receiving additional benefits. Larmer, Mineworkers in Zambia, pp. 107-08.
49. Ibid. chs. 4 and 5.
50. Interview with a miner at NFCA, Chambishi township, 28 August 2007.
51. Challenging the close ties between MUZ and the government, a new rival National Union of Miners and Allied Workers (NUMAW) was registered in 2004, representing miners who are new recruits in the privatized mining houses. At NFCA, NUMAW represented all but the 50-plus permanent employees staying on after privatization.
52. Interview with a miner at NFCA, Chambishi, 28 August 2007.
53. Yaroslav Trofimov, "In Africa: China's expansion begins to stir resentment," Wall Street Journal, 2 February 2007, p. A1.
54. Isabel Chimangeni, "Chinese presence met with resistance," 18 July 2006, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35152;
55. see also Joseph A. Schatz "Zambian hopeful takes a swing at China," The Washington Post, 25 September 2006, A16;
56. Miles Larmer and Alastair Fraser, "Of cabbages and King Cobra: populist politics and Zambia's 2006 election," African Affairs, No. 106 (2007), pp. 611-37.
57. The Economist Intelligence Unit, "Latin American politics: resource nationalism revived," 6 April 2007, http://www.viewswire.com/index; Joshua Kurlantzick, "The coming resource war, crude awakening," The New Republic, 2 October 2006.
58. For historical and contemporary analysis of Chinese state interests in Africa, see Chris Alden, China in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2007);
59. Philip Snow, The Star Raft: China's Encounter with Africa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
60. An overview of China's new south-south policy as the larger context of China-Africa relations is Alex Fernandez Jilberto and Barbara Hogenboom, "Developing regions facing China in a neo-liberalized world," Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2007), pp. 305-39.
61. John Lungu, "Copper mining in Zambia: renegotiation or law reform?" Review of African Political Economy, No. 117 (2008), pp. 41-53.