The main aim of the above dialog is to look at how Labor Migration influenced African family lives and their relationships. It’s to also to examine factors that caused migration in the view of South African history, it appears that economic action particularly as far as the developing mining, industrial sectors and market agriculture prompted an expanding interest for cheap work (Stahl, 1981:7).
Curiously the cases of Gelderblom and Kok (1994:68) stresses how the biggest part of the incompetent work force made specially for the increasing mining and big industries came from reserves. Most workers from these reserves did not move to the urban areas permanantly of employment but the migrant labor system was then introduced, of which was one of the most hihglited character of economic improvement the previous 150 years in South Africa. When giving a review of the starting point of work movement in South Africa, arguably the question arises as to how African individuals ended up associated with the transient work framework.
It is evident that the apartheid government forced work movement by introducing the hut and poll tax that was compulsory for every back household to pay so they can have the capacity to add on their financial exercises with money earned by selling their labor (Viljoen, 1994:5). Another measure empowering work movement was legislation founded by the state, such as the Land Acts (Act 27 of 1913 and Act 18 of 1936) that announced squatter cultivation unlawful and subsequently putting limitations on the cultivating exercises of African individuals that at last prompted the fall of African rural generation (Gelderblom and Kok, 1994: 71).
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Because of labor migration, many workers are isolated from their families for significant lots of time, where some of them are just ready to come back to their families in country territories on a month to month, quarterly or yearly premise (Wilson, 1972: I)
For a long time the larger part of vagrant workers were inhabitants of migrant work hostels that are single sexual orientation mixes for workers. In the majority of these inns an approach of the avoidance of families is underlined and therefore denies inn inhabitants the truth of the hostel turning into a local environment (Ramphele, 1993:4). This outcomes in a circumstance where the wedded man is constrained to live in a ‘single man’ sleeping shelter, turning into a absent spouse/father, leaving their wives and kids behind in the rustic regions of origin with a specific end goal to secure their property rights (Russell, 1995: 32).
These spouses are in charge of assuming control over their husbands’ agrarian duties, adding to their own particular work (Gelderblom en Kok, 1994: 174). Inside the setting of the ruined condition of many families in the rural areas, it was very hard for other women to take care of their homes without the presence of the husband. Despite the fact that spouses send cash home, wives back at home still beared most of the financial brunt and neediness. Spouses who were left behind have progressed toward becoming, as indicated by Mabetoa (1994: 92), more underestimated and down because of being rural residents described by the lack of adequate training and business opportunities.
It is anyway essential to take note that work movement does not in all cases inspire negative encounters in family life. Numerous vagrant workers send a lot of cash to their families in provincial regions. famillies utilize this cash to enhance their devastated way of life and welfare (Gelderblom and Kok, 1994:175). This argument by Gelderblom and Kok, (1994:175) is limited and unsatisfactory because they were not paid enough so they can send large amounts of money back home in rural areas, therefore it is important to point out that migrant labor system did more harm to African families than good. Migrant labour system did not only put people under hazardous working conditions with little pay and no benefits at all it also placed them under unbearable living circumstances putting people’s lives and health at risk and broke families into pieces which even money if they were paid enough could not fix.
References
- Gelderblom, D. and Kok, P. 1994 Urbanization. South Africa’s Challenge. Volume 1: Dynamics. Pretoria: HSRC.
- Mabetoa, M. 1994 ‘Cycles of Disadvantage of African Families in South Africa.’ pp. 81 -97 in Sono, T. (ed.), African Family and Marriage under Stress. Pretoria: Centre for Development Analysis.
- Ramphele. M. 1993 A Bed Called Home. Life in the Migrant Labor Hostels of Cape Town. Maitland: Clyson Printers.
- Russell, M. 1995 Parenthood among Black Migrant Workers to the Western Cape. Pretoria: HSRC.
- Stahl, C.W. 1981 ‘Migrant Labor Supplies, Past, Present and Future; with Special Reference to the Goldmining Industry.’ Pp. 7-44 in Bohning, W.R. (ed.). Black Migration to South Africa. A Selection of Policy-oriented Research. Geneva: Intemationai Labor Office.
- Viijoen, S. 1994 Strengths and Weaknesses in the Family Life of Black South Africans. Pretoria: HSRC.
- Wilson, E. 1972 Migrant Labor. Johannesburg: The South Afiican Council of Churches and Sf iro-Cas.
