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A migrant worker compound is a key institution in a system such as that which regulated labour on mines in South Africa from the later nineteenth century. The tightly controlled closed compound which came to typify the phenomenon in that country originated on the diamond mines of Kimberley from about 1885 and was later replicated on the gold mines. This labour arrangement, regulating the flow of male workers from rural homes in Bantustans or Homelands to the mines and jobs in urban settings generally, became one of the major cogs in the apartheid state. The single-sex hostels that became flash points for unrest in the last years of apartheid were a later form of compound. ==Compounds at Kimberley== An earlier form of compound developed in South Africa in response to copper mining in Namaqualand in the 1850s. However, the systems of control associated with labour compounds became more organized in the context of diamond mining at what became Kimberley from the early 1870s. By 1872 more than 50 000 people had converged on the Diamond Fields. The newspaperman R.W. Murray characterized the labour market in 1873 as containing ”the oddest gathering of human things that were ever seen anywhere upon the face of the globe. We have men from every civilized country in the world, and a type of every native tribe, from the diminutive Bushman to the fine brawny, stalwart Mohow.” 〔R.W. Murray. 1873. ''Diamond Fields Keepsake''〕 Africans journeyed far to work on the mines, in some cases up to 1500 km, and established a pattern of migrant labour which would later be a major feature of the gold mines as well. “They generally come in hundreds,” reported R.W. Murray: “Few of them remain longer than is sufficient to earn enough money to buy fire-arms, gunpowder, and lead. About eight hundred trek from the Fields at every full moon, and as many come in again in their places...They seldom bring their women with them.” From 1872 migrant labour on the Diamond Fields was controlled by a pass system. Access to firearms by men returning from the mines was soon curtailed and the institution of closed compounds, designed inter alia to stem IDB (illicit diamond buying), heralded much tighter controls from 1885 onwards.〔Roberts, B. 1976. ''Kimberley, turbulent city''. Cape Town & Kimberley: David Philip & Historical Society of Kimberley and the Northern Cape.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Compound (migrant labour)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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