Modernity on Credit: The Experience of Underground Miners on the Zambian Copperbelt

Abstract

This article explores the borrowing practices of Copperbelt underground miners in the context of growing debt consumption since the privatisation of the country’s mining sector. It explores why Zambian mine workers borrow and how they use loans. It shows that growing debt consumption among mine workers is related to the labour practices of the privatised mining companies. The payments in kind that typically accompanied mining employment in the 20th Century, such as housing, children’s education, water and electricity, have been withdrawn and meeting these costs now accounts for a significant proportion of miners’ income. Employers have effectively shifted responsibility for social welfare on to their workers, who receive increasingly low wages. At the same time, mass layoffs since privatisation have placed increased pressure on miners to look after retrenched and unemployed family members, while inflation has eroded their wages. The growth of credit markets has accompanied and facilitated these transformations. For contemporary mine workers, debt consumption is an attempt to reproduce the economic, social and cultural conditions of a ‘modern life’, which mine workers on the Copperbelt have associated with urban living since the colonial period. They invest borrowed money in housing, in family education and in businesses. Given the rising cost of living and the increasingly precarious nature of mine employment, this ‘modern life’ is primarily about ‘getting by’ and securing a post-employment future. Miners realise that they cannot live without debt. As such, they employ various coping strategies to manage their indebtedness.