Introduction
It is easier to write about the underground; it is another thing to work there. This is what I learned during my ethnographic fieldwork working as a helper in two Zambian underground mines. Despite the fans providing cooling, the heat in the mine is unbearable. The personal protective clothing – overalls, heavy boots, a hard hat with a lamp mounted on it, an oxygen box at the waist, and a ventilator covering the face and mouth – that miners wear compounds the situation. The choking fumes from blasting and mobile equipment such as loaders and dump trucks, together with the dust, make breathing laborious. These fumes also leave a bitter taste in the mouth and blinding itchiness in the eyes, even when one wears goggles. Amid the dust, clean overalls are not needed. Therefore, we often changed into ‘underground’ overalls before commencing work, only wearing ‘surface’ (clean) overalls when knocking off.
Within the underground tunnels that serve as both drive and walkways, mobile equipment normally has the right of way. Therefore, we frequently hid in the refuge bays dotted around the walkways or risked being run over. ‘Several miners have been killed’, fellow miners frequently reminded me. In their wake, these machines produce heat and deafening noise. Despite wearing earplugs, verbal communication was impossible. We had to depend on signalling using headlamps to communicate. Further, the tremors caused by blasting create fear among miners of the possibility of the ground collapsing. Mufulira and Kitwe, the two mines where I conducted this research and both owned by Mopani Mining Company (MCM), were prone to waterlogging, and there is always a fear of flooding. In 1970 flooding led to the deaths of 89 miners in Mufulira.
However, losing jobs, especially before they fully repaid their loans – both common occurrences since privatisation – concerned the miners I worked with more than these dangers. This article examines the everyday life of miners when retrenchment and loan repayment coincide in a context in which laws empower banks to make lump sum recovery of their loans directly from workers’ retrenchment packages. The article argues that retrenchment and indebtedness occurring at the same time represents a hard-hitting and at times painful double tragedy for workers, who see their retrenchment package directed to the banks to pay off their loans. This creates prolonged periods of unemployment, uncertainty, poverty and stifled dreams and aspirations. The wave of privatisation that swept across mineral-rich global South countries from the 1990s onwards has motivated growing scholarly interest in the new mine owners, the global mining companies, and their impact on the welfare of workers and communities in which they operate. Some of these studies reveal the rise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. These are voluntary and non-binding social welfare programmes, as opposed to the social welfare programmes previously provided which allowed workers to negotiate through their unions (Campbell 2004; Rajak 2011, 2012). Others examine how these companies isolate themselves by creating enclaves within these communities (Ferguson 2006; Appel 2012). Still others focus on the growing role of chiefs and local elites in these labour markets who seek to maximise the benefits from CSR, including job opportunities for their subjects (Negi 2010; Kapesea and McNamara 2020). Yet other studies focus on resistance by mining communities to these companies and how they attempt to avoid their responsibilities, especially for the environmental consequences of mining operations (Bebbington and Bury 2013).
Scholars focusing on workers emphasise their experience of subcontracting (Kenny 1999; Benya 2015b; Lee 2018), safety and responsibility (Rolston 2010; Phakathi 2017; Kesküla 2018), and the power of trade unions (Bezuidenhout 2000; Pitcher 2007; Botiveau 2017; McNamara 2021, 2023; McNamara and Geenen 2022). With the entrance of women into mining, some studies focus on gender (Benya 2009, 2016; Smith 2009, Macintyre 2011, Rolston 2014, Lahiri-Dutt 2015) and the continued importance of women’s social reproductive labour to sustain mining capitalism (Benya 2015a). However, with the notable exceptions of Deborah James and Dinah Rajak (2014), Benjamin Rubbers (2017) and Patience Mususa (2021), little attention has been paid to workers’ experience of debt and retrenchment. As these studies show, these changes result in significant uncertainty and in many cases poverty and vulnerability This article builds on these studies to highlight the everyday lives of miners and their families when loans and retrenchment coincide.
The Copperbelt provides an important site to study these experiences. The privatisation of the mines in 2000 signalled the end of a paternalistic labour regime that offered competitive wages and a range of cradle-to-grave social benefits to workers and their families (Fraser and Lungu 2007; Mususa 2021). Today, the state holds minority shares in the mines of between 15% and 20%. The major players include Vedanta (headquartered in India), Barrick Gold (Canada), First Quantum Minerals (Canada) and Delta Mining Limited, a subsidiary of International Resources Holding of the United Arab Emirates which now operates MCM, a company formerly owned by Glencore. These companies implemented a labour regime that pays low wages and minimises workers’ social welfare benefits while encouraging workers to obtain loans, and introduced labour retrenchment (and subcontracting) as a strategy for managing labour costs in the context of fluctuating commodity prices (Fraser and Lungu 2007; Lee 2017, 2018; Mususa 2021; Musonda 2021a, 2021b). This labour regime leaves workers with no option but to borrow and see their retrenchment package directed to the banks to pay off their loans (Musonda 2021a, 2021b, 2023). This is because Zambian law allows banks to deduct outstanding loans directly from the retrenched worker’s bank account.
The article draws upon ethnographic field research I conducted in two mining townships/towns, Wusakile (in Kitwe) and Kankoyo (in Mufulira), and in their mines, between 2016 and 2019. Apart from socialising with my respondents in their homes and community, I also worked in the mine as a helper with various teams. I took part in activities ranging from drawing drill holes, drilling, insertion of explosives, blasting and watering down of the dust, to installation of supports necessary to prevent roofs collapsing after blasting. I conducted 150 formal interviews and countless informal conversations with miners, union leaders and company managers, as well as reviewing company and union data. I also conducted a simple survey involving miners. The article uses pseudonyms to protect respondents’ anonymity. This ethnographic approach aimed to provide an in-depth description of mineworkers’ everyday lives in the workplace, at home, and in other social spaces. My position was that of an ‘insider’, given my rootedness in the community in which I conducted this research, having been born and bred on the Copperbelt and having worked in the mines as a nurse and trade unionist.
The article develops the concept of ‘financialised precarity’. It builds upon studies that locate the expansion of credit within the broader process of financialisation of the global political economy that allows global financial capital to profit through financial means rather than through trade or commodity production. This process involves offering an ever-wider range of financial products to an ever-growing number of potential customers, including poor people, and advertising these products as the best means of gaining access to a modern lifestyle (Krippner 2005; Ross 2014). It builds upon studies on precarity – the changing conditions for workers globally (Hann and Parry 2018; Han 2018). The concept helps to examine the reality of life in a situation that forces workers to use loans to compensate for or supplement their low wages, while securing the loans and profits for global financial capital at the expense of workers.
The first section of the article provides the background, which is followed by subsequent sections discussing the experience of retrenchment and indebtedness. The penultimate section, before the conclusion, highlights the reality of life when retrenchment and debt repayment coincide.
From paternalism to precarity and indebtedness
Historically, Zambian mineworkers and their families experienced ‘paternalism’ – the provision of various social benefits, such as housing, water, electricity and healthcare in mine compounds (Rubbers and Lochery 2021). The competition for African labour from the mines in Congo, which offered higher wages and better conditions of service at the start of large-scale mining in Zambia in the 1920s, significantly shaped the labour regime in the mines in Zambia. It forced the two foreign multinational companies, Rhodesian Selection Trust and Rhodesian Anglo-American Corporation Zambia, to offer competitive wages (Guene 2017) and social benefits, including housing, recreation and healthcare (Henderson 1972; Parpart 1983; Rubbers and Lochery 2021). The African workers’ strikes in the mid 1930s and early 1940s, and the establishment of the African Mineworkers’ Union, led to further increases in African workers’ social infrastructure (Parpart 1986a, 1986b, 1987).
Zambia’s independence, and the nationalisation of the Nchanga and Nkana mines in the 1960s, saw a further expansion of social benefits. However, the aftermath of the merging of Nchanga and Nkana to form Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) in 1982 represents the apex of this social welfare expansion. This is because workers benefited from a generous paternalistic regime in the form of free housing, children’s education, water and electricity, diapers for newly born children and covering burial costs (Fraser and Lungu 2007; Fraser 2010). This state paternalism rested on the provision of stable long-term employment. By the early 1970s, about 60,000 employees worked in the mines on permanent conditions of employment, with pensions and insurance provision in case of injury or death (Fraser and Lungu 2007). During its peak from 1976 to 1991, employment in the mines declined by only 9% – a figure that includes retirements, deaths and terminations on medical grounds (Musonda 2021b). Labour subcontracting was limited to fewer than 10% of the ZCCM workforce, mainly in drilling, exploration and expansion (Musonda 2021b). The Zambian government maintained these conditions through external borrowing amid a sustained collapse of the Zambian economy from the mid 1970s to the 2000s owing to the global fall of copper prices (Ferguson 1999).
As Zambia’s external debt became unpayable in the 1990s, sustained pressure from international financial institutions forced the Zambian government to dismantle and privatise ZCCM (Craig 2000; Kaunda 2002). These investors successfully negotiated generous incentives, including tax holidays and allowing them to carry forward losses incurred in one financial year into the next and to move profits out of the country (Fraser and Lungu 2007; Adam and Simpasa 2010; Fraser and Larmer 2010). In addition, the government weakened laws, enabling these companies to offer low wages, easily retrench workers, adopt subcontracting and weaken trade unions (Fraser 2010; Mulenga 2011; Uzar 2017).
Mining companies have implemented wage increases, in the case of MCM, from 284 Zambian kwacha (ZMK) in 2000 to 3,776 ZMK in 2017 for the lowest-paid worker (Musonda 2021a). However, these wages consistently lagged behind increases in the cost of living for a family of five during the same period, which rose from 272 ZMK to 4,325 ZMK. In 2018, my analysis of these wages revealed that 60% of the direct employees at MCM received wages below the cost of the average basic food basket. In 2021, the highest-paid direct employee in one of the largest mines received just above 7,700 ZMK a month and the lowest-paid direct employee received 3,900 ZMK (HR interview in August 2021). Meanwhile, the cost of living for a family of five in 2021 stood at above 6,000 ZMK, excluding other costs such as transport, uniforms and fuel (JCTR 2021). This has coincided with the withdrawal of social benefits, especially housing, water and electricity, and children’s education.
In terms of retrenchments, between 1991 and 2015, direct employment in the mines declined by about 60% (Zambia EITI 2017). As one HR manager at MCM said, ‘It does not make economic sense to keep workers in employment when the production costs exceed the profits. We have to retrench when copper prices fall.’ The problem, however, is that when copper prices rise, these companies rehire retrenched workers indirectly via subcontracting companies on poorer conditions to do the same work as they previously did. Therefore, the number of subcontracted employees rose from 10% in 1997 to over 60% (Zambia EITI 2017; ZCCM 1997). At MCM, for example, in 2018, contract workers accounted for over 70% of the workforce. In times of retrenchments, this section of the workforce is the most vulnerable because they lack unionisation and employment security.
One impact of retrenchment is that it leaves the currently employed mineworkers with more responsibilities of looking after their retrenched family members. In a random survey I conducted of 100 mineworkers in 2018, about two-thirds of the respondents were supporting no fewer than three extended family members directly or indirectly, in terms of food, housing, education, clothing, health and burial costs. The reason for this is that most workers suffer retrenchment before retirement. On top of that, the majority were born and bred on the Copperbelt and have never visited the villages from where their parents originated. Unlike miners in the past, for these workers, going to the village is not an option. This increases the pressure on them to buy or build homes to ensure their social security. However, their low wages make this dream impossible without loans.
Encouraged by their employers, who facilitate access to loans by assuring banks of loan security via direct deductions from the workers’ payroll, the number of workers seeking loans has increased. At Mopani, for instance, the percentage of mineworkers taking out bank loans increased from zero in 2000 to about 80% of general payroll staff and over 60% of senior employees by 2017 (Musonda 2021a). Loan deductions accounted for 37% of the total gross pay for the 6,000 employees whose salaries were paid directly into bank accounts. However, these loans barely improve workers’ financial positions because they do not qualify for larger loans that would enable them to buy or build a house without subsequent loans. In addition, banks have the power to increase interest rates in line with market volatility, and to have the loans paid off by redundancy or retrenchment payments where the borrower loses their job. This illustrates both the miners’ overdependence on loans and their vulnerability at the hands of both employer and banks, a point to which I now turn.
The experience of retrenchment
Christopher, a 40-year-old underground miner, husband and father of three, explained during an interview in Kitwe in March 2018: ‘When you knock off from work and go home to sleep, you are not sure about having a job tomorrow. When you report for work the next day, you are not sure about having the job the day after.’ Christopher joined ZCCM in 1998. In 2000, he was retrenched, reemployed in 2005, retrenched in 2009, rehired in 2011 and finally retrenched in 2015. Christopher’s case represents the realities for thousands of mineworkers in Zambia today.
Besides uncertainty, retrenchments, as already noted, increase workers’ economic burdens by caring for the retrenched family members. While such care practices have a long history among mineworkers in Zambia, the economic context has reconfigured them in new ways. In the past, it was the fear of rejection by their family in rural areas after retirement that led miners to send remittances to the village (Ferguson 1999). Today, it is the need to receive care from family, neighbours and colleagues in urban areas when one is retrenched that matters more than care offered by rural kin (Haynes 2017; Kapesea and McNamara 2020; McNamara 2021). It is also crucial to economically empower one’s family, that is, wife and children, or risk being neglected upon retrenchment.
In addition, retrenchments have disrupted the rhythm of working life, previously characterised by long-term, stable and pensionable employment from start up to retirement to their rural homes (Ferguson 1999). Today, miners do not expect to reach their retirement age. Their careers revolve around four types of employment: direct, contract and informal employment or self-employment, interspersed with periods of unemployment. Danny, an underground miner, husband and father of three, is a good example. Retrenched in 2015 with a 250,000 ZMK retrenchment package, Danny bought a car and a 10-acre farm on the outskirts of Ndola to start cultivating soybeans and undertaking pig and fish farming, with an overwhelming demand for soybeans, fish and pork at the time. ‘Farmers were cashing in big time. With this money I did not need a mine job’, he boasted to me then. However, due to drought in 2015/16 he only realised 10% (or 20,000 ZMK) of his total investment in soybeans. In addition, he lost many of his chickens and goats due to disease and theft. In 2016, Danny returned to Kitwe to operate his car as a taxi. But the little income the car generated failed to support his family’s basic needs or allow him to repair the car when it developed a fault in 2017. Luckily, the same year, he got a job as a subcontracted worker in a mine, but at only one-third of his previous salary at MCM. Danny could find a job after every retrenchment because he was skilled. Most unskilled workers left the mines for good, to begin a life of poverty. In short, mineworkers today on the Copperbelt no longer have stable careers; they have precarious (syncopated) careers, with many interruptions and bifurcations. Pierre Bourdieu’s observation that job insecurity today affects everybody and gives the sense that all workers ‘are in no way irreplaceable and that their work, their jobs, are in some way a privilege, a fragile, threatened privilege’ (Bourdieu 1977, 82), can be applied to Zambian mineworkers’ experience of retrenchments.
Further, retrenchments have forced workers to accept low wages offered by mining companies through subcontracting (Lee 2018) by creating a labour surplus. For example, Mutale, Chisanga, Mulenga and Mwamba were hired on the same day in 2005 at MCM with the same salary and conditions. By 2018, due to retrenchments, only Mutale remained at MCM. Chisanga now worked for a Peruvian subcontractor, Mulenga for a South African, and Mwamba for a Zambian. Mutale received a net salary of 7,662 ZMK; Chisanga 5,100 ZMK and Mulenga 3,800 ZMK. Conditions of service also differed significantly alongside these variations in wages.
Notwithstanding their negative impacts, retrenchments also enabled a very few miners to look for opportunities elsewhere. For example, following his retrenchment in 2015 Mwanza, a laboratory technician, used his retrenchment package to establish a company that now supplies MCM with chemicals used in the separation of ores. In addition, some miners can return to their previous jobs, start a business, rejoin the mines as contractors, or leave the mines for good – whether as vulnerable workers in the case of unskilled workers, or due to changing their careers for skilled workers.
The experience of loans
Mineworkers’ experiences of loans can be located in a mining-finance complex, a situation whereby the low wages offered by mining companies enables their entrapment into the banking system, from which they cannot be divorced. The case of Changala, a 45-year-old underground miner, husband and father of three, illustrates this complex. Changala’s December 2014 pay slip shows the following monthly income and expenditure ( Table 1 ).
Changala’s December 2014 pay slip.
| Item | Amount in ZMK |
|---|---|
| Gross pay plus 30% housing allowance | 6,500 |
| Less: income tax | 1,175 |
| Less: pension | 325 |
| Less: Stanbic Bank loan deduction | 2,800 |
| Less: child’s fees for MCM school | 650 |
| Balance | 1,550 |
As we can see from above, after all the deductions Changala was left with only 1,550 ZMK a month, compared to the cost of living of over 8,000 ZMK for a family of five. Also note that the loan represents the biggest expense. How did Changala land in this situation? In 2013 he received 5,000 ZMK as net salary, against total household expenses of 6,500 ZMK. Every month he had to borrow at least 2,000 ZMK from local money lenders, which accumulated to 60,000 ZMK. In 2014, Changala obtained 180,000 ZMK from Stanbic Bank to pay off his local debts. He then used the remaining 120,000 ZMK to buy a plot and start building a family house. He also used some of this money to send his eldest daughter to university. After spending the loan, his house had only reached the foundation. Changala survived by borrowing, sending him back to further borrowing. In mid 2016, Changala sold his unfinished house to repay his debt. In 2018, he got another loan from the bank, starting the debt circle all over again. Changala’s case illustrates how low wages subject miners to debt entrapment.
Like many other miners, Changala’s entrapment also rested on the fact that because of the low wages, he could not qualify for loans to enable him to complete projects, such as building a house, without subsequent loans. For example, in 2015, Chewe, a plant fitter, applied for a 350,000 ZMK loan to buy a house in Kitwe, but he only qualified for 160,000 ZMK. He ended up buying a plot and by the time he managed to build the foundations, the money was finished. In 2017, he got a refinancing loan of 60,000 ZMK and built up to the window level while extending the loan for a further four years. To complete the house, he got another 100,000 ZMK from Bayport Bank at an annual interest rate of 40%. Due to these loans, in 2021 his net salary had reduced to 900 ZMK against the estimated cost of living of over 8,000 ZMK for a family of five (JCTR 2021). This shows how bank requirements force debtors to prioritise their financial obligations over other concerns, to assume the consequences of their debt contracts, and to take care of themselves as they navigate economic hardship (Lazzarato 2012).
The often unsuccessful outcomes of their investments reinforce this entrapment. Investments in one’s children’s education are widely considered an important source of social security. Yet, this research found that using loans to support such investments comes with significant risks. It takes a long time before the children can find a job and begin contributing to the household’s income. Also, such education can be interrupted when the parent is suddenly retrenched. Equally, market forces can hinder such investments. When Chomba, a mine captain, got a 160,000 ZMK loan in 2014, he sent his child to a medical school in China. In 2017, however, with the depreciating value of the kwacha against major currencies, Chomba could no longer manage the expenses for these studies and his child was called back home. Besides the cost of education, graduates face difficulties in finding a job, which is often contingent upon having connections or using corrupt practices.
However, the banks focus more on profits than the workers’ hardships. For example, in the context of the 2015 global recession, the Bank of Zambia increased the policy rate from 12.5% to 15.5% to protect the country’s economy (Bank of Zambia 2015). Accordingly, Stanbic Bank raised interest rates for its borrowers from 15% to 40% and directed MCM to adjust mineworkers’ monthly payments accordingly. When MCM refused to increase the workers’ monthly loan repayments, Stanbic maintained its increased 40% rate by extending the repayment tenure. This extension made the loans more expensive and disrupted miners’ existing plans, a point made by Musonda (2023). For example, Jacob, an underground miner, got a 160,000 ZMK loan to build his own house in 2012. However, like many other miners this loan was exhausted before the house was completed. He hoped to finish the project with another loan once he had fully repaid the existing loan. With two years remaining on his loan, and with a reduced net pay of 1,000 ZMK after loan repayments, Jacob assured himself that his suffering ‘would be over soon’.
The extension of the loan period diminished his hopes. To make it from one month to the next, Jacob resorted to more local borrowing. However, this debt eventually became unsustainable. With no chance of getting a new loan to complete his house, in 2015 Jacob sold the unfinished house to repay the debt he owed local money lenders. When his wife died in 2015, he even borrowed more money from the same local lenders. In December 2015, Jacob committed suicide.
Jacob’s case shows how a bank’s power to unilaterally transfer market risks onto borrowers compounds their economic vulnerability. This strategy renders individual subjects responsible by shifting the responsibility for social risks such as illness, unemployment and poverty into the domain for which the individual is responsible and transforming it into a problem of ‘self-care’ (Lemke 2001). Mineworkers are behind the profits generated by the banks and the employers, yet when global prices fall banks sacrifice miners through high interest rates and retrenchments. This transfer of market risks also highlights the powerlessness of the state to protect workers against capitalist exploitation. Instead of challenging the mining companies or the banks, the government offered housing or farm plots to miners to cushion the impact of the loan recovery on workers. The union also negotiated an ex gratia payment of 18,000 ZMK from MCM which was given to all retrenched miners, paid not through bank accounts, but through the Post Office to insulate the money from the banks’ reach.
These case studies illustrate, first, how miners use loans hoping to compensate for their low wages and reduced social welfare; second, that given their low wages, they do not qualify for bigger loans to enable the completion of their projects, especially building a house, and so take out subsequent loans; and third, when they get the loans, repayments erode their already low wages, forcing them into further debt. The case studies further show that in a political economy characterised by precarious employment, low wages and rising inflation, investments in housing, businesses and education – long considered wise investments by most miners – carry many risks. Hence, workers who take on loans to invest in these projects often fail, take on more loans and fall into the trap of indebtedness. In most cases, loans simply do not enable them to fulfil their aspirations and, in doing so, to reproduce the ‘modern’ lifestyle associated with employment in the Copperbelt mines since the colonial period (Mitchell 1956). Certainly, a few miners invested their loans fruitfully. However, whether they invest their loans wisely or otherwise, in general these loans barely improve their financial position.
When loans and retrenchment coincide: the double tragedy
As already mentioned, in Zambia loan conditions allow banks to deduct their loan repayments as a lump sum from the terminal benefits of retrenched workers. I learned this at my expense. In 2008, I got a 40,000 ZMK loan from Barclays Bank, to repay at a cost of 75,000 ZMK in four years. Like most miners trying to diversify their incomes, I invested the loan in a bar business and money lending. However, these businesses collapsed following the retrenchment by the mines in late 2008 of most of my customers, who stopped coming to the bar, and those who owed me money failed to repay it. I tried to obtain more loans from private lenders at 50% interest repayable within 30 days to keep the bar alive and to attract new customers. This also failed and the loans and interest kept accumulating. Since I was operating in a rented bar, I struggled to pay the rent until I eventually closed the bar and offered the fridges, television, furniture, bottles and crates to the landlord as payment for the outstanding rent. My efforts to hide from moneylenders also failed. In May 2009, I received a retrenchment letter from MCM. At the time, I had an outstanding loan with Barclays Bank of 50,000 ZMK. Having repaid part of the loan for over 12 months, I assured myself of retaining some cash in case the bank recovered its loan from the retrenchment package.
Within four days, we got the news that MCM had deposited the retrenchment packages in our bank accounts. When I arrived at the bank, I went straight to the cash machine. I could see that MCM had deposited 50,000 ZMK. However, the bank had blocked access for withdrawals. When I went inside the bank, a bank official told me that the bank had recovered the entire retrenchment package as a loan and that I still had an outstanding amount due of 6,000 ZMK. I went home frustrated. It took me over two weeks before I could explain this to the family. Worse still, a local money lender with whom I had another loan came to demand payment, only agreeing to leave with our furniture, television and stove. I was without a job for nine months, surviving through the support of my wife and family. To be sure, I have vowed never to get a loan again in my life.
This double tragedy is not isolated. According to an interview with the Ex-Miners Association of Zambia in September 2016, in 2015 over 85% of the 10,000 retrenched miners lost their terminal benefits to bank loan recoveries. However, not all these miners were as lucky as I was when this happened to me. During an interview in October 2018 in Mufulira, Rodrick, a plant fitter, told me that:
When I got the retrenchment letter I felt like the heavens and the earth had closed up on me. I was hopeless. My five children were still young. Mining is the only job I know. And the bank has got my entire retrenchment package. Where will I go? Where will I get the money to provide for my family?
Two months later Rodrick and his family were evicted from their house for non-payment of rent. His wife and children initially went to live at his wife’s family home, until his friend offered him an unfinished and unelectrified house as caretaker.
My problem was not just paying rent, but also buying food. We started eating only one meal per day. Our life changed completely – no electricity, no running water, and in a house with blocks as windows and without a polished floor. My youngest child was always crying and asking me why we had left our beautiful house. All my children dropped out of school. I could not pay fees, and buy books, shoes and uniforms. This badly affected my wife. When she went to the hospital she was diagnosed with hypertension. She later developed a stroke and died. (Interview with Rodrick in December 2018)
It took Rodrick three years before he found a job as a contractor in the mines, earning one-third of his previous salary. ‘This is frustrating, but it is either this poorly paid job or death for me and my family’, he explained. Rodrick’s case shows how the coincidence of retrenchment and loan repayments leads miners into extreme uncertainty, poverty, and vulnerability to precarious employment.
This double tragedy can also lead to suicide. This is what happened to Kasanda, a 50-year-old underground miner, husband and father. Kasanda complained that ‘after my retrenchment the bank got my entire loan and even claimed that I owed them 7,000 ZMK. For five years, I failed to find a job.’ In 2018, he sold his unfinished house to repay loans, rent a new house and resolve some problems. In 2021, Kasanda committed suicide and left a note saying, ‘the bank killed me. After losing my job, the bank should have allowed me to get my benefits. I died because the bank did not care and the mines did not care’ (Interview with Kasanda’s daughter in November 2021). Kasanda’s case underscores the emotional experiences of many miners who lost their jobs and incomes due to loan recovery by banks and who had no assets to fall back on. As Parry (2012) argues, the propensity to commit suicide arises from the difficulty of living up to the demands and meeting the expectations that membership in this upwardly mobile stratum imposes. Certainly, Zambian miners are generally not upwardly mobile due to various factors. However, the fact that they can obtain loans and invest in houses, children’s education or businesses fits into Parry’s observation. If they invest successfully, they can face life with optimism, but less so when they invest unsuccessfully, especially when they lose their jobs before fully repaying their loans. In this case, while salaries serve as collateral, they also make earners vulnerable to lenders’ exploitative practices (James 2019), a situation made worse in Zambia by the persistent retrenchments suffered by miners.
The double tragedy also leads to marriage breakdowns. Recent studies show that amid widespread job losses affecting male workers, husbands have abandoned their gender stereotypes and become more cooperative with their wives or risk abandonment by their wives when they lose jobs (Evans 2016a, 2016b; Musonda 2022). However, in some cases losing both a job and benefits seems to recall Copperbelt marriages historically defined by conflict (Ferguson 1999). For example, the wife of Bwalya, a 40-year-old father and underground miner, refused to accept living a life of poverty following his retrenchment and loss of benefits. According to Bwalya, his wife was ‘against me getting the loan in the first place and against my investment of the loan in precious stones’, a business that fraudsters promised him would multiply his 200,000 ZMK fivefold. ‘When the fraudsters left with the money my wife celebrated and blamed me for all the problems’, he said. When Bwalya got his retrenchment letter and lost his benefits his wife left: ‘She said I have to take responsibility and that she was not going to suffer for the problems recklessly created.’ When I interviewed Bwalya in February 2019, he told me that his wife was married to another man. Meanwhile Bwalya was still looking for a job. Similarly, some wives saw their husband’s double tragedy as an opportunity for revenge. For example, Janet, a 35-year-old nurse and mother of three, divorced her husband, arguing that ‘when he was working, he was spending money on prostitutes without supporting us.’ When the double tragedy struck, she explained, ‘I told him to go to those prostitutes to look after him’.
Moreover, this double tragedy recalls old gender stereotypes that undermined girls’ life chances. During the 1950s most families on the Copperbelt prioritised marrying off their daughters over educating them (Epstein 1958). Recent studies show that due to various factors, including gender equality campaigns, families are encouraging and even supporting their daughters to be educated (Evans 2014a). This has led to improvements in the status of women in society more generally (Musonda 2020, 2022; Evans 2014b). The double tragedy affecting miners undermines these gains in gender transformation. For example, when Joseph lost his job and benefits in 2015, he struggled to find a job for more than five years and was unsuccessful in building a business. His daughter eloped with a young man in the neighbourhood when she became pregnant. ‘I wanted to stop this marriage and to make her abort the pregnancy. But my daughter refused. She said, “if you cannot send me to school let me just get married”’ (Interview with Joseph in April 2019).
Moreover, the double tragedy can undermine the caring practices built around social networks of support that have developed on the Copperbelt in the context of growing precarity (Haynes 2017; McNamara 2021). As Mulusa, a retrenched machine operator, complained:
Ever since I lost my job all my family and friends stopped visiting and accepting my calls, to avoid my frequent requests for help. I used to receive at least 20 calls per day. When I lost my job no one was calling me. (Interview with Mulusa in June 2019)
Even intimate relations can be tenuous. For example, Mambwe, an underground miner, complained that:
when I lost my job and money, my wife left me, saying she cannot be feeding a man. When I inquired, for example, about her late coming she would say, ‘I went to men to look for money to feed you’. (Interview with Mambwe in May 2020)
Similarly, Kamba, a mechanic, was rejected and denied any support from his nephew because of previously refusing to support his nephew (Interview with Kamba in December 2016). Retrenched from work, deprived of benefits and rejected by family and friends, workers like Kamba experienced in ‘a habitus of repeated experience of uncertainty’ which made planning impossible (Johnson-Hanks 2005, 367). Kamba was still unemployed when I met him in 2018.
I have not seen my children in a long time now. I don’t want to visit them because my former wife’s husband would think I am trying to reconcile with her. Therefore, I am just alone. I live by the day. I plan as the day comes. (Interview with Kamba in October 2018)
Put simply, Copperbelt miners are very vulnerable to retrenchment in several respects. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, several miners lost their jobs (Musonda 2024b). Similarly, in 2017, when the electricity company increased its tariffs miners lost their jobs, as MCM used labour retrenchment to prevent the increase (Musonda 2024a).
These case studies show how the double tragedy resulted in enormous suffering and undermined improvements in marital life and gender roles on the Copperbelt. This finding is significant given that little attention has been given as to how people experience life when retrenchment and loan repayments collide. In the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rubbers (2017) argues that the experience of uncertainty depended on the various material, social and cultural resources that people drew on in times of crisis (for example, a house, land to cultivate, or relatives), and the skills and connections to enable them to find a job or business. This research found that these material, social and cultural resources can also be risky. A house, for instance, is important to provide shelter. But an incomplete house is useless as the owner continues to rent, as was the case with most retrenched miners in 2015. For as long as friends and colleagues are willing to help in mitigating retrenchments (Haynes 2017; McNamara 2021; Lochery, McNamara and Musonda 2024), the retrenched miners’ lives are financially sustainable in the long term.
Conclusion
This article explores how Zambian mineworkers and their families experience life when the now widespread retrenchment coincides with loan repayments. It shows how, in the Zambian context, mining capital’s appetite for profit has combined with that of finance capital to create significant uncertainty and vulnerability for workers. Amid declining wages and persistent job losses, miners obtain loans to compensate for their low wages, to make ends meet from one payday to the next, and to secure their future following their pending retrenchment. However, loan repayments often leave miners’ families with nothing to live on. When they try to obtain loans to invest in their future, for example to build a house, they only qualify for loans that are too small to allow them to complete the house without taking on further loans and extending their repayment period. This exposes them to further economic vulnerability as the loans are subject to variable interest rates and banks are legally permitted to deduct loan repayments directly from the retrenched employee’s pay, sending these workers into unemployment with nothing to live on.
This article breaks with the mining scholarship that tends to focus on the rise of CSR practices or on how mining companies isolate themselves from the communities in which they operate. Broadly, it shows that the changes brought by the global mining companies go beyond workers’ experience of subcontracting, the impact on organised labour or indeed on gender relations. In bringing together the combined experience of retrenchment and loans, the article shows that the new labour regimes and financial capital sustain their profits through workers’ uncertainty and economic vulnerability. The concept of financialised precarity not only contributes to current theorisations of financialisation but also brings a new theoretical tool for broadening our understanding of the functioning of capitalism and how it survives on worker exploitation.