Rural livelihoods, large-scale mining and agrarian change in Mapela, Limpopo, South Africa

This paper forms part of the growing body of scholarly research that seeks to understand the impacts of extractive activities on local and indigenous communities. The paper examines the socio-economic impacts of large-scale mining activity on rural livelihoods in four villages (Armoede, Ga-Chaba Ga-Molekana and Skeming) in the Mapela traditional authority area where Anglo Platinum’s Mogalakwena mine is operating. Of these four villages, only Armoede residents were relocated while the other three villages remain within the proximity of the mine. As a result of co-habitation and proximity to production, the three villages also highlight another important dimension of mining-induced displacement and resettlement whereby mining activities encroach on the livelihoods of surrounding villages. Rural households in the Mapela area have traditionally relied on both agricultural and non-agricultural sources of income, often straddling urban and rural locales, in highly diversified livelihood systems for both survival and accumulation purposes. The establishment of large-scale mining investments in peripheral localities may be seen as constituting part of the mediating processes between the households and the wider socio-economic context which may enhance or diminish their livelihood assets or endowments. Findings from this research reveal that mining-related land dispossessions have had adverse impacts on land-based and agrarian livelihood activities namely, homestead garden cultivation, ploughing in large fields and livestock rearing. This happens within the context of limited non-farm livelihood opportunities, especially wage employment, both locally and in the wider economy. In this sense, large-scale mining investment disrupts the local livelihood system, intensifying the crisis of social reproduction amongst local rural households and limiting their ability to accumulate, especially from agriculture. This raises critical questions about the role and place of agricultural forms of livelihood in the contemporary capitalist world where the historical role of industrial growth as a means of eradicating poverty has also become highly uncertain.