Abstract :
This article examines one of the pre-eminent logics of global
capital flow – the pursuit of flexible labour regimes – as a window to explore
the interaction between Chinese investments and African communities. It
analyses the respective “politics of casualization” in the Chambishi mine
on the Zambian Copperbelt and the Tanzania–China Friendship Mill in
the port city of Dar es Salaam. Both Zambian and Tanzanian workers
have witnessed and resisted precipitous “informalization” of employment
since the Chinese assumed full or majority ownership in the late 1990s.
Wildcat strikes were staged by workers in both cases. Nevertheless,
Zambian copper miners, but not Tanzanian textile workers, seem to have
successfully halted this tendency of casualization. After several years of
struggle, in 2007 they signed new collective agreements with the Chinese
management, who agreed gradually to convert all casual and contract jobs
into “permanent” pensionable ones. By explaining the divergent outcomes
of these two cases of labour resistance, I hope to identify the major factors
shaping the encounter between Chinese managers and African workers
