Former University of Fort Hare vice-chancellor Professor Sakhela Buhlungu has argued that South Africa must confront the enduring legacy of migrant labour by rebuilding rural economies, rethinking land management and decentralising economic activity.
Delivering the fourth annual Francis Wilson Memorial Lecture on 15 October, Professor Buhlungu warned that poverty, unemployment, food insecurity and the deterioration of small towns were placing growing pressure on families and communities.
Titled “Migrant labour and the crisis of social reproduction in post-apartheid South Africa: Remembering the scholarly legacy of Francis Wilson”, the lecture examined how the economic inequalities entrenched under apartheid continue to shape South Africa’s development.
Wilson, the founding director of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) and DataFirst at the University of Cape Town (UCT), was a leading economic researcher whose work exposed the poverty and hardship associated with mining and migrant labour.
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
Buhlungu, a former dean of UCT’s Faculty of Humanities, argued that democratic South Africa had not adequately addressed the structural inequalities inherited from apartheid.
“We are at a make-or-break moment,” he said. “Where things don’t gel, where things are not holding together, where the centre is not holding, with many millions of people bearing the brunt of it all.”
The legacy of migrant labour
According to Buhlungu, Wilson spent more than five decades examining the relationship between mining, labour migration and inequality. His research showed how industrial development relied on workers leaving their home communities, while families and rural economies absorbed much of the social cost.
Buhlungu highlighted how the mining industry recruited workers, often from the Eastern Cape and other rural areas, under tightly controlled conditions. Workers lived in single-sex hostels, earned low wages and remained separated from their families, who continued to live in their places of origin.
“The rest of the country was structured to enable and support the industry,” Buhlungu said, explaining how the former homelands helped sustain the labour force that powered industrial development.
Drawing on his own family history, he recalled that his father worked in the mines, leaving his wife and six children at home. He said this experience reflected the reality of countless families whose livelihoods depended on migrant earnings.
The arrangement weakened local economies by removing working-age people. At the same time, communities bore the costs of raising children and maintaining households without sharing adequately in the wealth generated by their labour.
Although democracy dismantled apartheid’s formal restrictions on movement, Buhlungu argued that the underlying economic geography remains largely unchanged.
Migration now includes professionals as well as blue-collar workers, as people leave regions with deteriorating infrastructure, governance and employment prospects for better-resourced urban centres. This concentration of opportunity places increasing pressure on housing, public services and infrastructure.
Rebuilding communities and local economies
Buhlungu expressed concern about growing nostalgia for life in the former homelands, where some people remember factories, agricultural projects and employment opportunities that once sustained communities.
He cautioned that this nostalgia should be understood against the current crisis, rather than as an endorsement of apartheid. The problem, he argued, is that democratic South Africa has not developed an adequate alternative economic model capable of sustaining livelihoods in historically marginalised regions.
The expectation that growth in major centres would eventually benefit poorer areas has proved insufficient. In parts of the Eastern Cape, factories have closed, infrastructure has deteriorated and former economic centres have lost their vitality.
Buhlungu also questioned whether provincial boundaries established in 1994 adequately support economic development, arguing that political compromises and considerations of representation had taken precedence over the economic relationships needed to sustain communities.
He called for policymakers to reconsider how regions are organised and how investment can reach areas left behind.
South Africa needs a properly funded, long-term strategy to decentralise economic activity, he said, prioritising productive industries capable of generating substantial employment rather than isolated, small-scale developments.
“The traditional system has collapsed as an allocator of land and a manager of land allocation.”
Without such intervention, the country risks entrenching a pattern of prosperous urban centres surrounded by regions with few opportunities, further intensifying migration and competition for limited resources.
Land management is another urgent concern. Buhlungu warned that informal settlements and housing developments were encroaching on land previously used for grazing and crop production. In some areas, informal networks were allocating plots and charging residents without effective oversight.
The loss of agricultural land, combined with declining farming activity, threatens rural livelihoods and food security, leaving more households dependent on social grants and other state support. In some former homeland areas, small gangs control access to land and charge people for plots, complicating efforts to use land productively and plan local development.
“The traditional system has collapsed as an allocator of land and a manager of land allocation,” he said.
He called for renewed investment in agriculture and the productive use of land, arguing that rural development, employment and food security must be addressed together.
For Buhlungu, migration is not an isolated problem but a symptom of an economic system that has failed to create sustainable livelihoods across the country. The response must address why people leave their communities, rather than focusing only on the pressures they create in receiving cities.
Remembering Wilson’s intellectual legacy
Buhlungu also reflected on Wilson’s contribution beyond his research into poverty and migrant labour. An institution-builder and advocate for social justice, Wilson chaired the University of Fort Hare Council from 1991 to 1999 and contributed to policy debates and public life.
Buhlungu praised Wilson’s commitment to evidence, historical understanding and rigorous scholarship.
“He didn’t compromise on scholarship,” he said, highlighting Wilson’s attention to detail and his ability to draw on different disciplines to understand South Africa’s social and economic realities.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
He urged researchers to revisit Wilson’s wider body of work, noting that the questions it raised remain relevant to contemporary debates about inequality, development and the responsibilities of the state.
Remembering Wilson, Buhlungu suggested, should mean more than celebrating his achievements. It should involve applying the insights of his scholarship to the challenges confronting the country today.
“If you create some form of employment in the home areas … at least you mitigate that, and you reduce that pressure for people to move.”
During the question-and-answer session, Buhlungu distinguished contemporary migration from the apartheid-era system, when workers’ movements, living arrangements and employment conditions were tightly controlled.
Today, people have greater freedom to move, but economic pressures still push them away from communities with limited employment prospects.
“If you create some form of employment in the home areas … at least you mitigate that, and you reduce that pressure for people to move,” he said.
Reflecting on his experience of the Eastern Cape, where he grew up and later returned to work, Buhlungu described the deterioration of towns, schools and public facilities as deeply troubling.
He cautioned against overlooking the infrastructure and other assets inherited from the past that could have supported renewed development, but which have since been allowed to deteriorate.
The lecture was accompanied by the Wilson Wittenberg Prize, which honours the legacies of Wilson and Martin Wittenberg and recognises excellence in data-driven research. The awards have two categories: a journal article and a dissertation chapter, with an honourable mention in each category this year.
