Compound (migrant labour)

A migrant worker compound is a key institution in a system such as that which regulated labour on mines in South Africa from the later nineteenth century. The tightly controlled closed compound which came to typify the phenomenon in that country originated on the diamond mines of Kimberley from about 1885 and was later replicated on the gold mines. This labour arrangement, regulating the flow of male workers from rural homes in Bantustans or Homelands to the mines and jobs in urban settings generally, became one of the major cogs in the apartheid state. The single-sex hostels that became flash points for unrest in the last years of apartheid were a later form of compound.