South Africa Back Home for the Holidays

By Christopher Ogden/Ganyesa

Under a blazing sun and cloudless sky, Vincent Olebogeng strolls past an ore bucket spray-painted MERRY XMAS 86. Though the temperature is 87 degreesF, Olebogeng considers the weather cool relief. Thirty minutes earlier, he was two miles underground, moving tons of dusty gray ore in the almost unbearable heat of Durban Deep, a gold mine at Roodeport, ten miles west of Johannesburg. He has worked nearly 300 days in the past year, but he will not work tomorrow. After the paymaster hands him a brown envelope containing his monthly wages of 270 rand ($122), Olebogeng is ready to travel more than 300 miles to celebrate Christmas with his family, whom he has not seen in nearly a year. "They will slaughter a goat to mark my return," he says with a smile.

Olebogeng, 25, is going home to Bophuthatswana, one of the tribal homelands created by South Africa in which a total of 3 million blacks have been resettled over the past 20 years. Of the 450,000 blacks who toil in South Africa's gold mines, 163,000 come from the impoverished homelands, where work is scarce and the pay pitiful. An additional 195,000 come from the neighboring countries of Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland, where jobs are equally rare. Leaving their families behind, the miners spend most of the year living in cramped dormitories and working for wages that average $50 a week. Come mid-December, tens of thousands stream out of the camps and head home for the holidays, jamming bus stations, train platforms and airports to spend a month or so with their loved ones.

Though the United Democratic Front, the country's largest antiapartheid group, has organized a boycott campaign this Christmas to protest Pretoria's state of emergency, the minersqit week were far more interested in travel than in politics. At the Booysens train station in southern Johannesburg, 1,000 workers, some still in hard hats, others stripped to the waist, waited for three hours before the third-class carriages pulled in. A few dipped bread into tins of stew, washing it down with drafts of Lion beer and Viceroy brandy. Most were sprawled alongside mountains of suitcases and possessions, including sewing machines, stereos, furniture, even motorcycles. Vendors picked through the crush, hawking overpriced watches and brightly colored blouses. Girlfriends, some with infants strapped on their backs, lingered by the train's windows for a few last words. "See you next month," said a young girl in a thin smock, her baby's head bobbing up and down.

Olebogeng, who has worked at Durban Deep for five years, has been guaranteed a sixth. "Lucky for me," he said. "I have seven sisters and brothers to help feed." Despite the long hours and backbreaking work, the jobs are highly coveted. "We've turned away hundreds of applicants," said George Venter, personnel manager at Durban Deep, which employs 11,500 at Roodeport. Other miners have not been as lucky as Olebogeng. Faced with more than 700,000 unemployed blacks at home, South Africa is slashing the influx of migrants and hiring more locals. Cutting back jobs is also Pretoria's way of exerting pressure on neighboring black states that have urged tougher economic sanctions against South Africa. Hundreds of miners from Mozambique, for example, will not return in 1987.

As he packed for the trip home, Olebogeng looked around his dorm room, an 18-ft.-sq. space, lit by a single bulb, which he shares with 19 others. A coal-burning stove provides the only heat in winter and helps dry the rows of fetid clothes that hang on string lines. The miners sleep on pads on top of grimy two-level cement-slab bunks and store their possessions in small wooden lockers. One of Olebogeng's roommates was still there, packing T shirts for his two young daughters. "I'm gone so much, I'm surprised they recognize me," said Miyo Molale. Another miner, Philip Moshigo, was even tying up a double bed and mattress for the trip home. "My family has been sleeping on the floor," he explained.

His new vinyl suitcase stuffed with clothes and stereo tapes, Olebogeng planned to take the train home on Wednesday. But pay in hand and spirits high, he went out for a final fling with a friend and wound up missing his connection. The next day, nursing a hangover, he hitched an automobile ride with a black driver. For 300 miles, he rode through the scrub veld of the western Transvaal, past parched cornfields and through conservative Afrikaner towns.

In late afternoon, Olebogeng arrived in Ganyesa, a collection of mud-brick huts about a mile from the highway. Outside one meticulously maintained house stood Selena, Olebogeng's mother. He shook her hand, kissed his sister and playfully cuffed the ears of two younger brothers. Two other brothers who also work as miners were expected at any moment. His father was still in the fields, but neighbors flocked to greet Vincent. "You don't write, and you don't send money," said his beaming mother in mock irritation. "I should be angry, but you're tired, and I'm glad you are home."

Olebogeng will stay for three months, building a fence for his parents and doing other chores; he hopes that someday they will have a few luxuries, like electricity or running water or an indoor toilet. He will also court his girlfriend Mary. "I miss her all the time, but I can't help being away," he said. "I have to work." Nervous about what to buy her for Christmas, he promised to take her to the nearest town, more than 40 miles away, and let her select a gift.

Before he did anything else, however, Olebogeng had to give his father the present that made his year in the mines bearable: his savings of 1,010 rand ($450). "Pick a goat," he said with glee, anticipating the feast to come. Meanwhile, his brother James, 13, popped a cassette into Vincent's battery- powered stereo. The sounds of the Isilingo Soul Brothers wafted over the plain. Vincent Olebogeng was home, and Durban Deep seemed very far away.