Peacebuilding and conflict prevention in Mine Areas: improving community participation in Zambia’s Copperbelt

Thesis

Social conflict in the mine communities of the Zambian Copperbelt is a growing phenomenon that characterises social relations following privatisation of the state-owned mine corporation Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) in the early 2000s. Altered economic, legal, and political relations have led to an increasingly conflictual interaction between the state (national and local), mine companies and the mine communities. The period between 2015 and 2021 saw heightened tensions that resulted, this thesis argues, from poor understanding and conceptualisations of existing mine communities in governmental and company policy and practice. Previous academic studies of social conflict on the Copperbelt relied on a largely structural framework that assumed and measured conflict largely between mine companies and labour unions, the latter problematically seen as representatives of mine communities. This was never an accurate measure of social reality and is even less helpful today in capturing the complexity of mine communities in which many residents have no direct relationship with privatised mine companies – which today have no legal relationship to residential areas they used to own.

The thesis seeks to explain how this changed context influences perceptions of social provision and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among state, company, and community actors. This is based on a theoretical approach drawing on conflict and feminist theories to explain the relational dynamics that drive social conflict in the Copperbelt mine community. The study is informed by extensive fieldwork in mine communities, and draws on data collected and analysed through combined quantitative and qualitative methods including questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and observations in the mine communities of Kitwe and Chingola towns on the Copperbelt.

The findings show that contrary to prevailing assumptions about the homogeneity of community actors, social conflict in the Copperbelt mine community is largely driven by the contested concept of ‘community’ and how this is (mis)conceptualised in state-company-community engagement. The study finds that current local government and mine company conceptualisations about existing communities are both archaic and patriarchal in nature, and perpetuate inequitable, insufficient, and ineffective representation and participation of increasingly heterogeneous mine communities. The thesis recommends that strategies for conflict prevention and peacebuilding in mine communities on the Copperbelt can be developed using conflict analysis processes that understand that, as the thesis argues, social conflict is driven in part by the concept of ‘community’ which is contested in these state-company-community engagements.

Authors: Kwaleyela, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-beqqodvbz
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: mining; Zambian copperbelt; conflict theory; feminist theory; community; conflict prevention; corporate social responsibility
• Subjects: Social responsibility of business; Mineral production and conflict in Africa; Gender in mine communities; Understanding mine communities in Zambia