About half a million people still work in the mining industry in SA, and many are still migrants. The Minerals Council SA estimates that the sector’s almost 460,000 direct jobs support about 4.5 million dependants. So, where are we now? Do we celebrate the sunset of the migrant labour system?
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No one, it’s safe to say, ever took up polar exploration in search of a good time. To trudge through its annals is to confront a decidedly un-hygge variety of experiences. Just look at the titles:
Alone on the Ice.
In the Land of White Death.
The Last Place on Earth.
The Worst Journey in the World.
The Man Who Ate His Boots. It can’t have been easy to outdo these for lurid horror, but Julian Sancton may have succeeded with
Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey Into the Dark Antarctic Night. It evokes one of the most frightening hazards of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration: the isolation, confinement, and tedium of overwintering in an icebound vessel.