Duncan Money@mininghistory

Consulting historian and researcher. I write about mining, migration and Southern Africa. More info here: duncan.money Email: duncanmoneyhistory@pm.me

 Kampala, Uganda
duncan.money
Joined February 2015
1,235 Photos and videos
Two years later, these men became employees of Anglo American, when Ford divested from South Africa and sold a majority stake to the mining company.
History ZAR
@HistorySAZAR
Oct 29
Black workers at a Ford plant, c. 1985. Credit: William F. Campbell/Getty
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Duncan Money retweeted
zerobeta
@zerobeta
Oct 28
GH HILL
@GHHILL1911
Oct 27
Morton salt is mined 2,000 feet below Lake Erie. And now the lake is leaking into the mine. The mine was evacuated, with no injuries. Do not expect the mine to reopen anytime soon. Or ever.
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Duncan Money retweeted
John Aerni-Flessner@LesothoJohn
Oct 28
The #Fraser's company was home-based in #Wepener, Free State. But it started as a series of stores in #Lesotho. It operated large operations like this on the #Witwatersrand catering to #miners and also had a very big stores in Wepener itself
Moshe
@Moshe_Meso
Oct 28
Can’t believe they use make adverts in Fanakalo 🥲🥲
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Recent-ish article on Chinese miners in South Africa's gold industry in the 1900s and how this was covered in China. Literature on this topic usually sees it as part of South African history (or migration history) but it was part of Chinese history too: jstor.org/stable/48810926

“New Slavery” vs. Huagong: Chinese Indentured Labor in South Africa in the Chinese Press, 1903–1905...

T. Tu Huynh, “New Slavery” vs. Huagong: Chinese Indentured Labor in South Africa in the Chinese Press, 1903–1905, Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1/2, 2025, Special...

jstor.org
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Good argument on the significance for China: “Chinese journalists… reporting on the exploitation of Chinese laborers in South Africa helped the Chinese public draw parallels to the inequalities embedded in their own society”
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T. Tu Huynh argues that these criticisms encouraged that ideological elements that led to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911.
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Every once in awhile you come across something that’s sooo apartheid you reminded of the absurdity of the system.
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Duncan Money retweeted
Ewan Gibbs@ewangibbs
Oct 27
It's publication day! An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class is published today, 27 October 2026, by @VersoBooks. My book is a new history how Britain's formerly powerful working class was pushed to the political margins. Order🔽 versobooks.com/en-gb/product…
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As part of International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (18–24 October), @EAfricaZambia launched UNDENIABLE: Anglo American’s Role in the Kabwe Sacrifice Zone. Get involved: actsa.org/justice-for-the-mi… #JusticeForKabwe
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Duncan Money retweeted
Tommy Miles@tommymiles
Oct 26
“Africa's problem has not been its failure to learn but its learning too well” —“Our Continent, Our Future” (1998), p.37. “Read more Mkandawire” is always good advice. Full text: idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.or…
Oliver Kim
@oliverwkim
Oct 25
Mkandawire and Soludo pulling no punches re: technical assistance in Africa
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Duncan Money retweeted
Chilumba K. Bwalya
@ChilumbaKBwalya
Oct 26
I thought I knew….. but really not… wow… thanks to @mininghistory for the history.
Duncan Money@mininghistory
Oct 26
Anglo American bought Zambia's main brewery in 1994, six years before they bought any mines. A good example of how Anglo was only loosely speaking a mining company in the 1990s.
Page of type-written text. Text reads: "2. AGENDA Privatization of Zambia Breweries Transfer of contract of employees. PREAMBLE: The meeting was called by the Anglo American Corporation to brief the ZCTU on the situation regarding Privatization of the Lusaka Division and the need to transfer employees and their contracts to the new owner - Anglo American Corporation and Indol of South African Breweries."

ALT Page of type-written text. Text reads: "2. AGENDA Privatization of Zambia Breweries Transfer of contract of employees. PREAMBLE: The meeting was called by the Anglo American Corporation to brief the ZCTU on the situation regarding Privatization of the Lusaka Division and the need to transfer employees and their contracts to the new owner - Anglo American Corporation and Indol of South African Breweries."
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Anglo American bought Zambia's main brewery in 1994, six years before they bought any mines. A good example of how Anglo was only loosely speaking a mining company in the 1990s.
Page of type-written text. Text reads: "2. AGENDA Privatization of Zambia Breweries Transfer of contract of employees. PREAMBLE: The meeting was called by the Anglo American Corporation to brief the ZCTU on the situation regarding Privatization of the Lusaka Division and the need to transfer employees and their contracts to the new owner - Anglo American Corporation and Indol of South African Breweries."

ALT Page of type-written text. Text reads: "2. AGENDA Privatization of Zambia Breweries Transfer of contract of employees. PREAMBLE: The meeting was called by the Anglo American Corporation to brief the ZCTU on the situation regarding Privatization of the Lusaka Division and the need to transfer employees and their contracts to the new owner - Anglo American Corporation and Indol of South African Breweries."

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Anglo American's Managing Director Anderson Masoka - here explaining how Anglo were going to run the brewery - later established the United Party for National Development.
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Digitisation of the historical archive of the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions passed 200,000 pages this week and our project will soon be complete. This collection should be available to researchers in 2027.
An office workspace setup with an overhead document scanner, laptop, desk fan, and cabinets filled with file binders.

ALT An office workspace setup with an overhead document scanner, laptop, desk fan, and cabinets filled with file binders.

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Some of the remaining documents have badly deteriorated though. Documents that are only 30-40 years old are often almost illegible.
A hand pulls a blue binder filled with heavily worn, frayed, and aged paper documents out of a cardboard storage box.

ALT A hand pulls a blue binder filled with heavily worn, frayed, and aged paper documents out of a cardboard storage box.

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Duncan Money retweeted
Tommy Miles@tommymiles
Oct 22
This sounds like a fascinating biography, appropriately from not only a journalist who’d followed Mugabe for decades, but a Zimbabwean journalist raised in the same community & culture as his subject. Robert Mugabe: The Black Victorian x Percy Zvomuya hararereview.com/2026/10/22/…

Robert Mugabe: The Black Victorian x Percy Zvomuya

356 pp. October 15, 2026, Jonathan Ball Publishers. Non-fiction. My middle sister, when she was small and could still be carried, was obsessed with “The President”; so of course when one day we wer…

hararereview.com
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Duncan Money retweeted
Duncan Robinson
@duncanrobinson
Oct 22
One professor who recently left academia said it felt like being a miner in 1982 and it’s hard to disagree
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Duncan Money retweeted
Charlie Robertson@CharlieTTEcon
Oct 22
When countries want to move up the value-added processing curve, like Indonesia with nickel, they are competing with cash-rich, low-interest rate China, not the expensive West
Duncan Money@mininghistory
Oct 22
Striking statistics in the new Copper Factbook on the rise of metal processing in China and collapse in Europe and America (production in Asia was mostly Japan in 1990, and is overwhelmingly China in 2025). It's gone from a global industry to a national one in four decades:
Two donut graphs showing world refined copper production in 1990 and in 2025. The graphs show production in Europe declined from 32% to 13%, America declined from 39% to 13% while Asia rose from 19% to 62%.

ALT Two donut graphs showing world refined copper production in 1990 and in 2025. The graphs show production in Europe declined from 32% to 13%, America declined from 39% to 13% while Asia rose from 19% to 62%.

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Striking statistics in the new Copper Factbook on the rise of metal processing in China and collapse in Europe and America (production in Asia was mostly Japan in 1990, and is overwhelmingly China in 2025). It's gone from a global industry to a national one in four decades:
Two donut graphs showing world refined copper production in 1990 and in 2025. The graphs show production in Europe declined from 32% to 13%, America declined from 39% to 13% while Asia rose from 19% to 62%.

ALT Two donut graphs showing world refined copper production in 1990 and in 2025. The graphs show production in Europe declined from 32% to 13%, America declined from 39% to 13% while Asia rose from 19% to 62%.

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The other striking graphs are the enormous difference between production and consumption. The two regions that mine 57% of the world's copper (Africa and Asia, graph on the left) use only 2% of the world's refined copper.
Donut graph showing world copper mine production by region. Latin America produces 38% and Africa 19%.

ALT Donut graph showing world copper mine production by region. Latin America produces 38% and Africa 19%.

Donut graph showing world refined copper use by region in 2025. Asia uses 76% while Africa and Latin America use 1% each.

ALT Donut graph showing world refined copper use by region in 2025. Asia uses 76% while Africa and Latin America use 1% each.

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The World Copper Factbook 2026 is available here: icsg.org/copper-factbook/

Copper Factbook

World Copper Factbook 2026The ICSG's World Copper Factbook provides a broad overview of all facets of copper from how it is mined, produced, traded, used and recycled, to health, environmental, and...

icsg.org
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