RANDFONTEIN (South Africa): South African gold miner Remaketsi Lekoala misses his wife and five children. When he started work at the Cooke gold mine west of Johannesburg 18 years ago, he knew he would have to leave his family at home hundreds of miles away and live in a crowded, all-male hostel due to the strict apartheid laws.

After white-minority rule was abolished 11 years ago, he hoped to reunite his family in improved housing so he could see them more than twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. Although some mines have made great strides in upgrading housing, workers like Lekoala say they have been left behind.

“You don’t have any privacy,” he said. “It’s difficult not knowing what kind of problems my family are having. I can’t help as a father should.” Frustration over wages and housing boiled over this week when South Africa’s biggest mining union called a nationwide strike, the first in the sector in 18 years.

Housing was a contentious issue leading to the strike call as unions sought a doubling of the ‘living-out’ allowance that helps workers find accommodation outside the hostels. Miners, who descend more than 3km underground to drill ore in sweltering narrow tunnels, typically earn 2,500-3,000 rand ($387-$464) per month. They have rejected a wage rise offer of 4.5-5.0 per cent and are demanding an increase of 12 per cent.

Progress has been patchy in boosting living conditions for the nearly 200,000 gold miners in South Africa, the world’s biggest producer of gold and platinum. Some mines offer workers family housing, but the overwhelming bulk of gold miners still live in hostels. The employer’s federation, the Chamber of Mines, puts the proportion at 60-70 per cent while unions say it’s 80 per cent.

The single-sex hostels are a potent reminder of a brutal history that dates back a century when South Africa’s white mining magnates insisted on using migrant blacks, often from neighbouring countries, as cheap labourers.

“I lived in hostels and it was horrible. We were about 18 in a 3-by-3 metre room with our bicycles in the middle,” said Kgosi Mogaki, Director of Social Plan at the Mines Ministry.

Current conditions at the hostels vary widely.

The extent of crowding is a matter of dispute, with Lekoala and colleagues saying their rooms still have 16-18 men and mine owner Harmony Gold insisting the density is much less.

Harmony said it was unable to provide Reuters access to view the hostels where Lekoala and colleagues live before this article was released.

AngloGold Ashanti, the world’s second biggest gold producer, says over the past decade it has managed to halve the average number of men per room at its hostels to six and Harmony says the average density at its hostels is 4.2.

AngloGold Spokesman Alan Fine said some hostels offer semi-private sleeping quarters and more improvements are in store as the firm moves to implement an industry-wide agreement with unions to give at least 50 per cent of miners a choice of accommodation by 2009 and give all miners an option by 2013.

Harmony’s Jackie Mathebula, executive in charge of human resources, says the firm plans to spend 25.2 million rand ($3.9 million) over the next year to upgrade hostels. The industry says it has not moved faster to improve housing due to the sheer scale and expense of providing housing in the most labour-intensive mining sector.

“It’s the numbers. It’s a tremendously expensive exercise,” said Frans Barker, chief negotiator at the Chamber of Mines. The housing problem is less severe in other mining sectors such as coal, which has smaller numbers and which recruits more workers from nearby communities.—Reuters