Afterlives of Gold

Chapter 4, “Afterlives of Gold,” concerns the twenty-first-century Sino-African global color line that forces an examination of racial capitalism beyond Black and white. It reads the China Malls through the mine, giving an account of the labor dynamics at China City mall while drawing out historical connections to the colonial migrant labor system and southern African migrant labor in Johannesburg. At the mining belt mall, the memory and legacies of gold mining live on in the political consciousness of China City’s African migrant workers from Malawi and Zimbabwe, many of whom come from lineages of migrant mine workers. The chapter shows how Chinese labor regimes remake key features of the colonial mining industry such as the devaluation of “Black labor” (heigong), methods of discipline, and forms of social reproduction. The chapter also examines African workers’ practices of resistance and economic survival.