Summary

The received view of Zambia's mineworkers is of a reactionary body unable and unwilling to shape progressive politics in post-colonial Zambia. Miles Larmer seeks to use a whole range of little-used sources to dispel this myth. Extensive interviews with mineworkers and their wives reveals a working-class consciousness and a whole host of social and economic expectations that shaped their attitude towards political change. Mineworkers in Zambia gives this misunderstood group a place in the movement for political reform which culminated in the transition to multiparty democracy in 1991, and in so doing draws important lessons for the wider social and political history of post-colonial Africa.