South Africa Back Home for the Holidays

Under a blazing sun and cloudless sky, Vincent Olebogeng strolls past an ore bucket spray-painted MERRY XMAS 86. Though the temperature is 87 degreesF, Olebogeng considers the weather cool relief. Thirty minutes earlier, he was two miles underground, moving tons of dusty gray ore in the almost unbearable heat of Durban Deep, a gold mine at Roodeport, ten miles west of Johannesburg. He has worked nearly 300 days in the past year, but he will not work tomorrow. After the paymaster hands him a brown envelope containing his monthly wages of 270 rand ($122), Olebogeng is ready to travel more than 300 miles to celebrate Christmas with his family, whom he has not seen in nearly a year. "They will slaughter a goat to mark my return," he says with a smile.

Olebogeng, 25, is going home to Bophuthatswana, one of the tribal homelands created by South Africa in which a total of 3 million blacks have been resettled over the past 20 years. Of the 450,000 blacks who toil in South Africa's gold mines, 163,000 come from the impoverished homelands, where work is scarce and the pay pitiful. An additional 195,000 come from the neighboring countries of Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland, where jobs are equally rare. Leaving their families behind, the miners spend most of the year living in cramped dormitories and working for wages that average $50 a week. Come mid-December, tens of thousands stream out of the camps and head home for the holidays, jamming bus stations, train platforms and airports to spend a month or so with their loved ones.

Though the United Democratic Front, the country's largest antiapartheid group, has organized a boycott campaign this Christmas to protest Pretoria's state of emergency, the minersqit week were far more interested in travel than in politics. At the Booysens train station in southern Johannesburg, 1,000 workers, some still in hard hats, others stripped to the waist, waited for three hours before the third-class carriages pulled in. A few dipped bread into tins of stew, washing it down with drafts of Lion beer and Viceroy brandy. Most were sprawled alongside mountains of suitcases and possessions, including sewing machines, stereos, furniture, even motorcycles. Vendors picked through the crush, hawking overpriced watches and brightly colored blouses. Girlfriends, some with infants strapped on their backs, lingered by the train's windows for a few last words. "See you next month," said a young girl in a thin smock, her baby's head bobbing up and down.

Olebogeng, who has worked at Durban Deep for five years, has been guaranteed a sixth. "Lucky for me," he said. "I have seven sisters and brothers to help feed." Despite the long hours and backbreaking work, the jobs are highly coveted. "We've turned away hundreds of applicants," said George Venter, personnel manager at Durban Deep, which employs 11,500 at Roodeport. Other miners have not been as lucky as Olebogeng. Faced with more than 700,000 unemployed blacks at home, South Africa is slashing the influx of migrants and hiring more locals. Cutting back jobs is also Pretoria's way of exerting pressure on neighboring black states that have urged tougher economic sanctions against South Africa. Hundreds of miners from Mozambique, for example, will not return in 1987.