Despite various challenges in the platinum mining industry, management has to pursue stringent performance outcomes on an ongoing basis. The achievement thereof requires a motivated, involved and dedicated workforce. This can only be achieved when mineworkers are engaged in their jobs and committed to their organisation. Past research shows that formal and informal job resources can influence employees’ levels of work engagement, as well as their organisational commitment. The purpose of this research was to explore whether mineworkers’ perceptions of their organisation’s job resources have an influence on their work engagement and organisational commitment. The findings show that both organisational respect and employee care have a statistically significant positive influence on work engagement and organisational commitment. However, employee care had a stronger influence on both work engagement and organisational commitment than organisational respect. To increase the work engagement and affective organisational commitment of mineworkers, it is proposed that mining companies invest in workplace practices that enhance employees’ emotional attachment to the organisation.

Introduction

South Africa is the world’s largest producer of platinum (Cairncross and Kisting, 2016), and the country contains 87% of the world’s platinum group metals (Chaskalson, 2016). Hence, it accounts for a large proportion of national foreign exchange earnings, is a major source of employment, and impacts on the socio-economic mobility of South African communities (Federation for a Sustainable Environment, 2018). According to Björnsson (2018), 41% of the 490 000 people who were employed in the South African mining sector in 2015 were employed in the platinum mining industry. Many of these employees are migrants who leave their families behind in rural areas or in neighbouring states (Federation for a Sustainable Environment, 2018). Many demands are associated with the mining work environment, such as mine closure threats, strikes, adverse working conditions, health and safety risks, excessive production targets, and cultural diversity (Abrahamsson et al., 2014; Masia and Pienaar, 2011; Moraka and Jansen van Rensburg, 2015; Neingo and Tholana, 2016). The North West platinum corridor (Rustenburg, Marikana, Brits), often referred to as the Platinum Belt (Rajak, 2016), is known as the site of the Marakana Massacre. In 2012, 34 mineworkers were shot dead by the South African Police Service during a protest fuelled by poor working and living conditions, as well as a drive to increase wages (Bezuidenhout and Buhlungu, 2015; Capps, 2015). The Marikana Massacre brought to light fatal contradictions in the post-apartheid platinum mining sector.