Eating from One Pot

The dynamics of survival in poor South African households

Sarah Mosoetsa

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781868145331
• eBook ISBN: 9781868147861
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

As poverty and unemployment deepen in contemporary South Africa, the burning question becomes, how do the poor survive? Eating from One Pot provides a compelling answer. Based on intensive fieldwork, it shows how many African households are on the brink of collapse. That they keep going at all can largely be attributed to the struggles of older women against poverty. They are the fulcrum on which household survival turns. This book describes how households in two different areas in KwaZulu-Natal are sites of both stability and conflict. As one of the interviewees put it: 'We eat from one pot and should always help each other.' Yet the stability of family networks is becoming fragile because of the enormous burden placed on them by unemployment and unequal power relations. Through careful analysis, the experiences of survival are discussed in relation to the restructuring of the country's welfare and social policies, and the extension of social grants. Mosoetsa argues that these policies shape the livelihoods that people pursue in order to survive under desperate conditions, but fail to address the root causes of poverty and inequality.

Chapter 1

‘Sharing the little I have with my family’: the allocative rules of household resources and income

This chapter provides a narrative of household resources and income in Mpumalanga and Enhlalakahle. With the collapse of formal factories in the two areas, described in the previous chapter, and the subsequent absence of wage employment, the household has become the sole node of production for many people. This state of affairs is pushing many households to the brink of collapse. The people in these households are not, as proposed in the livelihoods literature, managers of complex assets. In fact, many of them have almost no assets to speak of, and many households exhibit signs of extreme poverty as their resources diminish. More and more, they are unable to secure alternative and sustainable livelihood sources and income. In such circumstances, people’s primary goal becomes naked survival, rather than the development of strategies that might enable them to achieve better livelihoods.

Household income is derived chiefly from state grants and employment in the informal economy. However, the potential of the informal economy – street selling and home-based work – to alleviate income insecurity is extremely limited. Food becomes the priority. Households spend little on health and education as a result. The cost of essential services makes household income even more inadequate and exacerbates food insecurity. In such a situation, many households turn to illicit activities such as crime or illegal electricity connections in order to earn additional income or cut costs.

This chapter investigates the response of households in Enhlalakahle and Mpumalanga to the crises of unemployment and poverty. The focus is on household resources, sources of income and the allocation or distribution of income. The next chapter will examine the struggles that emerge in households as a result of a lack of income.

CLUSTERING OR OVERCROWDING?

Poverty and unemployment are changing the structure and size of households as more individual adults and children move to those households where there is a stable income. However, households with a secure source of income are becoming the exception. State transfers have become the panacea. Elizabeth Francis’s (2000) research in the North West province of South Africa corroborates this picture. She identifies three strategies that households pursue in the face of poverty and unemployment:

• diversification: diversify livelihood activities;
• clustering: cluster around each other, increasing the size of households; and
• shutting-down: unable to create adequate livelihood activities; some households barely survive or collapse.

Francis questions the sustainability of all these strategies. She points out in relation to diversification, for example, that ‘problems of mobilizing, motivation, and supervising labour were recurring themes in the life-histories of people diversifying for growth (Francis, 2000).

Various pieces of legislation, especially those that regulated the migrant labour system and created the bantustans, put enormous pressure on the African household during the apartheid era. Townships were not established in order to maintain, nurture and reproduce families and kinship systems, but to create labour reserves that were directly linked to ethnic homelands. People were forced to depend on the most common traditional form of clustering, the extended family, which was underpinned by labour migration and remittances (Nattrass, 1984; Sharp & Spiegel, 1985; May, 1987; Murray, 1987). Today, however, many people express mixed feelings about the living arrangements that accompany the extended family:

I do not mind staying with my children and their children. I take care of their kids while they are at work, and when they get paid, they buy food and pay rent. But the problem with this is that they are not working. Everyone depends on me financially. It is a heavy load (MaDhlamini, Enhlalakahle).

What do you do when your daughters don’t get married and they have children? Do you throw them out on the street? In my culture, you don’t do that; they are family and families stick together. Space has never been an issue; we are used to living like this (MaSonto, Mpumalanga).

When I got married years ago, I was expected to live with my mother-in-law and I obliged. Today, I am old and living with my daughter-in-law and see no problem with it (MaMnisi, Enhlalakahle).

Many African households are under threat in the post-apartheid era. They face unemployment, poverty, and AIDS. Vulnerable people rely on family and kinship networks in order to survive. The households that do have stable incomes become overcrowded as more and more people seek refuge in them. It is not uncommon to find three or four generations living together in one household. Most of the households whose members were interviewed in Enhlalakahle and Mpumalanga consisted of six to nine people. Some households were even bigger, though, with ten or more people living in them. The Hlongwane family was a case in point. The family had grown from five members in 2000 to nine members in 2003, and were expecting two more babies at the beginning of 2004.

The process of clustering is influenced by the need to secure income and food. The prevalence of AIDS in the two communities, and the growing number of orphans produced by the epidemic, has also affected the structure and size of households. Grandmothers are the key caregivers and providers in many of these households. Their access to state grants and government houses makes them central household members.

The extension of the size of the extended family is not consciously seen as a strategy for survival by most people. It is viewed, rather, as a natural phenomenon. Cultural or traditional values are generally cited as the reason for accepting additional household members. Women consider it as part of their extended parental responsibilities:

These are my sons, daughters, and grandchildren. I cannot be seen to be throwing them out in the cold. That would be a sin in the eyes of the Lord and in my culture. I will take care of them forever (Sizakele, Mpumalanga).

We eat from one pot and should always help each other. It is my responsibility to make sure that there is food on this table every day. I brought them into this world; I have to take care of them until I die (Masonto, Mpumalanga).

I have to share the little I have with my family. That is my duty as a parent. There are no jobs anymore; my children and grandchildren look to me to buy food with the little money I get from the government (MaDhlamini, Enhlalakahle).

However, the growing size of households often results in greater income insecurity and overcrowding. Lack of space and resources limits the potential benefits of family and kinship networks. What stable household income there is, mostly from state grants, is insufficient to meet the needs of enlarged households:

There are now more mouths to feed from the same income. There are more children in this house who depend on my income (MaDhlamini, Enhlalakahle).

The fact that the majority (72 per cent) of the people interviewed in Enhlalakahle owned three- or four-roomed houses helped considerably with income insecurity. They could use their money for things such as food and paying for services instead of paying for rented accommodation. Seventeen of the 29 houses in the two townships in which the informants lived consisted of three or four rooms while ten had one or two rooms. Unfortunately, though, even four room houses are not big enough to accommodate all the people who are moving into them. Space has become a contentious household issue. The use of limited space is made more difficult by age and gender dynamics. This is particularly the case with regard to sleeping arrangements:

I share my two-bedroom house with 11 children – that is, my son, his wife and his three children. I also have four daughters and two grandchildren. My son, who is the eldest one, uses the one bedroom with his wife. I do not expect him to share the bedroom with anyone except his wife. He needs his privacy. The rest of us sleep in the other bedroom and some sleep in the living room. We use foam mattresses for those who sleep on the floor. We have plenty of blankets for everyone. It is okay for the girls to share the space because they are not married and do not need much privacy (MaMnisi, Enhlalakahle).

Household conflicts also frequently involve disputed claims to family houses. Claims about who is entitled to inherit a house are shaped by age, gender and income status. Houses are important assets for vulnerable people and struggles about rights of ownership can be fierce.

Many households have built shacks in their yards. These are used as bedrooms and are linked to the main house. Sometimes, however, a group of shacks constitutes a separate household altogether, usually inhabited by family or kin.

There was no space in the house for my family and me so I asked my mother if I could build a shack in her yard. At first, I shared everything with my family. We cooked in one pot and ate together. But then I decided to stop doing this. I wanted to buy things for my immediate family only and not for the rest of the family. I started cooking in my shack for only my immediate family and buying groceries for just us. I help my mother when I can, but not always. We are still a family, but we do not eat from the same pot anymore (Vusimuzi, Mpumalanga).

It is clear that the growing size of households is not a feasible solution to poverty in a context where there is rising unemployment and an increasing commodification of essential services such as water and electricity. Expansion in a context of shrinking resources places an unsustainable burde non the household.

HIDING POVERTY, HIDING DISEASE: THE POWER OF RURAL TIES

Poverty is generally seen as the responsibility of the individual. People are ashamed of being poor and try to hide it. The household, with its private character, is the obvious place in which people can conceal their poverty. The stigma attached to those living with and affected by AIDS makes households convenient hiding places for them as well. This places an even heavier burden on already over-stretched household resources.

The retreat to the household is spread geographically, with people moving between rural and urban households. Many people were linked to two households during the apartheid years: an urban and a rural one. The urban-rural relationship was critical in a context of repressive legislation and was sustained by remittances from wage income. The relationship has been maintained in the post-apartheid era, but it no longer rests chiefly on remittances and legislation. In recent years, the rural areas have served primarily as ‘hide-away’ places for the destitute and those living with HIV and AIDS. The stigma that is still attached to HIV and AIDS has weakened notions and practices of social cohesion. Rural areas provide places of escape for individuals who fear victimisation and also become their final resting places.

Lindiwe has been living with the evil disease for the past four years. Her daughter passed away when she was only six months old. Her source of support comes mainly from me, the church, and an AIDS organisation she joined two years ago. It saddens me to see how the community is not being supportive of my family and many other families in Mpumalanga. Even our neighbours do not talk to us anymore. All her friends have turned their backs against her. At the end of the month, I am taking her home, where I was born, near EShowe. My aunt will nurse her and she might recover or she will die peacefully and with dignity (Nomalindiwe, Mpumalanga).

The nature of the urban-rural connection has been changing due to poverty and HIV and AIDS. Previously the linkage included a strong economic component, with remittances moving from the cities to the countryside (Murray, 1981; May 1987; Bozzoli, 1991). Unemployment has made this economic exchange increasingly rare (Sharp & Spiegel, 1985).

Gone are the days when you would find a factory job in Hammarsdale. It is even more difficult for our sisters back home in the rural areas. Often they do not believe us when we tell them there are no jobs anymore. It is a sad situation for those who come to Hammarsdale in search of work. Like us, they cannot find anything. They are then forced to go back home. I believe that things are the same in Johannesburg. There is nowhere to hide (MaNtombi, Mpumalanga).

Rural-urban linkages frequently contain a ceremonial or spiritual component. The majority of people whom I interviewed went back at least once a year to the rural areas for burials, visiting cemeteries and annual rituals.

I do not send money back home anymore. I am unemployed and have no money. However, I visit them every year to speak to my ancestors to ask for guidance and protection from evil spells. The last time the family was there, was to bury my brother (Mzwandile, Enhlalakahle).

Not everyone, though, has a rural ‘home’ to go to. Many of the people who are born in the townships lose their ties to the rural areas after their parents and grandparents pass away. Some people lose their rural links because of family misunderstandings. There are also those who turn their backs on their rural homes when they come to the urban areas. While some workers send money home, others start new families and forget about the families they have left behind. In his study of Zambian Copperbelt workers, James Ferguson describes how people often come to view the ‘rural futures [as] unappealing’ and disregard the rural-based obligations of wide kin networks, remittances, visits home and ‘the cultural style that signifie[s] the acceptance of these obligations’ (Ferguson, 1999:231). He asse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: ‘Sharing the little I have with my family’: the allocative rules of household resources and income
• Chapter 2: ‘My wife does not respect me anymore’: unequal power dynamics in households
• Chapter 3: ‘I remain an ANC member, but civil society in Mpumalanga and Enhlalakahle
• Chapter 4: Theoretical and Policy Implications
• Conclusion: Poor households are fragile sites of stability
• Selected Bibliography
• Index