Understanding the livelihoods of child-grant mothers in Sinathingi in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Motsetse, Matsepo Nomathemba

Title: Understanding the livelihoods of child-grant mothers in Sinathingi in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Creator: Motsetse, Matsepo Nomathemba
Subject: Welfare recipients -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal
Subject: Social security -- South Africa
Subject: Family policy -- South Africa
Subject: Women -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal -- Social conditions
Subject: Women -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal -- Economic conditions
Subject: Poverty -- South Africa
Subject: Income -- South Africa -- KwaZulu-Natal
Date Issued: 2014
Date: 2014
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MSocSc
Identifier: vital:3380
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013284
Description: The main focus of this thesis is the child support grant, as part of a broader social security system, in post-apartheid South Africa. Since the end of apartheid of 1994, the new South African government has sought to redress the racial imbalances and inequalities of the past by engaging in measures of redistribution. Central to this pursuit of redistribution has been a restructured system of social grants, of which the child support grant is the most significant. However, the post-apartheid government has adopted a largely neo-liberal macro-economic strategy such that social inequality and endemic poverty remain pervasive particularly amongst the African population, which includes the recipients of the child support grants. In adopting a sustainable livelihoods framework as the main theoretical perspective, the thesis seeks to understand the livelihoods of child support grant mothers in the face of conditions of extreme poverty. It does this through a localised study of twenty child grant mothers in Sinathingi Township in KwaZulu-Natal Province. In examining the livelihoods of these child-grant mothers, the thesis brings to the fore that mothers and their children do not exist as autonomous living units but are embedded in a broader set of social relations, including intra-household relations and relations with the fathers of the grant-children. It also demonstrates that child-grant mothers are not simply victims of structures of poverty in contemporary South Africa, but actively construct their livelihoods through a range of activities and strategies which show perseverance and ingenuity.
Format: 148 p.
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Sociology
Language: English
Rights: Motsetse, Matsepo Nomathemba

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