The coronavirus Covid-19 poses a special threat to the elderly. In an article for the Daily Maverick, former CSSR PhD student and post-doctoral research fellow Gabby Kelly writes that South Africa has generally neglected its elderly population and now needs to pay urgent attention to their situation. She asks, for example, what will SASSA do about payments of old-age pensions so as to avoid requiring the elderly to gather at paypoints?

Since the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, South African scholars have worked relentlessly to investigate and understand the epidemic, and to ameliorate its catastrophic effects. At UCT, researchers within the Health Sciences modelled the clinical and epidemiological impacts of the epidemic, while economists focused on its fiscal implications. Within the Humanities and the Social Sciences, researchers explored the social meanings of the epidemic; its medical history; and its consequences for South Africa’s democratic polity. 

The set of papers, edited by Elena Moore and Jeremy Seekings, examines ‘Social Protection, Intergenerational Relationships and Conflict in South Africa’. In their introduction, Elena and Jeremy review the ‘Consequences of Social Protection on Intergenerational Relationships in South Africa’. Former CSSR student and post-doctoral researcher Gabby Kelly’s article on ‘Disability, cash transfers and family practices in South Africa’ examines conflicts over access to and use of disability grants. ‘Conflict and negotiation in intergenerational care: Older women’s experiences of caring with the Old Age Grant in South Africa’ – by CSSR doctoral student Kirsty Button and fieldworker Thobani Ncapai – examines the relationships between old-age pensioners and younger kin. Elena’s article on ‘Who has a duty to support? Care practices and legal responsibilities in South Africa’ examines how the responsibilities of kin have been defined in court cases involving the Road Accident Fund. In his article on ‘The conditional legitimacy of claims made by mothers and other kin in South Africa’, Jeremy analyses data from survey experiments on who is considered deserving of assistance from both the state and kin. The final paper, on ‘Parental absence: Intergenerational tensions and contestations of social grants in South Africa’ by Ziphora Kearabetswe Mokoene and Grace Khunou of the University of Johannesburg) examines conflict between grandmothers (who often provide child care) and mothers (who receive the child support grants for the children).

Elena Moore was part of a discussion on ‘Understanding Polygamous marriages in South Africa’ on the Aubrey Masango show on 702. If you are interested and want to hear more, here is the podcast: Radio 702 Show Talk

Oxford University Press have just published a new book by Nicoli Nattrass and Jeremy Seekings. Their book - Inclusive Dualism: Labour-Intensive Development, Decent Work, and Surplus Labour in Southern Africa - examines the importance of labour-intensive industrialisation in job creation and development in Southern Africa, with a particular focus on the clothing industry. Drawing on the work of W. Arthur Lewis, the founding father of development economics, they argue that inclusive forms of dualism should be embraced, not rejected.