The livelihoods of South Africa's rural African poor have long been characterized by diverse activities, and intertwined with urban opportunities. This paper examines the interlinked nature of land, employment and rural livelihoods within contemporary South Africa, in order to examine aspects of how the rural poor survive. Drawing on a body of livelihood and poverty-oriented enquiry, several vignettes from South Africa's former 'homeland' communal areas are presented and discussed. Contemporary rural livelihoods are not only located in migratory networks and diverse livelihood activities, they are considered here as constituted in terms of four broad domains. First, they are forged within various land-based and agrarian activities. Second, they are often supported by small-scale, informal economic activities, both farm and non-farm. Third, they are frequently shaped by South Africa's comparatively well-developed system of state cash transfers and, fourth, they are patterned by culturally inscribed patterns of mutuality and social reciprocity. The complexity and vulnerability that typically characterize rural lives are examined in terms of these four domains, along with constellations of social differentiation with which they are intertwined. IntroductionThis paper draws on a body of livelihood and poverty enquiry to examine the livelihoods of South Africa's rural African poor. It seeks to help answer the question: how do South Africa's rural poor survive? Examining the interconnections among land, rural livelihoods and employment, the paper suggests that the answers to this question are, broadly, to be found in repertoires of productive activity (including agrarian activities) along with receipt of transfers, both public and private. These sources of livelihood-making are furthermore intertwined with widespread practices of mobility, which effectively connect rural dwellers to often distant locales and resources. The paper examines these sources of livelihood-making, the complexity and vulnerability that typically mark rural livelihoods, along with the constellations of social differentiation that these simultaneously reflect and reinforce.

In sub-Saharan Africa, urbanisation and food systems change contribute to rapid dietary transitions promoting obesity. It is unclear to what extent these changes are mediated by neighbourhood food environments or other factors. This paper correlates neighbourhood food provision with household consumption and poverty in Khayelitsha, South Africa and Ahodwo, Ghana. Georeferenced survey data of food consumption and provision were classified by obesity risk and protection. Outlets were mapped, and density and distribution correlated with risk classes. In Khayelitsha, 71% of households exceeded dietary obesity risk thresholds while 16% consumed protective diets. Obesogenic profiles were less (26%) and protective more prevalent (23%) in Ahodwo despite greater income poverty in Khayelitsha. Here, income-deprived households consumed significantly (p < 0.005) less obesogenic and protective diets. Small informal food outlets dominated numerically but supermarkets were key household food sources in Khayelitsha. Although density of food provision in Ahodwo was higher (76/km2), Khayelitsha outlets (61/km2) provided greater access to obesogenic (57% Khayelitsha; 39% Ahodwo) and protective (43% Khayelitsha; 16% Ahodwo) foods. Consumption and provision profiles correlate more strongly in Ahodwo than Khayelitsha (rKhayelitsha = 0.624; rAhodwo = 0.862). Higher obesogenic food consumption in Khayelitsha suggests that risky food environments and poverty together promote obesogenic diets.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the interplay of agency, culture and context in order to consider the social embeddedness of money and trade at the margins of South Africa's economy. Focusing on small-scale, survivalist informal enterprise operators, it draws on socio-cultural analysis to explore the social dynamics involved in generating and managing wealth. After describing the informal sector in South Africa, the article elucidates the relationship between money and economic informality. First, diverse objectives, typically irreducible to the maximization of profit, animate those in the informal sector and challenge meta-narratives of a ‘great transformation’ towards socially disembedded and depersonalized economic relationships. Second, regimes of economic governance, both state-led and informal, shape the terrain on which informal economic activity occurs in complex and constitutive ways. Third, local idioms and practices of trading, managing money and negotiating social claims similarly configure economic activities. Fourth, and finally, encroaching and often inexorable processes of formalization differentially influence those in the informal sector. The analysis draws on these findings to recapitulate both the ubiquity and centrality of the sociality at the heart of economy, and to examine the particular forms they take in South Africa's informal economy.