The post-apartheid state in South Africa inherited a care regime that historically combined liberal, social democratic and conservative features. The post-apartheid state has sought to deracialise the care regime, through extending to the African majority the privileges that hitherto had been largely confined to the white minority, and to transform it, to render it more appropriate to the needs and norms of the African majority. Deracialisation proved insufficient and transformation too limited to address inequalities in access to care. Reform also generated tensions, including between a predominant ideology that accords women and children rights as autonomous individuals, the widespread belief in kinship obligations and an enduring if less widespread conservative, patriarchal ideology. Ordinary people must navigate between the market (if they can afford it), the state and the family, balancing opportunities for independence with the claims made on and by kin. The care regime thus remains a contested hybrid.
Social policy and welfare provision have converged with socio-economic conditions, cultural beliefs about kin support and intra-household dynamics to position older women as important financial providers in their families. This article draws on the findings of a qualitative study about intergenerational relationships of care in a large township near Cape Town. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen female Old Age Grant recipients and some of their co-resident adult children. The article focuses on the grant recipients’ experiences of giving and receiving financial support (‘financial care’) in their intergenerational relationships. It also unpacks the intra-household dynamics involved in this caregiving. Although the grant better enabled the women in the study to meet the needs of their households, beliefs about the mutual and shared responsibility for financial caregiving in families informed their expectations of financial assistance from younger kin. When their co-resident younger relatives did earn an income, negotiations around the provision of financial care ensued; generating conflict and reflecting unequal power relations between relatives. These dynamics contributed to the women’s experiences of vulnerability and their high burden of care. In this context, the article examines the state’s role in the care process and how it has contributed to the gendered and generational distribution of care work in families.
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