Granting the future? The temporality of cash transfers in the South African Countryside

Abstract

In the past five years, anthropologists from the global South have come to consider public cash transfer programs as an alternative to both work-centered policies and national development projects. These studies suggest that grants today go beyond the domain of traditional social policies and government bureaucracy and point to a new future in view of the scarcity of work. This future has become even closer with the pandemic of COVID-19, and with governments, non-governmental entities and the political left reaffirming the importance of a basic universal income. Considering these discussions, my article focuses on an income transfer program in South Africa after the Apartheid period, placing an ethnographic account in relation to the design of a 'progressive' policy of social grants. I present a longer history of salaried work in relation to rural African households and show how the emancipatory promises of cash transfer projects were read as a risk to local traditions and morals. In addition to this reduction in political hopes invested in transfers, I examine the temporal aspect of cash transfers, as well as the possible futures they evoke. By considering the futures that grants enable, I conclude by suggesting that it is premature to affirm that they have overcome wage work and its attendant sociality.

Free money's ideological nature: A comparative analysis of unconditional cash transfers in Eastern Africa

“…By ethnographically illustrating these four different interpretations of UCTs, our article complements the extensive literature dealing with cash grants in Southern Africa that shows, among other things, that many young male South Africans perceive such grants as emasculating (Dawson & Fouksman, 2020), that UCT programs tend to perpetuate and reproduce racial stereotypes (Torkelson, 2021), and that UCTs have the potential to reinforce notions of neoliberal individualism instead of bringing forth more inclusive forms of sociality (Dubbeld, 2021). In light of these remarkably different receptions of UCT programs, we suggest that CTs should not be seen as a politically neutral "technological quick-fix" (Fouksman & Klein, 2019, 498) offering a solution to the problem of the world's increasing "surplus population" (Li, 2017).…”

Ensino de Antropologia em inglês: reflexões sobre uma experiência de inclusão

“…Após o fim do regime de segregação, o apartheid, a África do Sul se tornou uma referência no campo jurídico e dos direitos humanos com a Comissão de Verdade e Reconciliação, atraindo cientistas sociais, juristas, filósofas e filósofos do mundo inteiro (Moutinho, 2012). A democracia, entretanto, retém desigualdades e formas de violências persistentes (Matebeni, 2017;Lopes, 2019;Dubbeld, 2021) para as quais a universidade não pode se omitir.…”

Moffies no exército: raça/etnia, gênero e (homos)sexualidade nas Forças Armadas Sul-Africanas durante o apartheid

“…Ainda que a celebrada passagem do regime de supremacia white para uma democracia multirracial tenha sido relativamente pacífica 92 , principalmente se comparada às guerras civis ocorridas em Zimbábue e Moçambique, a desigualdade social continua um problema importante na África do Sul. Segundo dados do Banco Mundial, a África do Sul é o país mais desigual do mundo, com sul-africanos whites concentrando boa parte da riqueza do país, dividida com uma pequena elite de cidadãos blacks (SOUTH AFRICA, 2019), enquanto a maioria da população non-white depende de auxílios governamentais (DUBBELD, 2017(DUBBELD, , 2021. A África do Sul ainda possui números elevados de violência de gênero -que afeta principalmente mulheres blacks (SOUTH AFRICA, 2020) -além de altos índices de violência contra pessoas LGBTQIA+ (ARCUS FOUNDATION, 2019).…”