Chapter 5: Chapter 5: After the triangulation of primary and secondary data in the preceding conceptual and empirical analyses of the rural-urban dichotomy effects of social grants
4.4. CHARACTERISTICS AND CONTEXTS OF THE RURAL URBAN DICHOTOMY Whilst literature acknowledges the gradual uniformity of some socio-economic statuses
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Females do not only make up a bigger fraction of the samples in both study areas (53 percent), they are more active in especially self-employment and informal employment activities. Of the 214 persons who are involved in self-employment activities informal employment, 128 (60 percent) of them are women. Logically, the slight superiority of women in demography cannot entirely explain their dominant leading role in remunerative work within the households in question. Whilst literature had generally associated gendered roles within households with rural patriarchal societies, the attainment of the tertiary qualifications by only men in both study areas in the survey seemingly counters perception. These substantially similar status quos between Ga- Maja Village and Seshego Township have the aptitude to refuel discourses revolving around whether the rural-urban dichotomy is incrementally blurring.
4.4. CHARACTERISTICS AND CONTEXTS OF THE RURAL URBAN DICHOTOMY
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contexts in the two study areas of the survey. Table 1 outlines varied distances and costs endured by the two sets of grant recipients in Ga-Maja Village and Seshego Township in accessing and utilising grants.
Ga-Maja Village Seshego Township Average Distance Average Cost Average Distance Average Cost
Pay Point 2km _ 1km _
Banks and Shopping Centre
45 km R45 1km _
Table 1. Distance and Expenses to Access and Utilise Grants
According to Table 1, Ga-Maja Villagers have to travel 45 kilometres and pay up to R45 for the trip to either Polokwane City Centre or Lebowakgomo town in order to access banks and a descent shopping centre (with shopping and service varieties). Pay points are stationed much closer with the average distance walked by Ga-Maja grantees ranging in the regions of 2km on average. On the other hand, the distances walked by Seshego grantees to the shopping complex where they access and supposedly utilise grants is around 1kilometre. Whilst SASSA’s initiative to cut cost of travelling to access grants through various means discussed above, poor local economic development which manifests in a dormant economic activities did not help the cause. Whilst globalisation and local economic development forces have paved way for multinational and retail outlets (well-stocked spaza shops usually owned by foreign nationals) to avail goods and services to the most remote grantees, Ga-Maja spatial patterns are still characterized by households scattered further and further from the few available entities.
Over 80 percent of Ga-Maja Villagers indicated being stuck between tensing to transport cost for accessing banks, which also charge them for the service, and enduring 2 to 5 hours of queuing at locally stationed mobile pay points. With only 3 spaza shops on the outskirts of the village, up to 86 percent of the villagers in the sample prefer to travel to Polokwane City Centre where “Re humana thusho yaka pela
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ka mphiwafela wa rena,ebile re kgona goya mabenkeleng ago bitsa ka theko ya fasa go nale mabenkele a macula” (we can quickly access grants and are presented with more and cheaper shopping options than these expensive foreign-owned shops), says one parent of a CSG recipient. These accessibility dynamics are the least of Seshego recipients’ worries in a way that gives them lesser expenses than their rural cohorts.
Municipality rates, and rentals in some cases, have been raised by urbanites in virtually all households but, similarly, rural dwellers cite levies and “diphiri” (rates) as outlays they are also obliged to cater for.
4.4.2. Gender issues
Comprehensive poverty alleviation encompasses non-material facets of human welfare which prompts the usage of the Gender Equality Index (GEI) as one of the indicators among others. With global and national social security programmes targeting the most vulnerable members of the society, women and female children become central to the initiatives. However, literature has documented culture and religion as, in some parts of the world, barriers to the empowerment of women through these concerted efforts.
Furthermore, although situations are unique to individuals and individual households, patterns of woman vulnerability have been generally associated with rural contexts where patriarchal societies remain deeply entrenched in cultural beliefs (Todaro, 2013;
Ralston, 2016). Whilst cultural values influence gender inequality in rural areas, resource control, religion and general male superiority complexities have been linked to gender oppression in both contexts. In the same line of argument, the study investigated the control of resources within Ga-Maja and Seshego households with the view of understanding trends revolving around decision making on the utilization of grants. With no record of child-headed households in the two samples, Figure 4.4 illustrates the gender of the main decision makers on the utilisation of grants in Ga-Maja and Seshego households.
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60
40 36
64
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Male Female
(%)
Ga-Maja Village Seshego Township
Figure 4.4. Gendered Decision Making on the Utilisation of Grants
Figure 4.4 shows that 40 percent and 64 percent of persons responsible for the grant budget are female in Ga-Maja and Seshego, respectively. With adult women making up 51 percent and 57 percent of the rural and urban samples, respectively, the dominance of women in household decision making tends to back up the autonomy enjoyed by urban women as documented by Narsey (2014). The leading role of urban women in handling grants would have been implicitly associated with their relatively higher educational levels as documented by StatsSA (2015) and the Capricorn District Municipality (2011), however, Ga-Maja and Seshego women in the sample share similar educational levels. Whether these trends are because 58 percent of adult women in the Seshego sample are single, black and over 60 years old implying that their educational development might have been compromised by racial Apartheid educational systems, was not interrogated by this study. It is thereby not as blurry that the autonomy enjoyed by urban women cannot be attributed to their educational edge over their rural counterparts.
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In Ga-Maja Village, just like in most South African rural area, it is unfortunate but expected that women are relatively more voiceless and powerless given the patriarchal environment which persists to date. Under these patriarchs, 40 percent of women in the Ga-Maja Village making final decisions on how and what to spend on in grant-receiving households is quiet a descent ratio, however, this could also be due to the fact that over 50 percent of households in the sample were female-headed. With this logic, the patriarchal footprints can still be traced and questions asked about how then can the other 10 percent difference between 50 percent female-headed households and only 40 percent making the final decision on the utilisation of the grant be accounted for.
Perhaps, the 8 percent which indicated collective decision making as a household could best explain the shortfalls, although such household democracy has not been testified for in literature. Network-driven social capital, harmony and reciprocity at household and community levels were therefore interrogated in a bid to establish more effects of grants and their distribution and degrees between rural and urban areas.
4.4.3. Measuring Social Capital in Ga-Maja Village and Seshego Townships The traditional rural-urban variances which have been centrally pinned on stark divergent characteristics and contexts have been recently countered by arguments revolving around the “increasingly blurring rural-urban dichotomy” (Champion and Hugo, 2004: 214). Literature documents that on one hand, people in rural societies are characterized by socio-economic homogeneity and thus they enjoy communitarianism.
On the other, urbanites belong to different castes, creeds, religions and cultures, thus they rarely share same social statuses, norms and values. These elements potentially make or break social capital among communities. Figure 4.5 presents compared responses when Ga-Maja and Seshego respondents were asked whether they share their households’ resources with either neighbours and/or non-resident relatives.
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Always Most Times Sometimes Seldom Never
20 22
38
14
6
0 0
24
38 38
(%)
Ga-Maja Village Seshego Township
Figure 4.5. Sharing Habits between Households
According to Figure 4.5 around 76 percent of the Seshego grant-receiving households never and seldom share their household resources with neighbours and/or non-resident relatives whilst contrastingly, up to 80 percent of the Ga-Maja households share the grant either always, most times and sometimes. This paints communitarianism and individualism between Ga-Maja Village and Seshego Township, correspondingly. Citing the inadequacy of the grants even for the receiving households themselves, 38 percent of the urban sample had never directly shared potions of the grants with their neighbours and/or non-resident relatives regardless of the fact that 10 percent of them claimed to manage to save and invest some of the grant income in other livelihoods.
These dynamics confirm the documented superior social capital in rural than in urban areas.
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