CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 4
4.2 Development is a gender issue
4.2.4 Poverty, gender and religion
As women wage the struggle against poverty, they employ a variety of survival strategies that have practical, cultural, and religious dimensions. It is particularly the religious dimension of survival strategies that are the focus of this study, but it is difficult to separate off from this religious aspect the practical and cultural dimensions. Earlier (section 2.4.2), I narrated three stories of Vulindlela women which illustrate their view of the world which I argued was a weaving together of a “life in the world” and a “life in the church”. The women of
Vulindlela make no distinction between their religious life and their material reality. Because this is so, I argue in this study that these women live by “working” theologies of survival.
This being the case, it is crucial for any discussion on the improvement of the material
conditions of poor women’s lives that their faith be considered. For poor women in South Africa, faith and the improvement of material life are inextricably linked. It is this
interconnectedness of faith to material reality that is a particular contribution that my study offers to the gender and development debate.
The church’s involvement in development processes has been at the centre of some theological discussion (Haddad 1996; 1998b; Koegelenberg 1992; 1994; Mugambi 1997;
Nürnberger 1999; Phiri et al 1996; van Schalkwyk 1996). A particularly optimistic view of the church’s role in development is expressed by Wilson and Ramphele (1989). They have argued that the church is better placed than any other institution, religious or secular, to work with poor people (Wilson and Ramphele 1989:303). This magnanimous attitude towards the ability of the institutional church to get involved in the process of social transformation has not, in my experience, been borne out. However, the rationale of their argument is a sound one. They assert that because vast numbers of poor people in South Africa ascribe to the Christian faith, the church is strategically placed in all marginalised communities to address poverty. Within all poor communities, the church as an organisation is extremely resourceful in human and physical terms. While acknowledging this to be true, I maintain that as an institution, the church generally has been unable to harness these resources for effective social transformation (Cochrane 1987; Haddad 1998b).
While the institutional church finds it difficult to harness resources, people of faith readily do so outside of the formal structures of the church in their struggle to survive. In a research study on poverty and religion conducted by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (Fenyves et al 1998), a number of pertinent ways that women of faith themselves saw religion as a resource for coping with poverty were highlighted. Respondents stated that praying and having faith bore “fruitful results” and they also held the view that non- churchgoers tended to “suffer more” and “they do without” (Fenyves et al 1998:v).
Significantly for my own research, respondents who were female churchgoers “saw their ability to make a difference in their communities as closely related to their religiosity”
(Fenyves et al 1998:v). The women understood having faith and helping the destitute with
prayer and love as making a positive difference (Fenyves et al 1998:v).8
Carol Muller (1994) in her work indicates how closely related faith and overcoming poverty are for women members of the Church of the Nazarites (ibandla lamaNazaretha). She recounts a story as narrated by Mrs Mazibuko, a member of the married women’s group where there is a transformation in one woman’s life from one of material lack to material gain. In this narrative, it becomes clear that for the woman (and for those who heard the story), the transformation of her material state is attributed to faith in the cosmological power of Shembe9 and ultimately to God.
8 In Marxian terms, religion has negatively blinded those who are poor to their structural oppression and is seen to merely act as a panacea for suffering resulting in passivity. This stance is best
summarised in the dictum, “religion is the opiate of the people”. My point here is to argue against this stance. Instead I assert that religion for poor and marginalised women in South Africa is not a panacea against their suffering, but rather an active weapon they use in their resistance to their oppression.
Survival theologies are acts of resistance (see Chapters 7 and 8).
9 Isaiah Shembe founded the African Independent Church known as the Church of the Nazarites (ibandla lamaNazaretha) in 1910 (Muller 1999).
After standing up, she told us that one day she had no money. No money to give her children to carry to school. Even her husband hasn’t got money. She had only the ticket to go to work. Her husband used to collect her from work to home. That day, her husband came late to collect her.
During the day she [had] failed to get money because even when she went to the bank, they didn’t give her money... On their way home, they were not talking to each other because they haven’t got money. You know, she said, on the highway next to Diepkloof, the traffic cop passed them. He was running at high speed. He passed them.
Then she saw something like papers coming away from the scooter. Then this lady said, “What is this?” She tried to pick out of the - look at... What was it?
What was falling out from the traffic cop? The traffic cop didn’t wait. He just passed.
Then she asked her husband to stop the car. The husband stopped the car, and they got out. Those that were coming out of the scooter was the money. It was in fifties! Fifty papers! They picked those - she didn’t say how much.
But, she said, it just went away from the scooter like papers. They, they picked it. The husband was picking, she was also picking.
That’s how Shembe helped them, because she said that if it was not because of Shembe, she was not going to get that money. But, because of Shembe... She asked him, “Shembe, can you help me? Because I have got no money”. Then Shembe put the money to this traffic cop, then blew it away. So they got the money (Muller 1994:132).
For the main character of this story, the transformation of her context of need to one of material gain has been transformed through her faith in God who can perform the miraculous.
Similarly, I have experienced through my work with the women of Nxamalala that they attribute their literal survival to God. In times of dire need they are unable to “explain” how they managed to provide meals for their children or pay their school fees. For them, God provides these material needs. The following excerpts from our discussions in the Bible study group illustrate their experience:
uNkulunkulu nje ongasisiza uma sibhekisa kuyena mina ngihleli ngingathi ungondlile ngoba anginabani anginangane anginandoda, ngihleli kasisi, nosisi akasekho nendoda yakhe ayisekho ngihlezi nengane, kufana nokuthi ngihleli ngedwa lapha ngoba akukho ndoda ekhaya, ngibhekisa kuNkulunkulu konke ngize ngicabange ngibabone abantu behla benyuka beya esontweni ngingene endlini ngithandaze ngithi Nkosi uyazi wena... Engondla
nangomthandazo ngithatha lowo mholo wempesheni engikufunayo ngikugcine
noma kungapheleli konke yindlu ngiyenze idilike, ngiyenze iphele imali yiyo nje engisizayo imali yempesheni ngoba akekho ongisizayo ngempela yimilenze le iyakhathala... uNkulunkulu yena mkhulu impela ngiyambona imisebenzi yakhe ngoba kulokuhlala kwami ngedwa ngabe sengafa.
It is only God who can help us if we trust in him. Myself I am being sustained by him because I have no child, no husband, I stay at my sister’s house. She passed and her husband passed. I stay with children. It is just like I am living alone because there is no man at home. I give it all to Jesus and even think I see the people going to church I get into the house and say, “Lord you
know”... He sustains me with the prayer also. I take that pension salary and do what I want even if I it doesn’t fulfill all my needs. I build the house and it falls, it is just the pension salary that helps me because there is none to help me and the legs get tired... God is powerful. I can see his works because for me to stay alone as I do, I am supposed to have died (Phumla Ngema, 25 September 1997, Nxamalala).
Umyeni wami washona ngo1988 ngasebenza waphela umsebenzi kodwa uNkulunkulu uyangipha nje ukudla ngidle... Ngihleli ekhaya angisebenzi...
Nazi izingane ziyafunda kodwa uNkulunkulu uyangisiza ukuthi ngikwazi ukuthola ukudla ngidle...
My husband passed on in 1988, I worked and I lost a job but God always gives me food to eat... I am at home I am not working...Here are the children they go to school, but God always help me to get food to eat... (Janet Nzimande, 27 May 1999, Nxamalala).
Sifundile ke manje ukuthi, “Nkosi yami” uma uthi nje hayi ake ngiyekele kuJesu, ngempela imali ebengiyithola ibiyisimangaliso nje ukuthi bengiyithola kanjani angazi, kodwa ngangibona nje hawu, nonesikweleti sami esidala nje ngibone nje hawu ngibone ukuthi hayi ngamandla kaNkulunkulu.
We have now learned that if you just say, “my Lord”, let me leave everything
with Jesus, in fact the money that I was getting was mysterious because I don’t understand how did I get it, but I found anybody that owed me paying my money back and I realized that it was the power of God (Thembani Khoza, 27 May 1999, Nxamalala).
In this last example, Mrs Khoza makes a direct link between her faith in God to provide her material needs and the network of women in the community who are an important source of survival. Women depend on one another in times of need.
I want to suggest that networks among poor women manifest themselves in a number of ways. Shawn Riva Donaldson (1997)10 examines the networks used by women to make health-care decisions in the rural community of Tshunyane in the North West Province.
Tshunyane, like many rural areas, is economically devastated with high unemployment and an absence of men in the community. In trying to understand how women make health choices for their children in situations where children die from diseases of poverty such as malnutrition and kwashiorkor, Donaldson (1997) shows how women depend upon each other to make these choices. She argues that while the roles and authority of these Tswana women are limited by traditional cultural practices, it is often these very practices that simultaneously provide women “with cultural tools essential for their survival, such as holistic traditional medicine, reverence for elders, sisterhood, and a sense of collective good” (1997:257). .
In the formal interviews Donaldson (1997) conducted with the women, they were asked who had the final word on money matters, rearing the children, and medical treatment for the children. Most married women suggested they shared these decisions with their husbands.
During one interview the woman’s husband arrived home unexpectedly. She “began to whisper and continued in a soft voice between mischievous giggles, ‘It is really both of us.
This is the way it is, but he does not think so’” (Donaldson 1997:267). “Publicly, Tshunyane women would bow to custom, but in actuality they turn to female networks in order to make critical decisions concerning their health and the health of the young children in their charge”
10 This research was carried out during the oppressive apartheid regime of the 1980s that systematically denied adequate health-care services to the rural areas.
(Donaldson 1997:271).11
Donaldson’s conclusion is significant to this discussion on the relationship between women’s networks and religion:
The women preserve tradition, but they simultaneously transform culture because of, and in spite of, the state. They pay homage to Badimo,12 while simultaneously infusing fluidity into culture, health practices, and gender behaviour, and by giving kin ties priority in their actions. Surely the Badimo and Modimo13 silently endorse this (Donaldson 1997:271).
11 Donaldson (1997) is making a distinction between how women act in the public and in the hidden realms. This distinction is key to my own arguments in Chapter 8 concerning agency and resistance in the survival theologies of marginalised women.
12 Badimo are Tswana ancestral spirits.
13 Modimo is the name given to God.
The importance of this work is that it highlights the way in which women manipulate cultural systems as they interact with forces of modernity, for their own ends. When faced with a situation of life or death, they prioritise their cultural networks of women which they recognised as their prime source of survival. At the same time, while recognising the value of both traditional and modern medicine and the role of the ancestral spirits and of God, they are fluid in the course of action they follow. This fluid path is strategic to the survival of their children against tremendous odds and it always include religious forces.
Adequate health care is a particularly pressing survival issue for rural women, hence the focus of Donaldson’s (1997) research. In urban and peri-urban situations, while health issues are important, women recognise that in the city survival depends on ready access to credit.
Later (section 4.4), I show that in gender and development planning, access to credit as a means to gender equity is a contentious issue in feminist theory. In this section I want to preempt this macro theoretical discussion, and foreground the agency of poor women in devising micro strategies in order to access credit and survive. They do this by forming networks of their own which are constituted into collaborative groups generally known as stokvels.14
Stokvels are small-scale savings clubs or credit unions through which women make financial resources available for projects they would otherwise not afford (Barrrett et al 1985;
Kritzinger 1996). Members enter into an agreement to pay a fixed sum of money into a common pool on a weekly or monthly basis. These informal credit organisations are
generally given this umbrella term but are also known amongst others as umgalelo [pouring], ukuholisana [we earn from one another/ we pay each other back], masibambane [let us join hands] (Barrrett et al 1985; Kritzinger 1996). These organisations take on a variety of forms as the following interviews with women conducted by Barrrett et al (1985) indicate.
Monica Phadi is a member of a society that buys food co-operatively. She explained her reasons for doing this:
14 It is unclear where the name stokvel originated. Kritizinger (1996:114) suggests that it is probably a distortion of the word “stock-fair” which English settlers gave to their rotating cattle auctions in the Eastern Cape in the early 19th century. At these auctions, groups of African farmers probably pooled their financial resources to give each other a turn to buy good cattle.
Realising that food was a problem and that we were starving all the time, some of us decided to form a group where we collect R3 each week and buy food in bulk and share it amongst ourselves. This idea helps us a lot because of inflation. We feel it works out cheaper although we buy at the OK Bazaars
which is supposed to be not very reasonable on their food prices (Barrett et al 1985:216).
To preempt the costs of death in the family, burial societies are formed. Jessy Cindi belongs to such a society and shares her experience:
In the meeting we discuss how to organise a burial and how to fight inflation.
In the meeting we collect standby money of R300 that goes to the bereaved. A coffin and buses are paid from the R3 and R5, even groceries. We hold a serious meeting when there is a death (Barrett et al 1985:217).
Khosi Ntombela who has been a member of an organisation had this to say about her stokvel,
It was a stokvel where we used to help each other when there was something like a wedding or a death or birthday parties. This was done by helping to cook and serve. All in all the donation was R20 a week from all. We used to meet for 30 minutes every Saturday. I used to go to every meeting. I didn’t want to miss it, because there was a lot of entertainment, such as drinking wine and the discussions and even the dancing (Barrett et al 1985:216).
This view of a stokvel as a place where women gather to drink and socialise, in opposition to women’s religious gatherings, seemed to be held by some women of Nxamalala. When I suggested that we were becoming a stokvel in raising money for an end of year party, Mrs Khoza expressed unease with using that terminology. Her response clearly indicated to me that she associated it with a place of “drinking” and “promiscuity”. Having said this, my experience with the women of Vulindlela, both in the Mothers’ Union and in the Bible study group, is that they always raised money through pooling resources and then distributing them as is needed. This “stokvel” method of fundraising is always associated with acts of faith, deeds of charity, and is accompanied with prayer and chorus singing. Indeed, the
fundraising that took place in the Bible study group adopted this method.
While little research has been undertaken on the extent to which stokvels embody an integration of the practical and the religious as survival strategies, Kritizinger (1996) has
attempted to show the religious significance of stokvels as a micro-economic movement for the mission of the church. In so doing, he argues that this movement is an indigenous response to poverty in which women play a significant role (Kritizinger 1996). Kritizinger (1996) shows how African Independent Churches (AICs) employ the stokvel principles of fundraising in initiating building and other projects. This, he concludes, enables this
indigenous church movement to be financially independent and innovative in initiating other community projects. Juxtaposing the financial structures of the AICs over against those inherited by the mission churches, Kritzinger (1996:122) argues that a “structural
conversion” of mission initiated churches is necessary. In adopting this more indigenous form of fundraising, mission initiated churches which would become “financially self- supporting and more culturally recognisable and relevant to their surrounding communities”
(Kritzinger 1996:122).
From my experience of St Raphael’s Church in Sweetwaters, Kritzinger’s argument is borne out. St Raphael’s, while being a mission initiated church, has functioned with little oversight from the traditional church structures. Its impoverished isolation has in effect meant that it has largely been left to make its own way. In this process there has been an integration of indigenous practices, “stokvel” fundraising principles being one example, which has enabled the church to reflect a more engaged, self-reliant, and culturally relevant form of Anglicanism in the community. The female membership of the constitutes about 80% of the congregation.
Women have played a fundamental role in this self-reliant and indigenous form of Anglican Christianity.
Given my earlier discussion in this section on the inability of the institutional church to harness existing resources to deal with poverty, the role of the stokvel movement and women as the key members, is particularly significant. While academic theologians, economists, and feminists debate the way forward on the macro theoretical level, religious women on the ground have found ways in spaces they create to make a way in the struggle to survive. The practical ways they survive, whether seeking health care for their children or accessing credit, are an integration of all aspects of their lives. In these integrative strategies, the religious aspect plays a major role.