Money and sociality in South Africa's informal economy

This 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.Web of Scienc

Working in fear? Managers’ and petrol attendants’ experiences of public-initiated violence at selected petrol stations in Johannesburg

Abstract: A general consensus generated from various news articles is that violence in the workplace is on the rise and that the workplace is no longer considered safe for many employees. Although some employees such as police officers and prison guards might encounter violence at work to some degree, more and more employees are experiencing the effects of public-initiated violence at work. They include petrol attendants working on the forecourts of petrol stations. Recently, Kole (2010) conducted research on the security measures to reduce workplace violence at petrol stations in Gauteng and highlighted issues and challenges that petrol stations face on a daily basis regarding workplace violence. Kole recommended several prevention strategies to reduce violent crimes at petrol stations. The aim of this study is to add knowledge on this phenomenon by focusing on selected petrol stations in Johannesburg, to understand whether they experience similar issues and challenges regarding workplace violence and what strategies they use to prevent these issues and challenges. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five managers and fifteen petrol attendants working at these selected petrol stations in Johannesburg in 2015. These interviews focused on violent Type I and non-violent Type II workplace violence that occur at their petrol stations

Resilience and Resistance Among Migrant Male Domestic Workers in South Africa

Despite the large body of scholarly research that has addressed the various challenges encountered by female domestic workers,there exists a notable gap in understanding the experiences of male domestic workers in South Africa. The present study seeks to bridge this gap by exploring the experiences of ten black African migrant male domestic workers in Johannesburg. Drawing upon Katz’s framework of disaggregated agency, encompassing resilience, reworking, and resistance strategies, the study demonstrates that in the absence of collective resistance through unionisation, male domestic workers employ resilience and reworking strategies to improve their material well-being. Decision-making processes regarding migration to South Africa, engaging in job-hopping, and engaging in multiple piece jobs are examples of the resilience and reworking strategies used by male domestic workers to improve their living conditions. This study shows that paid domestic work in South Africa, whether performed by men or women, is not withoutchallenges, but that male domestic workers exhibit agency by utilising various strategies to navigate and mitigate some of these challenges

In Conversation with Professor Jacklyn Cock, Author of Maids and Madams

David du Toit: Your book, Maids and Madams, is one of the seminal texts in domestic work literature in South Africa. What inspired you to write about domestic work during the apartheid era

Allergy and infant feeding guidelines in the context of resource-constrained settings

Recent discussions about the need for revised infant feeding guidelines in the context of allergy are founded in substantial evidence-based research. Key studies (Table I)1-5 undertaken in high-income country settings provide evidence that the introduction of allergenic foods (eg, cow’s milk protein, egg, peanuts, fish, sesame, and wheat) to infant diets before the age of 6 months might significantly reduce the risk of food allergy at older ages. Although such a strategy does not promote supplanting breastfeeding with the introduction of a diverse set of foods early on, it will shorten the duration of exclusive breast-feeding [EBF], replacing it with ‘‘partial breast-feeding,’’ the combination of breast-feeding with other fluids or solids, and most likely lead to a reduction in overall duration of breast-feeding.IS

Another Bloody Clean-Up: The Experiences of Trauma Cleaners in South Africa

South Africa has one of the highest violent crime rates globally, where physical and emotional trauma is used in homicides and suicides. While this is apparent to the ordinary South African, what is less clear is what happens after the police and forensics have done their job at a crime scene: Who cleans up the bloody mess? In South Africa, as in many other nations, trauma cleaners restore the scenes where homicides and suicides have been committed, and where industrial accidents have taken place. Little to no scholarly research has been conducted on the experiences of the cleaners of trauma scenes. Cleaning up these scenes consists of labour charged with violence that most cannot countenance, but which the cleaner must face. Drawing on 13 qualitative interviews, this article explores the challenges of cleaning up a site where violent and/or traumatic acts have occurred, and how the cleaners develop strategies to cope with their own concomitant trauma. The cleaners are exposed to various health and safety issues, as well as the emotional trauma associated with cleaning up horrific accidents and crimes. Findings show that trauma cleaners emotionally distance themselves from the violence to which they bear witness and use emotional labour, spirituality, humour, and debriefing as coping strategies. In its conclusion, this article suggests a greater acknowledgement of trauma cleaners’ responsibilities and recommends that proper physical and emotional training is necessary to ensure their wellbeing

The African Elephant and Rhino Group Nyeri meeting

Outlines the discussion and data presentation at the May 1987 AERSG meeting at Nyeri, Kenya. Elephant population estimates and reviews of them in different regions and specific areas, the illegal trade and the quota system and conservation progammes are discuss

The design of a visitor education and research centre for Sutherland, Western Cape

The modern visitor centre evolved rapidly with the world wide growth in tourism and its significant contribution to local economies. This new building type has provided many new opportunities for architects to work on small to medium size building with a greater meaning attached to them. However, architects would now have to deal with the problems that tourists bring! How must architects incorporate local history, culture and memory? The visitor centre is the combination of the local tourism office and museum. This new type of building is a combination of those formerly distinct building types which had two separate and different functions. “gateway building” The contemporary visitor centre combines the distribution of tourist/visitor information with the interpretation of particular regions. This interpretation of cultural and natural history links the visitor centre to the local history museum, however whereas local history museums often struggle with expanding collections, limited resources and low visitation levels, visitor centres have been able to attract greater government funding. The media of interpretation also differs dramatically, with visitor’s centres often using multimedia technology to enliven cultural history or educational displays. However they can also suffer from static displays which having been viewed once, discourage repeat visits. What is a contemporary visitor centre? Figure 1: Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Showing centre as “icon” building. This interpretation role of visitor centres has resulted in them becoming a major focus for visitation. The must-see status of these buildings is often pursued through dramatic form. Briefs for visitor centres often demand an “icon” envisaging that the building will itself, become a marketable destination. Buildings that try and become destinations in themself often run the risk of not promoting the area or location but rather them self. Visitor centres can therefor contribute to the transformation of destinations in both positive and negative ways. They can either help with economic, environmental and cultural revival of regions or they can be involved in changing places and overshadowing the very features they are meant to enhance

Trading on a grant: Integrating formal and informal social protection in post-apartheid migrant networks

This paper describes the findings of in-depth qualitative case studies based research on how poor and marginalised people in post-apartheid migrant networks seek to ameliorate poverty and manage their vulnerability. It argues that the ways in which people make decisions regarding formal social grants and cash transfers, their utilisation and their indirect impacts need to be understood in the context of the pre-existing and underlying systems and practices of informal social protection (Bracking and Sachikonye 2006). These informal strategies are shaped by two key phenomena (du Toit and Neves 2008): first, they depend crucially on the complex, spatially extended, de- centred social networks created by domestic fluidity and porosity in an environment of continued migrancy. Second, these networks are partly constituted by - and provide the underpinnings for - deeply sedimented and culturally specific practices of reciprocal exchange. This paper shows how social grants are used in this context. A detailed consideration of the case study material illustrates how cash transfers allow poor and vulnerable people to make 'investments' in human, physical and productive capital. The paper argues that a crucial aspect of the impact of cash transfers lies in the way they allow the leveraging of resources within networks of reciprocal exchange. Cash transfers, instead of 'crowding out' private remittances, can be seen to enable households and individuals to negotiate about the distribution of scarce resources within spatially distributed networks. Social grants thus have an impact far beyond the particular groups targeted in official plans. Crucially, given the existence of unequal power relations and practices of exclusion and exploitation within the informal social protection arrangements, social grants often provide key resources for those who would otherwise be marginalised. At the same time, they have only limited utility in addressing the core dynamics that drive chronic poverty. Reducing structural poverty in South Africa requires measures that address the underlying problems of structural unemployment