2010 Annual Ruth First Memorial Lecture, University of the Witwatersrand: Voices from the Margin

Abstract

This lecture sets out to narrate the story of young single mothers living in Mitchell's Plain, a township on the periphery of Cape Town, the choices they make on a daily basis and the exclusion they face. The Ruth First Fellowship allowed me to return to my hometown of Mitchell's Plain, located on the Cape Flats, to research and investigate the plight of single mothers who receive a child support grant from the state. Here I try to narrate a story of a community of women who rely on matriarchal networks to survive; the choices they make. My story of their lives challenges the widespread notion that those receiving the child support grant are living off the state.

Keywords:

• social exclusion
• child support grant
• domestic violence
• feminisation of poverty
• drugs

Notes

See the 2007 study by Saranel Benjamin, ‘The Feminization of Poverty in Post-Apartheid South Africa: a story told by the women of Bayview, Chatsworth’ for a similar account of marginalization.

See http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-188954968.html /April 2010.

Interview with Etienne Vlok, SACTWU, July 2010.

South African Social Agency Statistics, May 2010.

Interview with South African Social Agency Official, June 2010.

Mail&Guardian May 2010.

Interview with criminologist, Irvin Kinnes, 2009.

SAPS statistics, Crime Information Management, Mitchell's Plain precinct, April 2008 – March 2009.

B. Boyle, ‘Protest not just about service delivery’ Sunday Times April 2009.

S. Friedman, ‘Volley of factual blanks on war on social grants’. Business Day July 2010:7.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Crystal Orderson

Specialist Television Journalist