Dr Jamela Basani Hoveni argues that elderly Black women in rural South Africa perform unpaid childcare, effectively subsidizing state and private employers through social grants. Drawing from experiences in Mafarana, Limpopo, she highlights the burden on these grandmothers amid high child poverty rates.
Rural households in South Africa headed by elderly Black women, where many children live, rely on social grants for survival. These women provide unpaid childcare due to lacking infrastructure, supporting the workforce in a low-wage economy, according to Dr Jamela Basani Hoveni, Head of Policy and Research at the Commission for Gender Equality. Her analysis focuses on grannies in Mafarana, Limpopo, who care for grandchildren amid unemployment, parental illness, or death of parents. Black African children are more likely to live without either parent and in multi-generational households marked by poverty (73.2% poverty rate for Black African children, compared to 43.6% for Coloured, 6.1% for White, and 20.1% for Indian children). Child poverty hits rural areas hardest, with poor Early Childhood Development programmes noted in South Africa's 2023 SDG Country Report. Apartheid policies have left Black women disproportionately responsible for care in resource-constrained settings, worsened by climate change-induced droughts and diseases. Grannies extend care beyond physical needs, including cultural socialization via Tsonga oral storytelling and invoking Ubuntu philosophy: “munhu i munhu hi vanhu,” emphasizing interdependence. This role contributes to time poverty, reduced well-being, school lateness for girls, low female labour force participation, and gender wage gaps. Hoveni calls for policies to recognize and redistribute unpaid care work to support gender equality.
