Faculty of Humanities
School of Social Sciences
Department of Sociology
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
The aim of this research study entitled: Poverty and Inequality in Greater Tshwane was initiated to create a better understanding of the ways in which poverty and ill-health shape the lives of people living in four areas of Greater Tshwane or more specifically how individuals experience poverty, what health problems are predominantly experienced and what strategies are incorporated by “the poor” to increase their chances of survival.
In addition, the study set out to identify individual’s perceptions of the state and the role it plays in poverty alleviation. The areas included in the study are Danville, Eersterust, Laudium and Soshanguve.
The study – launched in 2002 and completed in 2005 – found that the majority of Tshwane’s “poor” live socially isolated existences. If faced with financial crises, the majority rely on themselves or the members of their household and to a lesser extend on their neighbours.
They participate in the activities of religious organisations to break out of their isolation. Approximately 63% of people in all four areas attend church and other religious services on a weekly basis, while an additional 15% attend services regularly during a month. The study found that religious services offer respondents spiritual satisfaction as well as personal and psychological well being.
On the question of health, the survey highlighted cholesterol, heart disease and respiratory ailments as most common. There is a high level of awareness regarding HIV/AIDS, but the racial groups differ radically in their perception of who is affected by this pandemic and how one contracts the disease.
Vulnerability is evident when the household sizes of the lowest income group are studied. Among households earning incomes of less than R1 000, six out of ten in both Eersterust and Soshanguve support four or more household members. This drops to approximately five out of ten in Laudium and two out of ten in Danville. Approximately 23% of all people in these four areas often or sometimes stay without food because they do not have sufficient money.
On a political level, it was found that interest in participating in formal political processes – such as registering and voting – is dwindling. The majority of respondents indicated that they voted in the 1994 and 1999 elections, but not in the 2004 election. They consider voting as “a waste of time and that the state is doing too little, if anything to improve their lives”.
The study further indicates that 45% of respondents claim that their situations have worsened since 1994, 31% feel that nothing has changed and 24% say that there have been no improvements. The majority also indicated that their parents were better off in the past than they are currently.
Prof JI Grobbelaar
Sociology
+27 (0) 12 420 3744
janis.grobbelaar@up.ac.za
This research project was part of a comparative regional study on Globalisation and Xenophobia. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana were the focus of the study, which was done under the auspices of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria).
The main objectives of the study – launched in 2003 and completed in 2005 - were to gather information on xenophobia towards foreign migrants from Africa in Pretoria and Johannesburg, and to provide a historical and theoretically embedded explanation for the paradoxical increase in xenophobia in South Africa in a period of democratisation. Current accounts of xenophobia in terms of globalisation, migration, unemployment, and isolation amongst others, were considered to be at best, partial.
It was found that in order to make sense of such a complex phenomenon it was important to situate it within changing conceptions of citizenship. In order to do this adequately, a historical context was necessary, in particular one of the relationship between migrant labour and the exclusion from citizenship under the apartheid state.
It was also found that the changing character of South African nationalism was contiguous with xenophobia as its character in the 1980s was largely inclusive, while in the 1990s it gradually acquired an exclusive form.
Finally the characteristics of nation-building as reflected in the statements of politicians, legislation, the press and the actions of various government departments was found to be highly conducive to an exclusionary conception of the nation within the public domain, which provided the conditions for the development of popular xenophobic prejudices.
Prof MJ Neocosmos
Sociology
+27 (0) 12 420 4908
michael.neocosmos@up.ac.za
|
