Paper Short Abstract:

Using the case of a multigenerational female-headed household in the South African township Khayelitsha, I trace the state slippages and women’s survival strategies to "access" social protection to meet their immediate needs, while grappling with dementia, HIV and a growing childcare burden.

Paper Abstract:

Following the apartheid regime that only provided for the white minority, social protection and redistribution of services and resources remain a pressing and perhaps insurmountable task in South Africa. From the mid-to late-1990s, progress towards achieving racial equality and redistribution were threatened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. HIV/AIDS claimed and disrupted lives, orphaned children and called for assistance from a wide range of local and international actors that could provide care, treatment and support beyond the government’s capacity.

Despite the rights and entitlements enshrined in South African law, today township residents continue to struggle with persistent unemployment and lack of access to basic services, including housing, sanitation, healthcare and education. The majority of households are multigenerational, and heavily if not solely dependent on government social assistance- most often in the form of the older person’s grant (for people over 60 years) and child support grants. Drawing a decade’s ethnographic data collected in Khayelitsha township, I problematise the notion of “access” to social protection, in the context of a single household of three generations of teenage mothers. This paper traces the state slippages and women’s survival strategies in attempt to meet their immediate needs, while caring for a great grandmother with dementia, a grandmother living with HIV and growing burden of childcare needs. I argue that families like this use creative and flexible strategies to make even precarious gains towards the creation and sustenance of a familial social and financial safety net.