Money and violence : financial self-help groups in a South African township

This ethnography is about the way in which Xhosa migrants in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa, collectively manage their money in financial self-help groups, also known as financial mutuals. This is an umbrella term for a myriad of collective financial arrangements that are mostly informal. In South Africa they are known locally as 'umgalelo', stokvel, savings, gooi-gooi, throw-throw, back-to-school, 'umasingcwabane', 'umasiphekisane' and 'umasingcedane' and include burial societies, rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCA), and accumulating savings and credit associations (ASCRA). Financial mutuals are islands of hope for Xhosa migrants surrounded by insecurity, unemployment, murder, rape and social conflict. Migrants have de-politicized their financial mutuals and created a place where they can feel secure and trusted and where money is in their control. Particularly women have created these de-politicized social spaces. Based on fieldwork in Indawo Yoxolo, the author explores the nexus of money and social interdependencies within an extremely threatening context, discussing anxiety among members of financial mutuals, the fragility of solidarity and trust, as well as the emergence of conflicts with kin, household members, and neighbours, over desperately needed money, and its consumption. [ASC Leiden abstract

Redes de inclusão e burocracias de exclusão: riscos e seguros de responsabilidade civil entre os mais pobres na África do Sul

Nos últimos anos as grandes empresas da África do Sul têm vindo a criar uma variedade de apólices de seguro que visa abranger aqueles até então excluídos, na sua maioria não-brancos pobres e de classe média. Neste artigo analiso as definições de custos e riscos, bem como a tentativa de poupar custos contando com o capital social dos mais pobres. Esta análise trará uma nova dimensão aos já acesos debates em torno do risco, desigualdade e capital social. A pesquisa levada a cabo junto de clientes que habitam em townships da Cidade do Cabo, bem como de correctores de seguros, actuários e outros envolvidos no mundo dos seguros, demonstra de que forma os custos das apólices estão directamente relacionados com a grande variedade de riscos e adversidades a que os mais carenciados estão sujeitos. Demonstra ainda o modo como as seguradoras mobilizam o seu capital social para ganhar acesso a novos mercados – por vezes com consequências desastrosas – e têm, em simultâneo, uma complexidade burocrática que dificulta o recebimento das compensações por parte dos clientes. Este estudo sugere, contra-intuitivamente, que a rápida expansão do mercado dos seguros pode agravar os riscos a que os mais pobres estão expostos e aumentar as desigualdades.Recently, large-scale South African companies are establishing a myriad of policies that aim to incorporate the previously excluded, mostly non-White, poor and middle classes. Here I examine definitions of risks and costs, as well as the attempt to save costs by relying on social capital among the poor. This casts a new light on lively debates on risk, inequality, and social capital. Research among clients living in the townships of Cape Town, as well as among insurance brokers, actuaries, and others involved in the world of insurance, reveal how policy costs are directly related to the many risks and adversities that the poor are exposed to. It reveals how insurers mobilize social capital to gain access to new markets – sometimes with disastrous consequences – and simultaneously have complex bureaucracies that make it very difficult for clients to submit claims successfully. This study counter-intuitively suggests that the rapid expansion of insurance could aggravate risks that the poor are exposed to and could increase inequalities

Wealth-in-people and practical rationality: aspirations and decisions about money in South Africa

This article explores crucial decisions made by Sylvia, a Xhosa woman living in the townships of Cape Town, during a period of approximately thirty years. These decisions involved large sums of money and had important consequences for her own life, for those of her son and grandchild, and for the relationships she had with her first and second husbands and in‐laws. Sylvia's decisions continued to be influenced by gendered ways of belonging to ancestors and descendants but also show important changes in connecting wealth and people. The wealth‐in‐people approach offers important insights into how Sylvia's decisions are guided by power and control over people as well as by prestige. However, it also becomes evident that the wealth‐in‐people approach does not sufficiently explain or theorize the agency of people. By drawing on the philosophical notion of practical rationality as a complementary analytical perspective, I explore agency in relation to aspirations and the acquisition of new open‐ended values. The perspective offered by practical rationality increases our understanding of how individual decisions, especially complex decisions around money, are made because of their transformative potential and the aspiration to cultivate oneself.Horizon 2020(H2020)Global Challenges (FSW

INTRODUCTION: MUTUAL HELP IN AN ERA OF UNCERTAINTY

Global Challenges (FSW

THE JANUS FACE OF INSURANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA: FROM COSTS TO RISK, FROM NETWORKS TO BUREAUCRACIES

An anthropology of value that fails to address prices is unsatisfactory, and so are studies of risk and reflexive categories that don’t take into account the composition, levels, conditions, and consequences of price. (Guyer 2009: 219) INSURING SOUTH AFRICA’S POOR South Africa is a society in which people, particularly the urban poor, are forced to deal with tremendous risks. AIDS is spreading at an alarming rate and some estimates are that almost 30 per cent of the population is HIV-positive.1 Particularly the poor and lower middle classes have to live with the danger of being robbed, murdered, assaulted or raped. South Africa has the world’s highest murder, homicide and assault rates, as well as the highest rate of reported rapes (see Bähre 2007).2 For residents of townships in urban areas such as Cape Town the police are simply unavailable.3 AIDS, violence and loss of income affect many people: household members look after the diseased, income is lost, debts accumulate due to funeral costs, and people are traumatized by illness and death of loved ones (ibid.). For these reasons, risk mitigation through insurance can b

A TRICKLE-UP ECONOMY: MUTUALITY, FREEDOM AND VIOLENCE IN CAPE TOWN'S TAXI ASSOCIATIONS

Mutuality is at the heart of the continued violence and inequality in South Africa. This historical and anthropological analysis of Cape Town's taxi associations reveals how mutuality has become strongly connected with violence and economic marginalization. The breakdown of apartheid led to new mutualities along the rural-urban divide, which resulted in taxi wars between ‘urban insiders' and ‘rural outsiders'. After liberation from apartheid, mutuality within Cape Town's taxi associations became a central issue in government policy and commercial interests, which contributed to taxi associations becoming mafia-like organizations. This analysis reveals that taxi owners today find themselves in a trickle-up economy characterized by: violent and shifting mutualities; the embrace of illegality and informality as being vital to doing business; and strong economic intervention by the state.Global Challenges (FSW