Cash transfers and poverty reduction in South Africa: a case study of old age pensions
- Authors: Kasere, Gayle Farai
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Poverty -- Economic aspects -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Poverty -- Grahamstown -- Eastern Cape Social security -- South Africa Pensions -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3321 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003109
- Description: Social assistance in the form of cash grants is a large and fiscally costly component of anti-poverty policy in South Africa. A critical question arises: Are the grants effective tools for reducing poverty in South Africa and, moreover, how significant is their impact on poverty? As a measure of reducing poverty, the government has expanded the social grants system since the advent of the new democracy in 1994. The country's social grant system is quite comprehensive and it is intended to cover vulnerable individuals over their life course from childhood to adulthood and into old age. Policy discourse surrounding the grants centres on the sustainability of the system and its implications for socio-economic development and poverty alleviation. It is therefore important that the significance of grants is identified and assessed particularly in relation to very poor households. This dissertation focuses specifically on one particular grant, namely, the old age pension. It does so in the context of the sustainable livelihoods conceptual framework and the history of the social grant system in South Africa. Statistical data collected by the South African government as well as more localised evidence gathered in the Eastern Cape town of Grahamstown is used to ascertain the significance of old age pensions for poverty reduction. While there is some evidence to suggest that pensions contribute to poverty reduction, this does not translate into poverty alleviation. In fact, there is some unevenness in the impact of pensions on poverty. In this regard, the decision-making structures in poor households regularly influence the way pension money is allocated and used within households. Grant money is normally shared in extended households, such that the pension does not simply benefit the recipient but the recipient's household as a whole. Although there is cause for concern regarding the propensity of social grants to affect people's behaviour negatively, there is a case to be made for retaining grants as an important, though not the only, form of anti-poverty strategy. This highlights the need for continued research on the social grant system and pensions more specifically.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Fast track land reform programme and women in Goromonzi district, Zimbabwe
- Authors: Chakona, Loveness
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Land reform -- Research -- Zimbabwe Land settlement -- Government policy -- Zimbabwe Land reform beneficiaries -- Zimbabwe Sex discrimination against women -- Zimbabwe Women's rights -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3317 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003105
- Description: From the year 2000, land became the key signifier for tackling the unfinished business of the decolonisation process in Zimbabwe, notably by rectifying the racially-based land injustices of the past through land redistribution. This took the form of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). However, the racialised character and focus of the FTLRP tended to mask or at least downplay important gender dimensions to land in Zimbabwe. Colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe (up to 2000) had instigated, propagated and reproduced land ownership, control and access along a distinctively patriarchal basis which left women either totally excluded or incorporated in an oppressive manner. This patriarchal structuring of the land question was rooted in institutions, practices and discourses. Although a burgeoning number of studies have been undertaken on the FTLRP, few have had a distinctively gender focus in seeking to identify, examine and assess the effect of the programme on patriarchal relations and the socio-economic livelihoods of rural women. This thesis makes a contribution to filling this lacuna by offering an empirically-rich study of land redistribution in one particular district in Zimbabwe, namely, Goromonzi District. This entails a focus on women on A1 resettlement farms in the district (and specifically women who came from nearby customary areas) and on women who continue to live in customary areas in the district. My thesis concludes that the FTLRP is seriously flawed in terms of addressing and tackling the patriarchal structures that underpin the Zimbabwean land question.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Smashing the crystal ball: post-structural insights associated with contemporary anarchism and the revision of blueprint utopianism
- Authors: Alexander, Tarryn Linda
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Social change , Utopian socialism -- Philosophy , Utopias -- Philosophy , Anarchism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3311 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003099 , Social change , Utopian socialism -- Philosophy , Utopias -- Philosophy , Anarchism
- Description: This thesis is an exploration of the images which define revolution's meaning. It suggests a possible shifting of emphasis from the scientific imaginary which centres on identifying the correct way to totalising revolution, towards a post-structuralist-anarchistic imaginary which privileges prefigurative radicalisations of social relations in the here and now. It looks specifically at how the field of post-structuralism intertwines with historically anarchist concepts to generate an horizon of social change animated by experimental and open-ended transformations. While the thesis offers positive characterisations of the types of contemporary movements, tactics and principles which embody the change from closed to open utopianism, it is chiefly a commentary on the role of theory in depicting the complexity of relations on the ground and the danger of proposing one totalising pathway from one state of society to another. It asks the reader to consider, given the achievements of movements and given the insights of post-structuralism, whether it is still worthwhile to proclaim certainty when sketching the possibilities for transcendence toward emancipation, an aim, which in itself, is always under construction. I engage this by firstly establishing a practical foundation for the critique of endpoints in theory by exploring the horizontal and prefigurative nature of a few autonomous movements today. Secondly I propose the contemporary theory of post-structuralist anarchism as concomitant with conclusions about transformation made in the first chapter. Finally I recommend a few initial concepts to start debate about the way forward from old objectivist models of transformation. The uncertainties of daily life, crumbling of economic powers and rapid pace of change in the twenty-first century have opened up fantastic spaces for innovative thought. Reconsidering old consensus around what constitutes a desirable image of revolution is of considerable importance given today's burgeoning bottom-up political energy and the global debate surrounding the possibilities for bottom-up revolutionisation of society. I submit that theories which portray stories of permanent, pure and natural end-points to revolution are deficient justifications for radical action.
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- Date Issued: 2012