/ 15 July 2011

Up close with disempowerment

Eating from one pot: The dynamics of survival in poor South African households by Sarah Mosoetsa (Wits University Press)

Wits sociology lecturer Sarah Mosoetsa first began visiting KwaZulu-Natal’s shoe, clothing and textile factories in 1999. On subsequent visits she was shocked to discover that many of the women and men who worked in these factories were losing their jobs, so she shifted the focus of her research from the factory floor to the households they were trying to save from complete dysfunction.

In Eating from One Pot, two KwaZulu-Natal communities come into focus — eNhlalakahle, outside Greytown, and Mpumalanga, not far from Pietermaritzburg.

In the Eighties many factory owners began moving from these areas to places where labour was cheaper and that were deemed politically more stable, Mosoetsa writes. This relocation coincided with a drop in production in Pietermaritzburg, a “shoe city” that had provided most of the employment in the area. From the Nineties onwards an estimated 60 factories closed down in Hammarsdale, a town near Mpumalanga township, and resulted in 3?500 job losses.

Over the years Mosoetsa conducted many interviews, which are first presented as case studies.

Later, they are interspersed as quotes to support her arguments about the country’s socioeconomic state and welfare system.

Mosoetsa’s research is exhaustive and reveals a bleak dystopia unravelling in the claustrophobic confines of township dwellings. Mostly the brunt of it is borne by women, who have to be resourceful to keep families afloat, whereas the men struggle with the fact that they have lost ­control of the purse strings.

Fractured social relations
Mosoetsa’s research is insightful, fascinating and depressing. She presents a society of “fractured social relations”, where abuse is spiralling out of control as a direct result of the emasculation men feel as they battle to hold on to some sort of authority in households where once they brought home the bacon. You can emphathise with the women and the added burden on their meagre resources.

Mosoetsa also goes to some lengths to illustrate the weakening of community-based organisations that functioned as safety nets for some households, even dissecting the double-edged nature of the church’s involvement in these ­communities.

As insightful as the text is, though, Mosoetsa’s book on the whole reads like a lost opportunity. Her style of presentation is at odds with the empathy she feels for her ­subjects.

The writing is textbook style — factual, cold and dry — as if she never met any of her subjects or set foot in their houses. It is short on the lucidity and detail one would expect from someone who spent so much time in these townships, dense with the history and political instability that typified the transition to democracy. One can hear the communities’ voices but they are rendered faceless by her decision to intersperse their truncated quotes throughout the book.

Living from hand to mouth
Having said that, her arguments come across loud and clear. In chapter four, “Theoretical and Policy Implications”, she writes: “The study of poor households conducted in this book reveals South Africa’s social and welfare policy framework has not achieved real economic transformation, wealth redistribution or the eradication of poverty. State transfers merely help people live from hand to mouth. Poverty and security levels have not declined for the great majority of the inhabitants of eNhlalakahle and Mpumalanga.”

Research for the book was concluded in 2004 and reading it does feel a bit like stepping back into time and peering into a nightmarish future.