Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Women and wages: gender and the control of income in farm and bantustan households

1990; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057079008708249

1465-3893

John Sharp, Andrew D. Spiegel,

African studies and sociopolitical issues

The argument of this article is based on a close comparison of two Bantustan areas in South Africa: the Matatiele district in the Transkei and Qwaqwa in the Orange Free State. Such comparisons are rarely, if ever, attempted, but we contend that they are potentially very useful in illuminating the complexities of social relationships in South Africa's rural periphery. In this article we concentrate on gender relationships. All the Bantustans share certain characteristics that impinge on the nature of gender relationships. Most significant are the overwhelming dependence of households on income derived from remittances, and the fact that migrant‐contract employment opportunities are mainly restricted to men. But Bantustan areas also differ with regard to the availability of residual productive resources (such as arable and pasture land), their residents’ past involvement in wage‐labour and experiences of forced relocation, and in the forms of material differentiation amongst residents. This article explores the significance of such differences in the cases of Matatiele and Qwaqwa. We show that men's domination and women's responses need to be analysed in the context of local historical and other factors as well as in terms of the macro‐level processes of capitalist expansion. We thus discuss the historical experiences of contemporary residents of our two selected Bantustan areas, as regards their gender relationships, as well as how these are played out in the present circumstances. The article concludes by briefly drawing some parallels between gender relationships in the Bantustans and elsewhere in the underdeveloped world.