Abstract
In settings of increased inequality, where rising prosperity for some spells penury for others, savings clubs enable new types of communality to be created – especially by women – which mediate, or are mediated by, new inequalities and dependencies. Changing gender dynamics and challenges to patriarchal authority, arising from apartheid-induced relocation and, later, the expansion of a somewhat gender-skewed state grant system, now find expression in the relative autonomy enjoyed by some female civil servants and informal traders. More than simply ‘loose ends’ of apartheid's homeland system, women's savings clubs are being woven together into new fabrics of intensified solidarity. But not everyone can benefit equally from these sociable arrangements. Clubs occupy a point of intersection between two trends. One comprises modern roles and concerns associated with upward mobility in democratic South Africa. The other is evident in pockets of apparent informality and customary mutuality, where egalitarian sociability predominates. Setting out an arena linked to, but discrete from, that of capitalism, the clubs help members alternately accommodate and defy capitalism's imperatives, while also fending off demands made by poorer relatives, neighbours, and those with too few resources to belong to clubs.
Highlights
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Changing gender dynamics and challenges to patriarchal authority, arising from apartheid-induced relocation and, later, the expansion of a somewhat gender-skewed state grant system, find expression in the relative autonomy enjoyed by some female civil servants and informal traders
Setting out an arena linked to, but discrete from, that of capitalism, the clubs help members alternately accommodate and defy capitalism’s imperatives, while fending off demands made by poorer relatives, neighbours, and those with too few resources to belong to clubs
Summary
A notable feature is the way most women belong to a proliferation of clubs. This point is made in the literature, but there has been more interest in classifying the different ‘types’ according to their functions, and in analysing the separate rationales of these,[31] than in exploring why and how a given saver’s memberships dovetail and combine. Sophie claims that the reason for her multiple memberships and for the central role she plays (she is treasurer of one and a keen and reliable member of the others) is her position as an outsider in this community. She came to the village from Swaziland to marry, and has no relatives here. The treasurer made off with the month’s proceeds, through an ingenious form of collusion with the teller She visited the bank to make the monthly withdrawal of funds, accompanied by two older members, as the club’s constitution dictated. Thomson and Deborah Posel, ‘The Management of Risk by Burial Societies in South Africa’, South African Actuarial Journal, 2 (2002), pp. 83 –127. 32 Verhoef, ‘Informal Financial Service Institutions’
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