Lone Mothers in South Africa - The role of social security in respecting and protecting dignity.
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Date
2013
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape
Abstract
The purpose of this document is to define the group of people whom we are considering as
part of the project ‘Lone Mothers in South Africa: The role of social security in respecting
and protecting dignity’. Setting to one side the group of interest briefly (‘lone mothers’), the
project originates from research undertaken for the South African Department of Social
Development (DSD) about attitudes to employment and social security (Noble et al., 2008;
Ntshongwana and Wright, 2010a and 2010b; Ntshongwana et al., 2010; Surender et al.,
2007; Surender et al., 2010). During the fieldwork for that programme of research,
participants in focus groups repeatedly made the unprompted point that poverty eroded
their sense of dignity. Given that the South African Constitution declares that people have
inherent dignity and that dignity should be protected and respected (Republic of South
Africa, 1996), we decided to dedicate a separate project to exploring the role that social
security currently plays in relation to people’s sense of dignity. Specifically we hoped to
explore whether social assistance, as a financial transfer to low income people, serves to
help to protect and respect people’s dignity, or conversely whether there are ways in which
the country’s social security arrangements serve to undermine people’s dignity.
Description
Keywords
Lone Mothers, South Africa, Social security, Dignity, Lone Motherhood
Citation
Wright, G. et al. (2013). Lone Mothers in South Africa - The role of social security in respecting and protecting dignity. Policy Brief 4, Bellville: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape