The sites for earning a living and for maintaining a family, of production and reproduction, remain geographically separated for many South Africans. Yet the common assumption that only fathers who live with their children provide support for them, substantially underestimates fathers' financial contributions to their children. In this article we examine the association between children's connections to their fathers and paternal support. Using data on 272 children collected as part of a study of Children's Well-Being and Social Connections in the Agincourt sub-district of Mpumalanga, South Africa, we identify three types of connection between children and their fathers and four levels of paternal support. We present empirical evidence on histories of children's residence and support to advance three propositions: first, that children's co-residence with their fathers is neither an accurate nor a sufficient indicator that they are receiving paternal financial support; second, children are as likely to receive financial support from fathers who are not even members of the same household as from fathers with whom they are co-resident and, finally that children who receive support from their fathers for any part of their lives are likely to receive support consistently throughout their lives. These findings underscore the importance of using a more nuanced conceptualisation and more inclusive measurement of father connection and support in order to determine the contributions that men make to their children. Children born since 1991 are significantly less likely to receive support from their fathers than are those born before. This difference is not a reflection of different levels of support for children of different ages but is due to real changes in paternal action.

During 2008, rumours about revolting incestuous encounters between sons and their mothers circulated in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the South African lowveld. This article views these rumours as expressing moral panic, paying particular attention to the historical contexts of their emergence and circulation, and to their temporal orientation. I locate these rumours in the periphery of South Africa's de-industrialising economy, marked by increased unemployment and criminality among men and by a growing prominence of women-headed households. They express a regressive temporalisation and pessimistic vision, not of development, progress and civilisation, but rather of deterioration and de-civilisation. Through the alleged act of incest, sons who engage in crime usurp the authority of fathers who once produced value in strategic industries and mines. As such the rumours envision a dystopia marked by the 'death of the father' and chaotic disorder without morality and law.

The achievement of upward mobility through participation in international labour markets has become possible for nurses in the context of a 'new' democratic South Africa, but this contrasts sharply with the predicament of many in the post-apartheid context, for whom economic vulnerability and unemployment are the prevailing norm. Such a stark contrast has tended to complicate the domestic relations experienced by nurses who, as working professionals, often have significantly greater financial resources and career flexibility than their husbands. Looking at the possibilities and constraints that are created for nurses in their social relationships particularly with their husbands, I draw on Belinda Bozzoli's concept of 'domestic struggles' in order to emphasise the multiplicity and changeability of gendered relations, instead of assuming a single patriarchal status quo.1 Fixed representations of gender roles nonetheless play an important part in nurses' own commentary on migration. While many nurses speak enthusiastically of the possibilities of seeking work overseas, others draw upon familiar representations of female domestic duty to condemn migrants for neglecting their family in pursuit of financial gain. I argue that this criticism is rooted in a fear of the threat that migration presents to existing nursing hierarchies, as a new and powerful tool for status acquisition in the post-apartheid context.

In January of 2000, spectacular fires burned in the natural veld of Cape Town, South Africa. As the fire-fighting effort finished, a theory emerged: invasive alien species, trees from other countries, such as Australia and the United States, were to blame for the fires. While the invasive alien hypothesis captured the attention of media and policy makers alike, there was little ecological evidence to support it. This article places the fires of 2000 in a longer history of post-apartheid policy and science surrounding invasive alien floral species, arguing that the fires allowed for a synergy between concerns over poverty relief, nature conservation, and scientific research. The most visible example of this synergy was an increased commitment to the Working for Water programme on the Cape Peninsula, a large-scale employment programme utilising unskilled labour to clear invasive alien species in order to conserve South African water resources. In addition to providing employment for South Africa's poorest citizens, Working for Water provided funding for ecological research about invasive alien species. The studies that resulted from this funding focused on gathering information to make practical suggestions for invasive species control. Although the focus of these studies was on management, the science used was itself as rigorous as it had ever been. In the post-apartheid era, as poverty relief and nature conservation came together, scientists ensured that they would continue to play a role in nature conservation by making their research relevant to both invasive species control and to poverty relief.

Childcare across sub-Saharan Africa is often socially distributed among adults, with care by the biological mother being one of several options available for children. Children typically move within and outside of large extended kin networks. Based on an ethnographic study of four Ovambo families in Namibia, this article seeks to understand the cultural logic of fostering. Several themes that emerged from the study are discussed here, including the varied motivations of fostering, the cultural scripts of equality, and the rules of reciprocity in exchange, which are involved. Education shapes a mother's choices of care-giving and creates both a supply of children and a demand on households. The implications for HIV/AIDS orphans are discussed.

In August 1992, one of the most remarkable peace initiatives was launched in South Africa when two warring migrant worker hostels began negotiating for a truce. The residents of the African National Congress-aligned Selby hostel and the Inkatha Freedom Party-dominated Jeppe hostel in central Johannesburg had been in open conflict for over a year. By February 1993, over 30 hostels had joined the Hostel Peace Initiative (HPI). Statistics show that violence in the greater Johannesburg region declined drastically during this period; the HPI, as this article argues, played an essential role in this decline. Amid intense political pressures and widespread violence, the HPI represented a grassroots effort by hostel residents to end the conflict. Based on archival research and oral history interviews, this article interrogates the significance of this initiative within the broader context of South Africa's democratic transition. It explores the dynamics within and between hostels, mainly focusing on the roles of internal power structures, migrant networks and external political pressures. The article shows that (headmen) played a vital role in connecting the urban migrant worker hostels with the politics and concerns of the KwaZulu bantustan. Access to land and the future of the bantustan were key in mobilising traditional authorities in the hostels. The article aims to contribute to a fuller understanding of the significance of violence and peace during the transition to democracy in South Africa.

In the early twentieth century, botanists in South Africa's Western Cape sought urgently to popularise and protect the region's unique indigenous Fynbos flora. Plants imported from the 1840s, some of which proved invasive, became a physical and symbolic focus for their advocacy. The botanists' efforts resonated with political attempts to forge a common white South African national identity that drew on notions of landscape and the indigenous flora for symbolism and that consciously exploited the politically integrative potential of the new science of ecology. Introduced by overseas-trained experts, ecological theory was, however, inappropriate for the local flora, and had unfortunate consequences for the scientifically-informed research and management particularly of the fire-maintained Fynbos. While botanists and conservationists were united in defending the local flora against invasive introduced plants, they drew distinctions between what was 'indigenous' and what was 'natural' that further complicated their attitudes to the local flora. These historical debates illuminate agendas and policies on introduced ('alien') and indigenous flora in the region today.

This article assesses the changing conceptions of the environmental impact of South African coal mining in the first half of the twentieth century, with special reference to the Witbank coalfield in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The anticipated development of the emerging coal town of Witbank was founded on the growing demand for coal. As Witbank's local landscape became visibly scarred, coal-based pollution was continually challenged and redefined. In an attempt to market electricity, and appease the doubts of potential consumers, attempts were made by Escom to romanticise features of Witbank's industrialised environment. Once mines were decommissioned, they were abandoned. Coal production increased dramatically during the Second World War, which provided an economic windfall for the local electrical, steel and chemical industries, placing undue pressure on the coal industry to step up production. The severe damage caused by coal mining during this period resulted in the ecological devastation of affected landscapes. The findings of an inter-departmental committee established to conduct research during the mid-1940s revealed the gravity of coal-based pollution, and set a precedent in the way that the state conceived of the impact of industry and mining. The report of this committee was completed in the wake of the war, by which time the Witbank coalfield had become one of the most heavily polluted regions of South Africa.

This article attempts to capture some of the complexity in the way that memory, meaning and agenda interact in the history of the cemetery of Roodepoort West. Roodepoort West was the 'old location' where Africans and others lived until 1955, after which a gradual process of removals took place until 1967, when it was finally destroyed. However, not everything was lost of the old location. The cemetery remained, after unrest caused by the proposed removal of the local cemetery during the late 1950s persuaded the authorities to leave it alone. More recently, the cemetery has played a part in land restitution, becoming both a site of tension and remembrance. This article explores the many meanings attached to the old cemetery, and funerals more broadly, over a period of time beginning from the 1950s to 2005. By looking at the history of funerals, and the cemetery, new insights and an alternative understanding of what it meant to live in an urban area in Apartheid South Africa can be gained.

The waves of popular protest sweeping contemporary South Africa are inadequately explained by anti-globalisation, anti-neoliberal and even anti-government sentiments and analysis. Attention to the gendered dynamics of township life, including the nature of households, gender relations and the critical importance of social welfare provisions to poor women and their households, yields a revised understanding of protests and movements. The Durban-based shack-dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo is used to illustrate these points, as are original quantitative and qualitative data from urban townships in KwaZulu-Natal.

The South African context challenges the conventional categorisation of older persons as dependent after a certain age. The concurrence of old-age pensions, high unemployment, high HIV prevalence, and frailty related to ageing necessitate a more dynamic approach to understanding older persons' social positioning. We examine the extent of change in older persons' social positioning within their households and the correlates of change in a rural community in South Africa. Using data from the Agincourt Health and socio-Demographic Surveillance System and a new typology of older persons' social positioning based on living arrangements, we (1) describe older persons' living arrangements in two time periods; (2) calculate transition probabilities of older persons' changing living arrangements over time; (3) identify possible drivers of change. Results show that while older persons experience stability in living arrangements over time, this stability is more prevalent among those who start in productive roles. Moreover, those who change arrangements are likely to move into productive roles. Taken together, these findings suggest that older South Africans fulfil productive roles in households while simultaneously experiencing ageing-related frailty and diminished labour capacity. These findings underscore the importance of considering ageing as both an individual and a relational process, with implications for older persons and their families.

Botswana's parliamentary democracy features a weak parliament that is ineffective in law making and executive oversight. Conventional explanations emphasise a dominant party system that emerged following independence, lack of operational independence from the executive, and the poor capacity of parliament as factors that undermine its effectiveness. Using a novel dataset that is based on interviews with Members of Parliament (MPs) on a wide range of issues, including their role orientations, this article tests several interrelated hypotheses to investigate whether there is an emerging coalition for change. The article finds that there is a group of opposition MPs that constitutes a coalition for change because they are reform oriented, discuss parliamentary affairs and exercise executive oversight. We argue that this coalition for change is marked by a connected communication structure. The study furthers our understanding of the functioning of parliament as a core institution of Botswana's democracy.

The virus that causes African horsesickness does not affect any indigenous species, but produces high mortality among horses, a species introduced by the Dutch East India Company in 1653. While the insect-borne disease did not occur in the immediate vicinity of the Cape Peninsula, horsesickness could have constituted an endemic disease barrier to the horse-based expansion of the colonial sphere into the hinterland, where it was seasonally prevalent. That it did so to only a limited extent is due to a substantial alteration of the ecology of the disease that largely resulted from inadvertent side effects of anthropogenic modifications of the environment concomitant to the socio-economic development of the colony. This epidemiological transition evolved in two phases that overlapped chronologically but were clearly distinct regionally. It had started in the south-west of the Cape Colony in the later part of the 18th century and, in correlation with, first, the progressive extinction of quagga and zebra populations and, second, the economic intensification of pastoral and agricultural production and accelerated horse travel, gradually shifted over the following century toward its northern and eastern boundaries. During the earlier phase of this process, the area in which horsesickness was seasonally prevalent contracted steadily. However, the subsequent intensification of the utilisation of horses in transport and farming facilitated the recurrence of ever more frequent and economically devastating large-scale epidemics of horsesickness. The history of African horsesickness in the Cape thus provides an instructive example illustrating the unexpected consequences of human modifications of the environment.

The most distressing consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic's impact on children has been the development of child-headed households (CHHs). Child 'only' households challenge notions of the ideal home, family, and 'normal' childhood, as well as undermining international attempts to institute children's rights. The development of these households raises practical questions about how the children will cope without parental guidance during their childhood and how this experience will affect their adulthood. Drawing on ethnographic research with five child heads and their siblings, this article explores how orphaned children living in 'child only' households organise themselves in terms of household domestic and paid work roles, explores the socialisation of children by children and the negotiation of teenage girls' movement. Further, it examines whether the orphaned children are in some way attempting to 'mimic' previously existing family/household gender relations after parental death. The study showed that all members in the CHHs irrespective of age and gender are an integral part of household labour including food production. Although there is masculinisation of domestic chores in boys 'only' households, roles are distributed by age. On the other hand, households with a gender mix tended to follow traditional gender norms. Conflict often arose when boys controlled teenage girls' movement and sexuality. There is a need for further research on CHHs to better understand orphans' experiences, and to inform policy interventions.

Interrogating critiques of the 'African labour aristocracy' thesis, the article proposes that public service industrial-class manual workers in Botswana form, if not a labour 'aristocracy' in the sense first defined by Saul and Arrighi, then a marginal worker 'elite'. They are privileged in having a regular salary above minimum pay, augmented by periodic lump-sum gratuity payments. This sets them apart from the other low-paid workers in the private sector, casual workers in the informal economy and a vast army of unemployed job seekers. In the absence of a national unemployment benefit scheme in Botswana, the article explores some of the strategies deployed by women members of the Manual Workers Union in their attempts to contend with the spectre of future unemployment and impoverishment. In gender terms, the article highlights the independence, autonomy and decision-making capacity of women trade unionist leaders, who straddle the worlds of workers' rights and citizens' rights, and manoeuvre their way through the maze of rules and regulations they encounter in both.

This article examines the contradictions that African girls' schooling presented for colonial governance in Natal, through the case study of Inanda Seminary, the region's first and largest all-female school for Africans. While patriarchal colonial law circumscribed the educational options of girls whose fathers opposed their schooling, the head of Natal's nascent educational bureaucracy argued that African girls' education in Western domesticity would be essential in creating different sorts of families with different sorts of needs. In monogamous families, Native Schools Inspector Robert Plant argued, husbands and sons would be taught to 'want' enough to impel them to labour for wages - but they would also be sufficiently satisfied by their domestic comforts to avoid political unrest. Thus, even as colonial educational officials clamped down on African boys' curricula - attempting to restrict their schooling to the barest preparation for unskilled wage labour - they allowed missionaries autonomy to educate young women whose fathers did not challenge their school attendance. This was because young women's role in the social reproduction of new sorts of families made their education ultimately appear to be a benefit to colonial governance. As young men pursued wage labour, young women began to comprise the majority of African students, laying the groundwork for the feminisation of schooling in modern southern Africa.

Children were central to efforts to eradicate white impoverishment in the Cape Colony in the late nineteenth century. The education and training of poor, white children were believed to be the most effective ways of breaking cycles of poverty, and of ensuring continuing white control over the Cape's resources. Yet a closer reading of the evidence presented to the 1894 Labour Commission and the committee appointed to investigate the Destitute Children Relief Bill suggests that this interest in poor, white children also stemmed from concerns about the children themselves. Destitute white children - both male and female - were described, frequently, as representing a threat to the social, moral, and even economic order, and this view of poor white children shaped official responses to white poverty. This concern for white children reflected not solely their status as 'children' - that they represented the colony's future, were fairly malleable, and could be more easily 'reached' by projects and schemes to eradicate white poverty - but also their problematic class position in a colonial racial order that sought their reform, direction and education into acceptable productive citizens.

This article argues that Portuguese accounts of cannibalism in sixteenth-century southeast Africa reflect important but mostly unrecognised elements of the region's political and cultural history. The article analyses descriptions of the Zimba cannibals in Ethiopia Oriental, written by the Portuguese priest Joo dos Santos. Dos Santos's evidence figures significantly in scholarship for this period, and while many historians include his colourful descriptions of cannibalism, none has taken them seriously, largely dismissing them as a product of European myth-making. In focusing on the question of cannibalism, the article asks not whether the Zimba ate human flesh, nor why they might have, but how dos Santos came to believe that they did. Early modern European cultural outlooks had a role in producing such accounts, but the argument here focuses on how claims of cannibalism reflected African, rather than European, perspectives. Such claims were a vernacular expression of beliefs about, and critiques of, political power in the threatening and unsettled political environment of the time. In transmitting descriptions of cannibalism from African informants, dos Santos acted as an unwitting vehicle for this vernacular critique, conveying its meaning quite imperfectly to his readers.

This article considers the implications of historicising road safety in contemporary South Africa. It offers a critical interrogation of the 'epidemiological turn' evident in recent global road safety campaigns, primarily by 'refiguring' or decentring the archive on road safety in South Africa. Using the frame of 'crash narratives', this study assembles a diverse range of 'fragments' provided through oral testimonies and ethnographic observation of road users including township residents, transport operators, funeral entrepreneurs and their clients, as well as Road Accident Fund (RAF) claimants and associated medico-legal experts. Within this framing, stories of 'black spots' and 'twice deaths' - fatal road accidents en route to funerals - and the personal testimonies of RAF claimants offer a glimpse into wider historicised and contested dynamics around the nature and meaning of road danger and accidental death in South Africa. They also provide a more intimate window onto the lingering bodily and emotional trauma experienced by road accident victims, their families and caregivers, as well as suggest the contours of emergent domestic fault lines shaped by the politics of compensation engendered by the RAF system. Dwelling on this particular 'accidental archive' thus brings into sharper focus the lived experience of the road accident crisis in South Africa and, correspondingly, an appreciation of everyday forms of road safety already at work in township communities.