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New Contree, No. 46 (November 1999) 31

STOKVELS AND ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: THE CASE OF

AFRICAN WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, CA.1930-1998

Grietjie Verhoef

(Department of Historical Studies, Rand Afrikaans University)

Opsomming

Verwantskapverhoudings in tradisionele gemeenskappe het vroue onderwerp aan die gesag van mans en ouer vroue. Vroue behoort aan hu/le mans en hu/le reg om in die kraal te woon het afgehang van haar verwantskap tot een of ander man, lewend of afgestorwe. Ingevolge die kommunale grondbesitstelsel kon vroue nie grond erf nie, maar dit het vererf na haar kinders. Vroue het vruggebruik van hul afgestorwe eggenotes

se

grond behou. Wanneer vroue uit die tradisionele sektor uitbeweeg het, het die moontlikheid ontstaan om vI}' en onafhanklik van die man te word. Swart vroue wat stedelike gebiede toe getrek het, het self 'n inkome begin verdien. Dikwels het weduwees deur verstedeliking begin om 'n onafhanklike lewe te skep. In hierdie stedelike omgewing het vroue ondememend oorgegaan tot informele sektor aktiwiteite, maar hu/le het toegang tot kontant ontwikkel waarvoor hu/le dan stokve/le gestig het. Stokve/le was sosio-ekonomiese ondersteuningstelsels om daaglikse bestaansbehoeftes asook later langtermyn aan krediet aan te spreek. In hierdie artikel word die stokvel as tipiese ROSCA-organisasie ontleed. Die verskillende verskyningsvorme van stokve/le word bespreek asook die funksies daarvan in die Swart gemeenskappe. Ten sloffe word verwys na die pogings tot integrasie van stokve/le in die formele finansiiHe stelsel. Die artikel is krities ten aansien van die mate waartoe formele finansiele instellings die bewese spaargeneigdheid van hierdie organisasies erken en op grond daarvan toegang tot krediet ver/een.

Summary

Women tend to be 'invisible' in society. In African communities women's participation in production and relative control over the means and fruits of production is often underestimated, leading to inadequate incorporation of women in macro-economic planning.' In the South African context particular attention is currently given to gender equality and specifically to women as the predominant financial managers of rural

households in the informal sector.2 _{Women have been creative in devising life}

strategies for survival in changing environments, e.g. through socio-economic innovation. This paper addresses the transition of African women into the urban environment and investigates how informal savings organisations have been utilised to enhance economic survival and independence. The last part of the paper focuses on strategies towards the incorporation of women in the formal financial structure.

, E.A. Baerends, "Changing kinship, family and gender relations", in C. Riseeuwand K. Ganesh (eds), Negotiation and social space. A gendered analysis of changing kin and security networks in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (New Delhi, 1998), p. 51.

2 See e.g., RP 38/1996: Interim Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the provision of rural financial services, 7 March 1996, p. 4.

STOKVELS AND ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: THE CASE OF

AFRICAN WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, CA.1930-1998

Opsomming

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Summary

STOKVELS AND ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: THE CASE OF

AFRICAN WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, CA.1930-1998

Opsomming

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Summary

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V> N 32 Grietjie Verhoef

1. Women in the traditional economies

A basic understanding of the role of a woman in the traditional economy explains the entrepreneurial and managerial abilities illustrated by her adjustment into the urban

environment. In traditional African societies monogamous and polygamous marriages

existed. Women were not allowed to have more than one husband. In the traditional

household women performed important economic roles. The household evolved around the woman. Households with more than one wife would take on a compound nature. The marriage establishes a 'house' of the woman concerned, which centred around one wife and her children, rather than around the husband. The so-called

'house' (Nguni

=

indlu, Sotho

=

lapa) formed the centre of social and domestic

arrangements.3 _{The husband had specific responsibilities towards the woman and her}

children, e.g. he must provide dwellings and a means to maintain a livelihood, i.e. fields, kitchen, granary.4 Livestock was usually attached to the 'house' and it remained a 'house' property - it was inviolable and was employed to benefit the children of that 'house'. The wife and her children worked the fields and cultivated the land. The 'house' thus revolved around her, but she was subordinate to the mother of the husband and the husband. She did not own property privately - it belonged to her 'house'. The woman's right to live in a homestead thus depended on her relationship

to some man, alive or dead.s The woman's independence increased with the birth of

children, but the subordination to the mother-in-law remained until the latter's death. This follows the passing of rights over the woman from her father to her husband and his family. These rights include control over her activities, productive and reproductive. Her traditional household duties depended on her relationship to her husband. Should her husband die, she could not inherit the land - it was communal land. T,he property

of the 'house' and the land was inherited by the children of that house.6

. The widow

might retain the use of a deceased man's fields. On quitrents theoretically nothing could prohibit a woman from acquiring land by purchase, but it was official policy to

prevent such acquisitionJ

Urbanisation was often the only strategy towards full economic independence. Men often disapproved, but the town environment was attractive to women. There they could earn an income independently from the 'house' and dispose of it according to need. She could conceal it from the 'house' and her husband and live an independent

3 E. Preston-Whyte, "Kinship and marriage", in W.O. Hammond-Tooke, The Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa (London, 1974), pp. 179-180; WA Hoemle, "Social organisation", in

I. Schapera, The Bantu-speaking tribes of South Africa. An ethnographical survey (Cape Town,

1950), pp. 69-70; B. Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng. Consciousness, life strategy and migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 (Johannesburg, 1991), pp. 40-42.

4 Preston-Whyte, "Kinship and marriage", p. 180; Baerends, "Changing kinship, family and gender relations", p. 52.

5 P. Mayer, Townsmen or tribesmen (Cape Town, 1971), pp. 233-234; Preston-Whyte, "Kinship and marriage", pp. 182-183.

• B. Sansom, "Traditional economic systems", in Hammond-Tooke, Bantu-speaking peoples, pp. 160-162; Mayer, Townsmen or tribesmen, pp. 233-234.

7 Mayer, Townsmen or tribesmen, p. 234.

32 Grietjie Verhoef

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7 Mayer, Townsmen or tribesmen, p. 234.

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Stokvels and economic empowerment 33

life. Rapid urbanisation occurred during the 1920s and 1930s in South Africa when severe droughts and the impact of the depression reduced rural self sufficiency. Industrialisation in South Africa provided opportunities for men and women from rural African and white Afrikaner communities to earn a 'cash' income or to supplement rural

subsistence with wage labour8 _{A 'dual economy' as a life strategy for women (inter}

alia) to extend earnings beyond the traditional rural sector, emerged.

Women were not ill-equipped for economic independence in urban centres. In the traditional environmenttheyorganised the 'house', thus developing managerial abilities. They also showed wilfulness and independence from patriarchal control by moving to towns. Urbanisation did not change the legal position of women but created an environment where life skills could be utilised towards self empowerment. The choice exercised by African women, to live in townships and to construct and maintain a household there, indicated a change in the nature and purpose of earning an income. To unmarried women economic activity in urban areas meant breaking free, accumulating dowry and supplementing parental support. To married women it meant supplementing 'house' income as well as constructing and supporting her own household."

African women in towns engaged in a variety of informal sector activities to generate cash income. This paper will not explore all these activities, but it is important to note that such activities were inadequate to maintain families. Women pioneered 'stokvels' into their urban social environment to supplement income, social needs and future needs.

2. Stokvels as savings institutions

Stokvels are typical informal rotating savings and credit associations, ROSCA's, as they are known in third world countries. These are community based self-help organisations such as savings clubs and friendly societies that have emerged in economically deprived societies where formal means towards the alleviation of financial needs were

either inaccessible or did not exist. '

°

The name "stokvel" was derived from the

nineteenth century Eastern Cape "stock fairs" of the English speaking settler stock farmers. The black farmers and labourers who attended these fairs, engaged in a lively interaction of ideas, SOCialising and gambling. Gatherings became regular meetings of

8 Sansom, "Traditional economic systems", pp. 163-167; Mayer, Townsmen or tribesmen, p.

234; Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng, pp. 4, 129.

9 Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng, pp. 122, 134; Mayer, Tribesmen or townsmen, p. 234; E.

Hellman, "The Native in the towns", in Shapera, Bantu speaking tribes, pp. 406, 409-410; Mayer,

Tribesmen or townsmen, p. 93.

10 T. Besley, S. Coate and G. Loury, "The economics of rotating savings and credit associations",

American Economic Review, 83, 4 (1993), pp.192-793; C.W. Calomiris and I. Rajoraman, "The

role of ROSCA's. Lumpy durables or event insurance?", Joumal of Development Economics, 56 (1998), pp. 210-211; P. Smets, "Community-based finance systems and their potential for urban self-help in a new South Africa", Development Southem Africa, 13,2 (1996), p. 175.

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people in black communities, no longer exclusively associated with the stock fairs. 11

A small group met regularly at the house of one member. The host would then be the recipient of the "stock fair" of that particular meeting.'2 This social and economic organisation spread into urban areas as black people entered wage labour in the South African mining and industrial sectors. By 1920 stokvels were operating in the Western and Eastern Cape, the Witwatersrand, as well as in Natal and the Orange Free State. Generally a stokvel can be defined as a type of credit union in which a group of people enter into an agreement to contribute a fixed amount of money to a common pool on a regular basis. Depending on the rules of that particular stokvel, the pool or a portion thereof, is withdravyn by members either in rotation, by bidding or in time of need.,3 Black people mobilised savings through stokvels in order to provide loans to members. Changing social and economic relations in urban areas resulted in changes in the organisation and functionality of stokvels. People's funeral, consumption and credit needs paved the way for the emergence of dynamic informal organisations, such as micro-credit organisations, savings clubs, buying aids and burial societies.

Stokvels is the umbrella term for a wide range of informal financial and social organisations that developed in South African black communities. In different regions these organisations have different names. In early days limited differences existed between the different types of stokvels, but today stokvels display substantial differences. Stokvels are also known as "mahodisanas" derived from the Sotho word "hoda", which means "pay" - "mahodisana" would thus refer to the act "to make pay back to each other".14 Reference to stokvels is sometimes corrupted by names as "estokini" or "stokies". In the Western Cape stokvels are called "umgalelos", which means "to pour". These groups had a strong religious inclination, commencing meetings with prayer. The more general term for stokvels in the Western Cape currently is "gooi-gooi's", which is derived from the Afrikaans word "oorgooi" (to throw over), which in the context of stokvels mean to lump money together.'s In the Eastern

11 AK. Lukhele, Stokvels in South Africa. Informal savings schemes by Blacks for the Black community (Johannesburg, 1990), p. 4; E. Thomas, "Rotating credit associations in Cape Town", in E. Preston-Whyte and C. Rogerson (eds), South Africa's informal economy (Cape Town, 1991),

p. 291; W.G. Schulze, "The origin and legal nature of the stokvel, part 1", South African

Mercantile Law Joumal, 9 (1997), pp. 20-21. 12 Thomas, "Rotating credit associations", p. 293.

'3 Lukhele, Stokvels, p. 1; Black Enterprise, Dec/Jan. 1990, p. 45; Enterprise, Feb. 1991, p. 47; S. Burman and N. Lembete, "Building new realities: African women and ROSCAs in urban South Africa", in S. Ardener and S. Burman (eds), Money-go-rounds. The importance of rotating savings and credit.associations for women (Oxford, 1996), pp. 23-24; L. Moodley, "Three stokvel clubs in the urban black township of KwaNdangezi, Natal", Development Southem Africa, 12,3(1996), p.362.

'4

H. Kuper and S. Kaplan, "Voluntary associations in townships", p. 179; Schulze, "Origin and legal natureofstokvel, 1", p. 21.

'5 Thomas, "Rotating credit associations", pp. 291-292; Schulze, "Origin and legal nature of stokvel, 1", p. 21.

'4

Stokvels and economic empowerment: the case of African women in South Africa, ca. 1930 - 1998.

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