Politics of pension sharing in urban South Africa
b"Analysing the practice of pension sharing, this article looks at social and\\ncultural dimensions of ageing in an urban African residential area, Cape\\nTown's Khayelitsha. First, the paper discusses pension sharing as a futureoriented\\nsecurity strategy. Many older Africans in Khayelitsha believe that if\\nthey do not share their pensions with their kin, they do not have much chance\\nof being helped in times of need. Pension sharing as an instrumental act is\\nrooted in the perceived underdevelopment of the state social security system\\non the one hand, and in the very character of African kinship and the \\xafuidity\\nof today's urban domestic units on the other. Partly triggered by poverty and\\nmass unemployment, African pensioners are under severe normative pressure\\nto share their grants within their families. Taking into account African notions\\nof old age and of personhood, and considering the widespread devaluation of\\nolder Africans in social constructions, pension sharing provides older Africans\\nwith an (easily available) means by which they can earn (self-)respect.\\nFurther, state policies indirectly enhance the normative pressure on pensioners\\nto share their old-age pensions. On a symbolic plane the practice may be\\nconstrued as a political model that conceptualises duty as the inner bond of the\\nsocial world. In conclusion, it is propounded that the concept of (intergenerational)\\nreciprocity is inadequate to account for pension sharing or\\npractical provision of old-age care."