1 Introduction
Where does one draw the boundaries between family and culture on the one side, and family and existential realities on the other? In an attempt to answer this complex question, this paper examines the African family to explore tensions between existential circumstances brought about by the political economy of modernisation in Africa (colonialism, Christianity and industrialisation) and the resilience of cultural variables which have sustained African populations for centuries. The African family can be located within this dialectic between economic modernity where the political economy has, in the words of commentators, caused the disruption and fragmentation of the family on the one side; and African re-affirmation, where resilience in some of the cultural variables has sustained family stability on the other. Cynics have questioned if in 21st century Africa, one can still make reference to the African family mainly because of the vast diversity in family composition, the economic and socio-cultural location, and consequently of what the present family can and cannot do. However, notwithstanding this, empirically an institution called the family and belonging to a people known as Africans, in the conventional biological and socio-cultural senses, does exist. Nevertheless, not even among Africans themselves, if by African we refer to the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants of the continent, is there uniformity in family composition, material well-being and capability of the family to play its role as the primary source of relationality. And yet, notwithstanding these differences, sometimes subtle and sometimes glaring, differences which are critical in the circumstances responsible for the capabilities and life chances of individuals, both in the family and in society; there is both a disjuncture and continuity in the form of the family, both reflective of the existential and the cultural dynamics operating simultaneously as forces that shape and sustain the family.
The African value system is humanistic and relational, directed at interpersonal or intergroup relations, and not at some abstraction, and the family forms a cardinal pillar in this relationality. While conjugal relationships are important in marriage, Africans marry into families and not to start families. Because of this the extended family was, and to a certain extent still is, the norm. To an extent, a significant number of African families are spared divorce because of the strength of the extended family which performs both a counselling and a consoling function in times of conflict and strife. In Africa, the family is pivotal to both the living and the dead. Advocating for the restoration of the family as part of the healing process in the broken relationships in part of the African continent, de Haas writes:
“Despite the myriad influences including those of the world major religions of Christianity and Islam, and countless regional differences in language and lifestyle, there is a distinct pan-African culture in the societies south of the Sahara. Common themes in this culture are the pivotal role of the family (which includes both living and dead members) in society, a holistic approach to healing individuals and communities, and an awareness of the interdependence of human beings and the natural environment. The values which underpin this worldview are manifest in a distinct philosophy which, in this corner of the continent is known as ubuntu (a person is a person through other persons)”.[1]
An understanding of the philosophy of the African family necessitates and understanding of the African philosophy on human welfare, a value which sits on the pinnacle of the hierarchy in African values, “the hub of the axiological wheel”,[2] where human needs and interests constitute the fundamentals of life. This natural relationality of individuals to others and to society at large, that Africans uphold, prescribes an ethics of duty (responsibilities) rather than of rights. “A morality of duty is one that requires each individual to demonstrate concern for the interests of others. The ethical values of compassion, solidarity, reciprocity, co-operation, interdependence, and social well-being, which are counted among the principles of the communitarian morality, primarily impose duties on the individual with respect to the community and its members”.[3] In African ethics, duties trump rights simply because duties address themselves to the needs of others, and individuals in African ethics fulfil these duties mainly because they are the right things to do. Therefore, in African ethics there is no distinction between morally obligatory and morally optional acts, since acts are not morally good in themselves but rather are morally good because of the consequences that they have on others. The individual, the family, both the living and the dead, live in a reciprocal relationality, each an extension of the other. And this has kept the family alive.
A few observations are necessary to put the African family in perspective. First, the African continent has become very cosmopolitan since colonization, and despite both colonization and political decolonisation, as mediating factors, Africa follows the trajectory taken by families internationally; a move towards smaller nuclear families, accompanied by an accent on individualism. Secondly, while economic developments tend to favour the direction of nuclear families, the same forces act in a contradictory direction, compelling families to expand but changing the composition or form, with an accent on the collective. The locus and function of the African family in Sub-Saharan Africa is mediated by a political economy which has attenuated the traditional cultural relevance of the family as the primary institution of socialization, a concept used to locate the family at the centre of human relationality, the building block in the functioning of society. Yet despite this, the tenacity of the cultural residual, i.e., those elements in the culture which are capable of withstanding the assaults of acculturation and enculturation, and in the case of the African family, the political economy of capitalist expansionism, has kept the family and some of its traditional functions alive notwithstanding the enormous challenges.
2 The Focus on South Africa
This paper discusses family and culture in South Africa, and in a way because of the similarities in the political economy and cultural outlook, as a determining force, the description could legitimately represent family and culture anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. Differences are in degree and not in kind. The conventional conception of family: marital heterosexual relationships of husband and wife responsible for the joint care of children, filial piety, reciprocity and solidarity among family members, and most of all the warmth of family life, have been severely compromised by the political economy of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, one cannot attribute changes in the African family solely to factors in the political economy; the incorporation of Africans into white colonial institutions, the school, the church, the economy and the polity, also entailed enculturation of indigenous populations into western ways of life including Christianity, education, the economy and politics thus ushering in a new social normativity. Inevitably, this brought with it changes in the value system, changes which affected the cultural base including the traditional conception of family with the attendant values. And yet, there are those elements in the cultural fabric which have sustained the family, no matter how compromised, thus providing a bedrock for the continuity of community and society.
The choice of South Africa is that it has capacity to collect data on the family at determined periodic intervals. Statistics South Africa, the National Agency for data collection and analysis, uses the term household and not family to refer to what, in conventional parlance, would have constituted the family. “A household is all individuals who live together under the same roof and who share resources such as food or money to keep the household functioning. The definition is much more restrictive than the concept of a family which usually refers to individuals who are related by blood and who may live very far apart. Although household members are usually related, blood relations are not a prerequisite for the formation of a household”.[4] The definition has, therefore, significant sociological connotations, as conventional daily social intercourse takes place more in the household than in the family, as a significant number of families live in different locations and do not spend time together as family although they continue to hold kinship and emotional bonds. As a matter of fact, almost all household members have strong biological bonds, although there may be a few exceptions. What the definition omits, because of its accent on the economic dimension of the household, is the centrality of culture in maintaining continuity in the family.
The rationale for Statistics South Africa to use the household unit as an equivalent of the family unit lies in the circumstances of work and migration of family members away from home to live where they generate livelihoods. The definition also considers a child-rearing culture, mediated by a political economy, where children born out of wedlock live mostly with their mothers while fathers have other families and live in separate households. These conditions detract from the conventional where conjugal relationships are a prerequisite to the family and accordingly, children live with both parents.
3 The Disjuncture: Fragmentation of the Family
This paper approaches the subject of family and culture in two parts. The first part presents the empirical position of the African family and explains how economic and political variables in racial capitalism almost disintegrated African family life particularly in South Africa and, to an extent, in Southern Africa. The second part demonstrates how tenacious elements in the culture have sustained the family against the onslaught. First, the empirical section draws from various studies on the position of the African family in South Africa since political decolonisation in 1994 to the present. The present family structure in South Africa resulted from economic forces, particularly those of industrialisation. South Africa’s industrial economy developed mainly from the mining industry (diamonds and gold), both of which depended on manual labour. In order to avoid the costs of reproduction (providing housing and care to the families of workers), mining magnates employed native men housed in single-sex hostels near the mining sites for labour. This labour was drawn across Southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho) and mainly from what was referred to as the native reserves within South Africa. Walker attests:
“A pervasive system of migrant labour played a fundamental part in shaping the past and present of South Africa’s economy and society and has left indelible marks on the wider region. South Africa was long infamous for its entrenched system of racial discrimination. But it is also unique in the extent to which urbanization, industrialization, and rural transformation have been moulded by migrant labour. Migrancy and racism fed off each other for over a century, shaping the lives and deaths of millions of people”.[5]
In the late 1930s, South Africa started to go beyond being an agrarian and mining economy and embarked on manufacturing as another sector of the economy. When the Second World War broke out, conscription of whites into the armed forces created vacancies in the mining and manufacturing sectors, thus necessitating an increase in the demand for labour and compelling the new industries to employ Africans. Moreover, for the first time, production in the manufacturing sector outstripped that of the mining and agricultural sectors. A combination of increased demand for labour and the absence of white workers as result of the war compelled industry to employ Africans in semi-skilled and skilled positions. With industrial expansion into manufacturing, the migrant labour system grew in magnitude as either industries or local authorities in which the industries were located undertook construction of more single-sex hostels to accommodate the growing workforce. Worse, increasing employment of women, first as domestic workers and also in other types of employment, was to complicate the disjuncture. The migrant labour system did not only fragment families by taking away men from their homes and locating them in single-sex hostels, it also encouraged cohabitation between migrant men and women working as domestics in the mining towns, precipitating the growth of shack settlements and naturally second families for the men who already had families back in their places of origin. It is this development which largely accounts for children living without their fathers. Men thus had two direct families, the family back in the rural home and the family in a shack next to the mining town, ushering in a new culture of a rural wife and a town wife coexisting as two distinct families united in their common relationship to the migrant father. Some men never returned home to their legal wives and children.
3.1 Presentation of Family Types in Statistical Form
3.1.1 The Context
Commentators on the position of the African family emphasise “fragmentation” (Hall and Posel), and “disruption” (Budlender and Lund), among others, because not only does the African family show a radical shift from its traditional self, it also shows a radical shift from conventional families elsewhere, observations which constitute the disjuncture.[6] Budlender and Lund attest, “The nuclear family is not a norm in South Africa. Many households do not consist of two parents plus children, and a substantial number of children do not live with their biological parents”.[7] The two authors continue, “Household surveys over the period 1996-99 suggest that only between 30 and 35 percent of women aged 15-49 years were married, while a further 4-6 percent were cohabiting with partners. Well over half – 58 to 60 percent of women in their prime productive (and caring) years (15-49 years) – had never been married. Yet according to Moultrie and Dorrington, (2004:9), in 1998, more than 30 percent of never married African women aged 45-49 years had more than three children”.[8] This position continues into the present, as very little has changed since then. This reflects clearly on the problematic of locating the family as “representing the initial institutional expression of human relationality, where such relationality is first experienced as stable and natural, as freely guaranteed …”.[9]
3.1.2 The Data
Tables 1 and 2 below are from the data collected by Statistics South Africa in 2019, and therefore, provide the most recent status of the family. The two tables provide an ample demonstration of how economic and political forces have conspired to undermine the family as a source of relationality, and how in turn the social fabric of African society has been torn apart by the same forces. The tables also demonstrate the complexity in human relationality engendered by the structure of families where living conditions negate the natural, assuming that the conventional location of family with the resultant expectations of conjugal love, represents the natural condition. Simultaneously, the tables reflect the dialectic between the politico-economic and the cultural, where the tenacity in the cultural sustains the family in spite of the politico-economic forces which fundamentally undermine it. This observation is pertinent because family life exists in all the forms reflected in the tables despite that this does not imply equality in family structures in terms of the capability of the family to render equal services to its constituent membership.
The tables represent all households/families in South Africa irrespective of race. However, when it comes to life chances in the social and market places, hence in the quality of life in Africa, race has been historically, and continues to be, a significant determinant of one’s location in life. As we have no access to the raw data that constitutes these figures, reprocessing the data to represent only African households/families, where African refers to descendants of the indigenous inhabitants, was not possible. This only relates to the data from Statistics South Africa in Tables 1 and 2. Data from the rest of the tables represents only African families/households. Notwithstanding this shortcoming in the data on Tables 1 and 2, one can confidently take the data as reflective of the African family, mainly because Africans constitute 81 percent of the population in South Africa, and the figure is much higher in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. The contribution from Africans to the data sets is thus significantly high. We also wish to stress that the African family is the most affected by the political economy both historically and in the present. The regional disaggregation of the tables confirms our claim, and demonstrates the nuances resulting from the economic, racial and cultural peculiarities in the South African population. For instance, two provinces or regions, the Western Cape (WC) and Gauteng (GP) are atypical of the South African demographics. The Western Cape is predominantly urbanised and is a White and Coloured enclave, with Africans not a majority population, and Gauteng is predominantly an urban region or province. Both provinces display nuclear family majorities, a characteristic not common in the rest of the country. In contrast, in Limpopo (LP) and the Eastern Cape, which are the most rural provinces and predominantly African in the population composition, the extended family is the dominant form. This is simply because urban families become more conscious of the economic costs of large families, while larger families might even be an asset in an economy that is dependent on labour for household production, which is a prerequisite in rural areas.
Table 1: Family Composition in South Africa by Province and Rural/Urban Status in 2020:
Family Type |
RSA |
Urban |
Rural |
WC |
EC |
NC |
FS |
KZN |
NW |
GP |
MP |
LP |
|
Percentage Distribution of Household Composition |
|||||||||||
Complex |
1.5 |
1.8 |
1.0 |
2.3 |
0.9 |
1.3 |
0.4 |
1.9 |
1.5 |
1.8 |
1.0 |
0.9 |
Extended |
36.0 |
30.4 |
48.9 |
28.1 |
44.0 |
40.0 |
33.4 |
42.5 |
36.2 |
27.8 |
43.6 |
44.9 |
Nuclear |
43.0 |
47.4 |
33.1 |
54.3 |
36.2 |
42.0 |
48.8 |
35.8 |
35.9 |
49.7 |
37.1 |
36.4 |
Single |
19.5 |
20.5 |
17.0 |
15.4 |
18.9 |
16.7 |
17.3 |
19.9 |
26.4 |
20.6 |
18.3 |
17.8 |
|
Percentage Distribution of Inter-Generational Households |
|||||||||||
Unclear |
2.7 |
2.6 |
2.7 |
1.9 |
2.7 |
2.1 |
1.9 |
3.6 |
4.3 |
2.5 |
2.6 |
1.4 |
Skip Generation |
4.5 |
3.2 |
7.4 |
2.7 |
7.9 |
5.1 |
6.8 |
5.5 |
3.9 |
2.4 |
5.1 |
6.4 |
Triple Generation |
14.9 |
11.9 |
21.8 |
11.4 |
17.9 |
19.6 |
14.3 |
16.8 |
14.7 |
11.1 |
20.0 |
20.1 |
Double Generation |
45.1 |
46.6 |
41.4 |
50.6 |
39.3 |
49.2 |
48.1 |
42.0 |
39.2 |
47.5 |
44.0 |
45.2 |
Single Generation |
13.5 |
15.1 |
9.7 |
18.1 |
13.3 |
7.3 |
11.6 |
12.3 |
11.5 |
15.9 |
10.1 |
9.1 |
Single person |
19.5 |
20.1 |
17.0 |
15.4 |
18.9 |
16.7 |
17.3 |
19.9 |
26.4 |
20.6 |
18.3 |
17.8
|
Data from the above table shows that just over two in five (43%) households in South Africa fall into the category of “nuclear”, where the household comprises both mother and father together with their children only; whereas almost an equal number (36%) are extended households. Extended households vary from triple generation where grandparents, parents and children live in one household, to skip generation where grandparents and grandchildren live in the same household while parents live elsewhere, most probably as economic migrants. A fifth (20%) of households are described as single, i.e., where only one person lives in the household. Extended households may also include other relatives such as uncles and aunts or even cousins who may fall into any of the three generations. There are regional or geographical variations in family or household composition, with rural areas showing more extended households (almost half or 49%), while urban areas show reverse features (47% of households are nuclear). Provincial figures reflect the urban-rural pictures as well as those provinces which are more urbanised such as the Western Cape and Gauteng, which show more nuclear families than those provinces which are predominantly rural such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape for instance.
The extended family form would represent the traditional African family. However, the skip generation extended family is a new creation of the migrant labour system, which is a development of the political economy in South Africa and in the region where parents leave children in the care of grandparents while they migrate in search of economic opportunities. The single person family is a new phenomenon and purely a development from economic modernisation. Single generational families comprising couples only are more common in urban than in rural areas, while single-person families straddle both urban and rural areas.
Table 2: Children’s Living Arrangements in South Africa by Province and Rural/Urban Status: 2020
Family Type |
RSA |
Urban |
Rural |
WC |
EC |
NC |
FS |
KZN |
NW |
GP |
MP |
LP |
|
Percentage of Children’s Living Arrangements |
|||||||||||
Lived with Neither Parent |
19.7 |
14.7 |
27.3 |
14.1 |
32.7 |
16.4 |
24.2 |
24.2 |
22.2 |
10.6 |
15.4 |
19.7 |
Lived with both parents |
34.2 |
42.9 |
20.0 |
55.1 |
23.5 |
39.0 |
32.2 |
20.5 |
31.3 |
47.6 |
30.2 |
31.8 |
Lived with Father |
4.4 |
4.8 |
3.9 |
5.0 |
3.0 |
2.9 |
4.0 |
5.7 |
5.3 |
4.5 |
5.9 |
1.9 |
Lived with Mother |
41.7 |
37.7 |
48.8 |
25.8 |
40.9 |
41.8 |
39.7 |
49.6 |
41.2 |
37.3 |
48.5 |
46.6 |
|
Percentage of Children Orphanhood Status |
|||||||||||
Not Orphaned |
87.7 |
- |
- |
93.8 |
84.4 |
87.9 |
86.5 |
85.1 |
84.6 |
88.7 |
87.6 |
91.1 |
Double Orphaned |
2.6 |
- |
- |
0.8 |
3.2 |
2.1 |
2.7 |
2.5 |
3.4 |
3.2 |
2.2 |
2.2 |
Paternal Orphaned |
7.1 |
- |
- |
3.7 |
10.1 |
4.1 |
7.4 |
8.7 |
8.1 |
6.3 |
7.6 |
5.4 |
Maternal Orphaned |
2.6 |
- |
- |
1.8 |
2.3 |
6.0 |
3.4 |
3.7 |
3.9 |
1.8 |
2.6 |
1.4 |
The position of children displays features which have significant bearings on the family as a primary source of relationality. One would assume that in both nuclear and extended households, children live with both parents. However, a further look into the data presented in Table 2 shows a different picture. While almost nine in ten (88%) children are reported as not orphaned, only a third (34%) of children live with both parents, while two in three (42%) children live with their mothers only. Further, a fifth (20%) live with neither parent, ostensibly on their own, or with relatives or even with family friends. Finally, only 4 percent of children live only with their fathers. There are regional variations as well, with more urban children (42%) living with both their parents than is the case with their rural counterparts (20% only), while more rural children (27%) live with neither parent than is the case in their urban counterparts (15%). Finally, more rural children (48%) live with their mothers only, a position which reflects the state of male migration in South Africa mainly because of the historical features, first of the mining industry and consequently of almost all manufacturing industries particularly under apartheid. Secondly, children might live with their mothers without their fathers simply because of the large percentage of mothers who never married but may have a number of children. African family life has been at the bottom list of values in colonial and apartheid South Africa. Much of this in the sections that follow below.
There is not a greater single force that has mediated in the nature and quality of the African family in South Africa and the adjacent countries than the economic arrangements of colonialism and later apartheid and, most significantly, the migrant labour system. In a paper titled: “South Africa: A Legacy of Family Disruption”, Budlender and Lund write:
“A foretaste of the starkness of the figures: in South Africa, only about 35 percent of children live with both their mother and father, while at least an equal number live only with their mother. The majority of women have children, but a large number of them do so outside of marriage and with different fathers for successive children. Almost one fifth of children have lost at least one parent. Only about a third of the 12,7 million households conform to the ‘nuclear norm’ of children and parents with about one fifth having three generations or more present in one household. Many grandmothers care for their grandchildren often in the absence of children’s parents. When family life is so disrupted and complex, is it necessary to use different approaches to the issue of care than those advanced in industrialised countries?”[10]
Budlender and Lund were using the lens of care to examine the complex nature of African families in relation to the care of children. Katherine Hall and Dorrit Posel refer to “migration, family fragmentation and the fluidity of households”, and start their paper in startling reference stating, “The disruption of family life is one of the important legacies of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history”.[11] They start by acknowledging that the migratory labour system to and within South Africa was common in the Southern African region since the colonial era, and proceed to say, “The deliberate disruption of households and families, by the apartheid regime … is widely acknowledged to have had a massive and lasting effect on African household structure”.[12] While the figures given in Tables 1 and 2 are taken from the General Household Surveys carried out by Statistics South Africa, Hall and Posel used a different source, the National Income Dynamics Study carried out by the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town, and generated the figures in Tables 3, 4 and 5 below.
Table 3 Parental Co-residence with Children, 1993-2017
Child lives with |
1993 |
2008 |
2017 |
Both parents |
34.6 (1.06) |
27.1 (1.37) |
30.4 (0.60) |
Mother, not father |
43.4 (0.90) |
44.7 (1.17) |
45.4 (0.59) |
Father, not mother |
2.7 (0.23) |
2.5 (0.31) |
3.1 (0.18) |
Neither parent |
19.3 (0.72) |
25.8 (0.99) |
21.1 (0.45) |
Notes: The sample includes African children under 15 years. Standard errors are in parentheses.
Table 3 provides a longitudinal statistical overview of parental co-residence with children between the years 1993 and 2017. What the table demonstrates is the fragmented nature of the African family on one side, and the critical position of women in the maintenance of family relationships with children on the other. Children living with both parents decreased from a high of 35 percent in 1993 at the end of apartheid, to a low of 28 percent in 2008, but again increased by 3 percentage points to 30 in 2017. Hall and Posel attribute the fluctuation in figures to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s through to the first decade of the 21st century. During this period a significant number of children lost either or both parents to the AIDS pandemic. By the middle of the second decade, South Africa had contained the spread of HIV/AIDS relative to what the position was at the beginning of the millennium.
Table 3 also shows a significantly large proportion of children who live with mothers alone (45% in 2017), in contrast to the proportion of children who live with fathers alone (3%). Further, Table 3 also shows children who live with neither parent. That one in five (21%) children live with neither parent is not necessarily indicative of orphaned children; in most cases fully-parented children may live with extended relatives, most probably grandparents, but relatives might also include uncles and aunts. This might mainly be due to migration. However, cultural factors might also be at play. For instance, it is very common for more economically capable relatives to care for children of poorer kin, although with modernization and more dependence on the economy, the practice is on the decline. The extended family has always played an inordinately significant role in Africa, mainly because the African ethical system is relational and humanistic, primarily directed at interpersonal or intergroup relations, and not individualistic. While modern marriages might be legally and mostly contractual conceptually, irrespective of the contractual status the family still has an important role to play essentially in the raising of children.
Table 4 Contribution of Orphaning to Parental Absence
|
1993 |
2017 |
Number of children without a co-resident mother |
2.6 million |
3.4 million |
Mother deceased (as a percentage of children without co-resident mother) |
8% |
18% |
Number of children without a co-resident father |
7.4 million |
9.4 million |
Father deceased (as a percentage of children without co-resident father) |
11% |
15% |
Note: The sample includes African children under 15 years.
Table 4 could be interpreted as an extension of Table 3 and demonstrates the extent of separation between living parents and children, as a very significant number of parents who were separated from their children were alive. In other words, it was not death that separated children from their parents. For instance, of the 3.4 million who lived away from or without their mothers in 2017, only in 18 percent of the cases (612,000 children) were the mothers deceased. In comparison, far too many living fathers did not live with their children as the ratios show. Of the 9.4 million who lived without fathers, in 7.59 million cases the fathers were alive. Read together with the quote above where the authors maintain that a large number of women have up to three children outside of marriage, and in a significant number of cases with three different fathers, the position becomes clearer. While the figures do not explain the causes of the separation, one can infer a degree of emotional alienation particularly in the case of absentee fathers.
Table 5 How Frequently does (Parent) See and Support the Child?
Mother |
Father |
|||
|
Non-Resident Household Member |
Absent: Lives Elsewhere |
Non-Resident Household Member |
Absent: Lives Elsewhere |
Every day |
0.4 (0.32) |
4.3 (0.89) |
0.0 |
5.4 (0.56) |
Several times a week |
9.9 (2.97) |
13.8 (1.77) |
16.5 (6.29) |
13.0 (0.99) |
Several times a month |
55.3 (5.08) |
39.4 (2.52) |
49.5 (5.88) |
24.8 (1.07) |
Several times a year |
32.1 (2.73) |
34.6 (2.56) |
32.7 (5.67) |
26.2 (1.26) |
Never |
2.4 (1.06) |
8.0 (1.05) |
1.2 (0.71) |
30.6 (1.05) |
(Parent) supports the child financially |
70.3 (5.03) |
50.4 (2.33) |
82.5 (3.99) |
38.3 (1.44) |
Notes: The sample includes African children under 15 years. Standard errors are in parentheses.
Table 5 reflects the emotional and financial ties between absentee parents and their children. Absent parents are identified as those parents who do not reside in the households or families where their children live, are not part of the child’s household and live elsewhere. Non-resident parents are still part of the household but do not live in the same household where the children live. The former might include parents who did not marry the child’s mother or father, or divorced parents who might have started new families elsewhere. Children are likely to have more contact with non-resident mothers than they do with non-resident fathers, although overall non-resident parents have more contact with their children than do absent parents, most probably because absent parents may have other families anyway. Also, non-resident parents (fathers and mothers) provide financial support in significant numbers compared to absent parents. This is understandable as they are still members of the household. Only in the case of absent fathers is there significant loss of contact between parent and child as is indicated in almost a third (31%) of cases where there is never any contact. The impact on family solidarity would be devastating in this case.
4 Discussion of Empirical Findings
Three salient observations can be drawn from the data together with observations made in the literature. The first observation is that marriage is not a central factor in the composition of the family, nor for that matter in the bearing and rearing of children. The second observation relates to the extent to which political and economic forces (the migrant labour system) have mediated in the structure and composition of the African family. The third observation relates to the disintegration or dismemberment of the African family in South Africa has to be understood within the context of the national question, i.e., the contestation for the ownership of the country; and in the process, the manifestations of racial capitalism as an instrument of controlling Africans in the struggle for hegemony.
4.1 Marriage and the Family
Observations, from Table 3 read together with Table 2 which provide a longitudinal snapshot of co-residence of parents with children, show that just only about a third of all children live with both parents. The large number of children (on average almost half) who live with mothers only, together with a fifth of children who live with neither parent, confirms findings in the literature, that a significant number of mothers never married. Culturally, where parents do not marry, children belong to the mother’s family, and when a woman with premarital children marries into another family, the children remain with her parents. We could, therefore, safely conclude that in a majority of cases, marriage does not constitute the main requirement in raising a family. This is attested to by the number of women-headed households. This is not to say that Africans do not value marriage; circumstances in the political economy have devalued marriage as the source of the family. We have pointed out how the migrant labour system has led to a dual family system, a town and a rural wife, each with children and family of its own. In most instances, the town woman periodically cohabits with the man, thus leading to the start of a woman-headed household, or an unmarried mother. A significant number of women referred to above would fall into the category of unmarried mothers.
4.2 The Interaction of Variables in Racial Capitalism
The migrant labour system lies at the heart of family disintegration in Southern Africa. In South Africa, in particular, the forces are political because in the first instance the migratory labour system was primarily a political and not necessarily an economic decision. Later, when developments in the economy such as the demand for more skilled labour which needed a permanent workforce with work schedules not compatible with the frequent breaks in the migrant contract system, the state intervened with more negative legislation entrenching the migrant labour system. The effects are empirically demonstrated in Tables 2, 3 and 4 showing co-residence between parents and children where an inordinate number (in millions) of children do not reside with their parents. We emphasise the issue of children in the family because the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states: “[T]he child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding”.[13] It is difficult to estimate the damage to full development of the child’s personality caused by the enforced separation of migrants from their families. A number of analyses, basing their observations from scientific studies, attribute the inordinately high and violent crime rate in South Africa to the destruction of the family unit under apartheid.
4.3 The African Family and the National Question
By the middle of the 19th century, African assimilation into the western economy was such that as a class, the African bourgeoisie had established itself. An African farming class had emerged in the Cape Colony and in Natal, producing agricultural goods and owning ox wagons that carried fresh produce to the markets in the cities and towns; and simultaneously, some of these farmers were also freight owners transporting goods between commercial and industrial centres. For instance, in 1860, the first African owned sugar mill came into existence in Natal. Colin Bundy documents extensively the emasculation of the African peasantry by white capital fearing competition and determined to exploit African labour.[14] While the Act of Union of 1910 was the master legislation that sealed the fate of Africans and other blacks for decades to come, successive colonial regimes had already imposed a plethora of repressive and discriminatory laws such that by the time of Union in 1910, Africans and other blacks had been reduced to servility in all but name. For instance, a thriving African peasantry had been reduced to a semi-lumpen proletariat by various forms of taxation: the hut tax for instance, had forced Africans to seek work in the mines. Africans and other blacks were not part of the owners of the country’s wealth and not by circumstance but by design. Successive pieces of legislation, such as the Miners and Works Act of 1911 and the Native Labour Relations Act of 1911, were simultaneously to debilitate African society and entrench white privilege over African semi servility. The Urban Areas Act of 1927 forbade Africans to work outside of their local areas except by permit, and even then, Africans had no rights of residence in towns except in accommodation provided by employers, which invariably turned to be single-sex hostels. A weakened family structure was both a convenient target and a powerful tool of control. Apartheid was to consolidate this position further during the last four and a half decades of white control. We would conclude that the political economy of colonialism and, later, apartheid caused untold damage to the composition and status of the African family. However, there is more to the family than the political and economic environment.
5 Continuity
While the disjuncture described above can be explained using the lens of the political economy, the continuity is a function of long-standing cultural values and practices which, although greatly affected materially by the political economy, have remained tenacious, thus giving rise to part of the form that show in the empirical data above. The disjuncture and continuity are pertinent in determining the nature and functioning of the family as the primary institution that moulds and prepares individuals for the tasks that lie ahead in life, particularly the capacity to harmonise one’s life with the rest of society. Wiredu, a well-known African philosopher, amplifies this point, “The family is of unique importance to a child in that it provides a buffer and mediates between the child and the rest of the world”.[15] The continuity between self and others is expressed tersely in the African proverb “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” in the Nguni language, meaning a person is a person because of other persons.
5.1 The African Family as Home
In his introductory remarks to the Colloquium on the Family held by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in 2021, Stefano Zamagni, President of the Academy, referred to Aristotle’s concept of Oikos, the Greek meaning of home, where home “is essentially the place where nature and culture cohabit and where interpersonal relations are based on the principle of reciprocity”.[16] Zamagni contrasts this conception of family with practices in mainstream economics, where “the family is seen as a tool or contract that partners use for wealth or welfare maximising purposes”.[17] After listing the consequences of this conception of the family, Zamagni feels that were it not because of weaknesses in government and market failures, the family becomes unnecessary. This makes a critique of the economistic conception of the family inevitable or mandatory if we are to associate the family with source of relationality: a prime generator of human capital, relational capital and social capital”.[18] All these attributes locate the family within the home. This is where family and culture in Africa fit, because notwithstanding the power of economic and political forces, to a certain extent the family has survived, albeit in a compromised form, mainly because economics has come to dominate the lives of individuals. The family is neither essentially a function of contractual arrangements, although they have a bearing in some instances, nor is it fully “a community of life based on gift, reciprocity, generativity, and sexuality”, although it may have the elements of all.
Political decolonisation across Africa brought in attempts at cultural decolonisation as well. While the former was relatively easy to accomplish in terms of institutional arrangements and control over the organs of the state, the latter has proved problematic and probably exists in name only. The traditional African family prior to the colonial onslaught was an equivalent of the Aristotelian oikos within the context of the prevalent culture and the limitations imposed by the economic and technological environment. Colonialism came with a technically advanced technology, an economic system that yielded immediate rewards and a Christian education predicated on a religion that transcended culture and technology. While indigenous nations resented and indeed, revolted against political subjugation, the economic, cultural and material artefacts of colonialism brought in immediate rewards particularly in terms of the quality of life. The church, the school and the hospital were undeniably beneficial institutions, and so was the shop, the factory, the ox wagon and later the train and the automobile. The impact of these colonial achievements on the culture of indigenous populations was enormous, hence acculturation and enculturation happened almost automatically. The undermining of indigenous cultures and value systems was thus both deliberate and autonomous by association, as indigenous inhabitants attributed all the visible achievements to the colonial culture. Where did this place the family?
While the political economy caused a disjuncture in family patterns, tenacity in the values, admittedly not at variance with some of the western values, particularly Christianity, kept the family as oikos. The extended family is not necessarily polygynous. Grandparents in particular, and extended relatives in general, continue to constitute the family despite the physical residential separation, thus continuing with reciprocal relationships and family solidarity. This is most visible in times of family crises, death and bereavement, poverty and other forms of suffering where the family rallies to the comfort and rescue of affected individuals. Research shows how the introduction of the old age security system, where South African citizens of over sixty years receive a state pension, resulted in significant numbers of children from poor households going to school, as grandparents provided the financial and other material wherewithal. This is a demonstration of family solidarity, the oikos. The skip generation household shown on Table 1 is a typical representation of this form of family solidarity, where grandchildren live with and most probably are entirely cared for by grandparents. Family gatherings are extremely common among African families in South Africa. This is most demonstrable during long holiday and vacations, and also at family functions such as coming of age ceremonies, birthdays and other occasions where family members transcending the nuclear form gather to celebrate the occasion. The spirit of family lives on both sides of the marital unions and continues to preserve the memory of the brotherhood and sisterhood of kith and kin.
As part of the kinship system, the family extends into the clan and relationships among clan members may be as strong as if immediate consanguinity were the case. While statistics may describe phenomena in scientifically generalised and measurable ways, case studies provide closer insights into the nuances and lives of the subjects. A case study of two men, Charles and Paul, definitely not related by blood but sharing an identical surname, illustrates this point. In African family culture, sharing a surname is a sufficient condition for close kinship as surnames are derived from the same ancestry and indicate common descent. Charles and Paul met for the first time in 1965 in Durban. Charles came from the upper section of the Eastern Cape and Paul from just across the border in lower Kwa Zulu Natal. The two areas share a common border. From the very first meeting they felt and behaved like kinsmen. The surname was common among Nguni people from both regions and there was recorded history that members of this clan had migrated into the two regions from upper Kwa Zulu Natal adjacent to the Swaziland border in South Africa.
The relationship between Charles and Paul became stronger when they discovered that they were both studying for a BA degree at the University of South Africa, an institution that offered long-distance tuition. When Paul, who lived a distance away from Durban, had to sit for his final examinations in Durban, Charles invited him to stay at his house for the two-week duration of the examinations and, as a brother, at no cost. In the new home, Charles’ children referred to Paul as ubabomncane (literally younger father in Zulu), as Paul was three years younger than Charles, while Charles’ wife referred to Paul as Bhuti meaning brother. From then henceforth, the two men were emotionally siblings and Charles’ house became Paul’s second home. When Paul got married and had children, his and Charles’ children automatically became first cousins, or sisters in the cultural parlance. In 2015, 50 years from their first meeting, Charles died leaving an unemployed son aged 45 who needed rehabilitation from alcohol dependency. Paul took the son to a rehabilitation centre at huge financial cost. This was what Charles as father would have done, and this is what Paul as Charles’ brother felt he had a paternal obligation to do.
This relationship was not only between the two brothers: children from both sides had developed strong family bonds. Charles’ daughter, a nurse, underwent an abdominal operation and needed a comfortable place for recuperate. Paul’s eldest daughter was a surgeon and took her sister to her house and looked after her while she recuperated from the operation. Such are the bonds of family and kin in Africa that the case study of Charles and Paul is no isolated incident in family relationships. It is inherent in the culture and where no adverse factors mediate the relationship, Charles and Paul’s case can replicate several times without anybody raising eyebrows since such behaviour would be part of the normal. The two men, through strong beliefs in the vibrancy of family bonds, had demonstrated the existence of the family as oikos where relationality in the form of reciprocal relationships existed as a communio personarum, with each member of the family participating in the welfare of others. The family transcends physical beings or persons as individuals and embodies the spiritual domain which includes both the living and the dead in the form of ancestors. From an African perspective, children provide continuity in the family.
Conceptions of family transcend conjugal relationships hence traditionally, sexual relationships did not play a primary role in the conception of the family, though they were not unimportant. This was simply because they belong to the individual domain and the family is a communion and not an individualistic institution. As stated earlier, Africans marry into families and not to create families, which is what sexuality is about. For instance, by tradition, biologically childless couples were given children from the husband’s brothers to bring up as their own, and such children would look after their new parents in old age as if they were their biological parents. The social value of the family exceeded the biological. Admittedly, with modernisation much of this belongs in the past, but some elements still exist. It is these cultural factors that have sustained the African family despite the onslaught from political and economic practices that sought to undermine the family and, consequently, the social fabric.
6 Conclusion
This paper has attempted to show both the fragility and the resilience of the family in Africa; on one side, a fragility caused by deliberate political machinations employing economic variables to undermine the family as the anchor of fundamental values that form the building blocks in a society’s moral and ethical system. On the other side, there have been those elements in the culture which have shown a resilience supported by a deeply entrenched humanistic philosophy. This has resulted in a family system marked by both a disjuncture and continuity where, on the one side, the family is disrupted and fragmented, while on the other it continues performing the function of the family as oikos, a home, “essentially the place where nature and culture cohabit and where interpersonal relations are based on the principle of reciprocity”. It is the continuity that causes strangers to the African kinship system often to wonder at the resilience of what appears to insignificant variables in family relationships. While it is accepted universally that economic circumstances determine family relationships, this is partially true in African societies, as cultural variables transcend economic and legal bounds and have a vibrancy of their own.
6.1 The Family as a Source of Care for Children
Data shows that despite high rates of migration by parents, four in five children live in a family setting (nuclear or extended). The absence of biological parents has not completely deprived children of parental care as, in the case of the extended family, mostly grandparents, and to an extent, other relatives fulfil this function. Admittedly, this might not be the best-case scenario; however, in the absence of researched facts regarding the quality in the alternative scenarios, we are not in a position to assess this in qualitative terms. In the qualitative case studies carried out by Catherine Hall and Dorrit Posel there seems to be no decline in the quality of care given to children by grandmothers. Assessing the impact of three-generational families on the development of cognitive abilities of children, Moller established that children from three-generational families performed better than children from nuclear families. This can be partly explained by the role that grandparents traditionally play in storytelling to young children. This might help in developing the children’s attention spans and concentration abilities.[19] In extended families evening time is when children gather around grandparents to be entertained in folklore and, in the absence of gadgets such as television and computers in poor households, this is a vital source of entertainment. The gatherings are not only for entertainment, it is here that grandparents impart lessons on appropriate behaviour and decorum, preparing children to participate as responsible citizens in society.
6.2 The Family as the Primary Unit of Socialisation
In line with the African holistic philosophy of life, the African family provides a holistic socialisation to the individual, introducing children into the world and enabling them to fit into different life roles. Writing in L’Osservatore Romano in 2015, Philomena N. Mwaura painted the African family in the following words:
“The extended family provided the individual with a personal and corporeal identity. One was assigned to a particular community and was assigned distinct roles at various stages of life on the basis of age, gender and social status. The cultural, social and moral norms of the community that were applied within the extended family helped an individual to grow into a productive and respected member of the community. Those norms served as a blueprint for life. The extended family was, and continues to be, the first religious community to which an individual belongs. It was through parents, grandparents and other members that one learned about religious and spiritual heritage. It was possibly where one learned about God, spirits, ancestors and the afterlife. The extended family was and is also a means of mutual support. The principle that guides relationships is that of ‘Ubuntu’ or ‘you are because we are’ and the extended family thus becomes a means of social, psychological, moral, material and spiritual support through thick and thin”.[20]
Among Africans, the family is a microcosm of the world, a world of humans who interact on the basis of their humanity. This entails both duties and obligations for, in order to live harmoniously with others, one has obligations towards them; and it is in fulfilling these obligations that one expresses one’s humanity.
6.3 The Family in Reconciliation of Broken Relationships
Starting with marital relationships, while traditionally divorce was almost unknown in African families, with modernisation this has changed. However, despite these changes, African divorces remain exceedingly low compared particularly with white families that divorce. For instance, in 2002, Stats South Africa recorded that 329.6 in 1000 marriages among white persons had ended in divorce, only 29.6 in 1000 marriages among African families had ended the same way. By 2020 the number of marriages had decreased among all racial groups and the number of divorces had decreased correspondingly. Reasons for the low rates of divorce among African families are both economic and cultural. On the economic side, relatively more African women are economically dependent on their spouses than is the case with white women. This exerts pressure on those dependent African women to bear with unsatisfactory conditions in marriage knowing that they have limited alternatives. However, much of the tenacity of African marriages has its origins in cultural practices, where marriage is partly a family affair and partly a contract between spouses. Families play a pivotal role in restoring broken relationships as practice is such that separation only takes place after families have failed to reconcile the couples. This offers breathing space allowing the couples to consider fully the consequences of separation, particularly on children. In this sense families play a significant therapeutic role in marital relationships.
Further, as De Haas pens: “In cases of divorce, the type of trauma which can accompany such a break up in a nuclear family setting is eased, as children have a variety of other ‘mothers’ and ‘fathers’. Similarly, when one or both parents die, or migrate to seek employment, close relatives or more distant kin take over parental functions. Migration from rural to urban areas, and within urban areas, is facilitated through kinship networks, and families displaced by violence often take refuge with kin”.[21]
In conclusion, the African family has survived the political and economic onslaught first of colonialism and secondly of apartheid because the cultural fabric had sufficient philosophical and religious basis to sustain resilience to foreign cultural incursions. The cultural resilience was also buttressed by the fact that although coming from a western and, therefore, colonial perspective, Christianity promoted the sanctity of the family. South Africa is predominantly a Christian country, and Christianity came to a society that was already highly religious. There was thus a convergence of faiths. Physically, the family changed both shape and form under pressure from the political economy, but the spirit never changed as it continues to function as the building block in the social fabric, hence De Haas’s call for the healing of the family.
7 Bibliography:
1 Colin Bundy,1979, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
2 Debbie Budlender and Francie Lund, South Africa: A Legacy of Family Disruption, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.
3 De Haas Mary, 2000, “Healing the Family”, Keynote Address at the International Conference on Family Therapy, Durban, South Africa.
4 González Ana Marta, 2021, Philosophical Insights on the Family in the Light of Contemporary Challenges, An Enlightening Contrast, Colloquium on the Family: Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Vatican City.
5 Katherine Hall and Dorrit Posel, 2019, Fragmenting the Family? The Complexity of Household Migration Strategies in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Journal of Development and Migration.
6 Kwame Gyekye, 2010, “African Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
7 Mafumbane Rachel, 2019, “The Undiluted African Community: Values, The Family, Orphanage and Wellness in Traditional Africa”, Information and Knowledge Management, Vol 9, No 8.
8 Moller Valerie, 1994, “Intergenerational Relations in a Society in Transition: A South African Case Study”, Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, Routledge, May 2010.
9 Statistics South Africa, General Household Survey 2020.
10 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, November 1989
11 Walker Cheryl, 1990, “Gender and the Development of the Migrant Labor System: c1850-1930: An Overview” in in C. Walker (Ed) Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945. Cape Town, David Philip ,168-196.
12 Zamagni Stefano, 2021, “The Family and Integral Ecology: Opening Remarks”, Colloquium on the Family, Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences: Vatican City, Rome
[1] De Haas Mary, 2000, “Healing the Family”, Keynote Address at the International Conference on Family Therapy, Durban, South Africa.
[2] Kwame Gyekye, 2010, “African Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[3] De Haas, 2000, Op Cit, page 18.
[4] Statistics South Africa: General Household Survey 2020.
[5] Walker Cheryl, 1990, “Gender and the Development of the Migrant Labor System: c1850-1930: An Overview” in C. Walker (Ed.) Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, Cape Town, David Philip, 168-196.
[6] See: Katherine Hall and Dorrit Posel, 2019, Fragmenting the Family? The Complexity of Household Migration Strategies in Post-Apartheid South Africa; and Debbie Budlender and Francie Lund, 2011, South Africa: A Legacy of Family Disruption, Institute of Social Studies: The Hague.
[7] Debbie Budlender and Francie Lund, South Africa: A Legacy of Family Disruption, Institute of Social Studies: The Hague, page 927.
[8] Hall and Posel, 2019, Op Cit, page 930.
[9] Ana Marta González, 2021, “Philosophical Insights on the Family in the Light of Contemporary Challenges: An Enlightening Contrast”, Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Vatican City.
[10] Debbie Budlender and Francie Lund, Op Cit, page 926.
[11] Katherine Hall and Dorrit Posel, 2019, “Fragmenting the Family? The Complexity of Household Migration Strategies in Post-Apartheid South Africa”, Journal of Development and Migration.
[12] Ibid.
[13] UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, November 1989.
[14] Colin Bundy, 1979, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
[15] Kwesi Wiredu, quoted by Rachel Mafumbane in “The Undiluted African Community: Values, The Family, Orphanage and Wellness in Traditional Africa”, Information and Knowledge Management, Vol. 9, No 8, 2019.
[16] Zamagni Stefano, 2021, “The Family and Integral Ecology: Opening Remarks”, Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Vatican City.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Moller Valerie, 1994, “Intergenerational Relations in a Society in Transition: A South African Case Study”, Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, Routledge, May 2010.
[20] L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 23 October 2015, page 15.
[21] De Haas, Mary, 2000, Op Cit.