Renegotiating intimate relationships with men: how HIV shapes attitudes and experiences of marriage for South African women living with HIV: ‘Now in my life, everything I do, looking at my health’

by | Sep 26, 2019 | ACTA, ACTA 2013

Renegotiating intimate relationships with men: how HIV shapes attitudes and experiences of marriage for South African women living with HIV: ‘Now in my life, everything I do, looking at my health’

Authors Diane Cooper, Elena Moore, Joanne E Mantell

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Associate Professor, Women’s Health Research Unit, School of Public Health and Family Medicine; Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town; Senior Research Fellow, Centre of Social Science Research; Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry, HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, New York
Source: Acta Juridica, 2013, p. 218 – 238

Abstract

This paper explores marriage attitudes and practices among Xhosa-speaking women living with HIV (WLHIV) in Cape Town, South Africa. It reports on a study that assessed the fertility intentions of a cohort of people living with HIV, aimed at informing an HIV care intervention. It draws on qualitative data generated from 30 successive interviews with WHLIV in wave 1, 23 interviews in wave 2 and 20 follow-up interviews in wave 3. Gender inequality, marriage and HIV are strongly intertwined. Broader layers of South Africa’s history, politics and socio-economic and cultural contexts have consequences for the fluidity in intimate relations, marriage and motherhood for WLHIV. Key and conflicting themes emerge that impact on marriage and motherhood. Firstly, marriage is the ‘last on a list of priorities’ for WLHIV, who wish to further their children’s education, to work, to earn money, and to achieve this rapidly because of their HIV-positive status. We demonstrate that the pressure women face in marriage to bear children creates a different attitude to and experience of marriage for WLHIV. Some WLHIV wish to avoid marriage due to its accompanying pressure to have children. Other WLHIV experience difficulties securing intimacy. WLHIV may find it easier to seek partners who are also living with HIV.Apartner living with HIV is perceived as sharing similar fertility goals. In this study, HIV accentuates existing issues and highlights new ones for WLHIV negotiating intimacy. The findings contribute to the existing knowledge base regarding the fluidity of marriage and fertility intentions within the dynamic context of living with HIV. These are likely to have broader relevance in currently rapidly urbanising and economically developing countries with high HIV prevalence in southern Africa.

How social security becomes social insecurity: unsettled households, crisis talk and the value of grants in a KwaZulu-Natal village

by | Sep 26, 2019 | ACTA, ACTA 2013

How social security becomes social insecurity: unsettled households, crisis talk and the value of grants in a KwaZulu-Natal village

Authors Bernard Dubbeld

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University
Source: Acta Juridica, 2013, p. 197 – 217

Abstract

There is no respect in these times, because young people say they have rights, so they do whatever they like. The boys of today have no honour, they get girls pregnant and leave them. (Mandla) I think it’s criminal behaviour, you should not take somebody’s child and cohabit with her when you have not paid lobola. Our children now go out with a girl and take her to their homes, and she agrees. In the end she has children and there are fights, and he doesn’t want to pay anymore, because we women are paid with a grant. (Hlengiwe)

Declining rates of marriage in South Africa: what do the numbers and analysts say?

by | Sep 26, 2019 | ACTA, ACTA 2013

Declining rates of marriage in South Africa: what do the numbers and analysts say?

Authors Christine Mhongo, Debbie Budlender

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: At the time of writing this article, Ms Mhongo was a researcher at the Centre for Law and Society (formerly Law, Race and Gender Research Unit) in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape; None
Source: Acta Juridica, 2013, p. 181 – 196

Abstract

This article interrogates the extent to which the population censuses conducted in South Africa between 1921 and 2001 provide evidence of a decline in marriage rates among African males and females. It thus differs from other articles in this collection which discusses findings from household sample surveys. In addition to presenting the trends, the article summarises the different arguments offered in the literature relating to this period for the decline in rates of marriage. The article suggests that most of the arguments have merit, but the strength of the different factors would have differed over time and among different groups of women and men. Further, the article offers a possible methodological and linguistic reason for the perhaps ‘incorrect’ finding that the decline in marriage rates has stalled since 1995, but also argues that those who claim that it is post-apartheid factors that are driving the decline in marriage need to confront the fact that this is not a new trend.

Changing patterns of marriage and cohabitation in South Africa

by | Sep 26, 2019 | ACTA, ACTA 2013

Changing patterns of marriage and cohabitation in South Africa

Authors Dorrit Posel, Stephanie Rudwick

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Professor and NRF/DST Chair, University of KwaZulu-Natal; Researcher, University of Leipzig
Source: Acta Juridica, 2013, p. 169 – 180

Abstract

In this study, we investigate recent trends in marriage and cohabitation in South Africa. We use national micro-data to describe how marriage rates diverge sharply by race, with African women far less likely than White women to be ever-married and more likely to be never-married and not cohabiting with a partner. Large racial differences in marital status are evident also among women who are mothers, helping to explain why the majority of African children do not live in the same households as their fathers. We discuss these trends and patterns by reviewing particularly recent research, which suggests that there are economic constraints to marriage, and which explores possible links between widespread support for the custom of bridewealth and low marriage and cohabitation rates among African women, even in the context of childbirth.

Women, marriage and domestic arrangements in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

by | Sep 26, 2019 | ACTA, ACTA 2013

Women, marriage and domestic arrangements in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Authors Victoria Hosegood

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, UK; Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies/University of KwaZulu-Natal, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Source: Acta Juridica, 2013, p. 143 – 168

Abstract

This paper contributes a demographic perspective to this collection of articles. The author asks an overarching question ‘Can the collection and analysis of detailed demographic data in household surveys and surveillance systems inform understanding of the context and impact of judico-legal process and reform of marriage and land ownership?’ The paper starts with a brief introduction to the context of marriage in rural KwaZulu-Natal, a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues related to the collection and interpretation of marriage data in South African household-based censuses, surveys and demographic surveillance. The third and fourth sections describe the Africa Centre demographic surveillance system in rural KwaZulu-Natal, and examine the demographic measures and categorisations of the study population in 2009. The findings show that marriage rates — already low in the early 2000s — have continued to decline such that by 2009, 10 per cent of women aged 20 to 45 years were currently married and the majority of women in their late 40s had never been married. While available data on women’s ownership of land are limited in this source, male and female-headed households are similar with respect to whether registered ownership or permission to occupy is held by a member within rather than outside the household. That most named ‘owners’ may be men, may mask an increasing acceptance on the part of communities and families that women need to be assisted in securing access to land and housing; particularly women with children or responsibilities towards other children and adults. Efforts to ensure greater access and legal protection for rural women in relation to housing can be enhanced by encouraging household and population-based surveillance and surveys to include data about land and housing routinely.

Women’s eviction in Msinga: the uncertainties of seeking justice

by | Sep 26, 2019 | ACTA, ACTA 2013

Women’s eviction in Msinga: the uncertainties of seeking justice

Authors Sindiso Mnisi Weeks

ISSN: 1996-2088
Affiliations: Senior Researcher, Centre for Law and Society, University of Cape Town
Source: Acta Juridica, 2013, p. 118 – 142

Abstract

In the results of the 2010 survey on Women, Land and Customary Law conducted by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry, a small number of women in Msinga responded that they had either been threatened with eviction or felt forced to leave their residences because of relatives. These women fell into almost all categories pertaining to marital status: never married, married, separated/deserted and widowed. Among them, a fair number had chosen not to seek legal redress at all. Of those who did seek it, most turned to the traditional authorities for assistance. Their satisfaction with the process followed by the customary authorities varied. Very few took their matters to the Magistrate’s Court; and even there, not all were content with the process. Only one woman went only to the Magistrate’s Court (without also using the traditional dispute management system). This article is based on follow-up interviews with a number of the women who responded in the survey to say that they had been constructively ‘evicted’ from residential land by their relatives. Of the women interviewed, all but one pursued justice in one or more of the legal institutions ostensibly available to them. Discussing women’s experiences of loss of residential land rights at the hands of their relatives, this article looks at the ways and extent to which, firstly, their land rights are embedded in social relations (especially marital relationships) and, secondly, the women are able to rely on the available dispute management forums to secure justice against their relatives and restore their lost rights in land. It concludes that these Msinga women’s stories affirm the literature that argues that the protection of African women’s land rights in terms of customary law — the social recognition of their rights and their enforcement through the legal system — is heavily dependent on social relations. In the course of the article, it comments on the social significance of marriage in Msinga and some of the difficulties that emerge in the survey’s attempt to measure women’s vulnerability to eviction. It then offers some suggestions concerning the social and legal interventions that might assist in obtaining clearer knowledge of the extent of women’s susceptibility to eviction (and of what forms) as well as help women to overcome the loss of residential land rights using legal means.