Deciphering the “duty of support”: caring for young people in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Framed around a public and legal debate about the boundaries of responsibility and obligation to care for children in post-apartheid South Africa, the paper interrogates key assumptions regarding family structure and care patterns, as embedded in policies and programmes intended to offer support to “vulnerable” young people. Drawing on a legal contestation of eligibility for the foster care grant, the piece examines the South African state’s definitions of the duty of support and the right to care for children. Then, to explore how responsibility for children is conceived of and distributed, the article briefly describes what one could refer to as “the problem of the patriline” in Zulu kinship, that is, the tensions between the rules governing descent, ownership of and obligations to (and from) children and shifting experiences of kinship and care. Finally, by exploring how responsibility for children is conceived of and distributed for a small group of young people in one locality in KwaZulu-Natal, the p...