Claiming the State: The Political Economy of Social Welfare Access in Rural South Africa

Disadvantaged people need not only to have access to the publicly available information about the system, they also need to know all the unwritten rules about how to prove one’s identity and work through the powerful local networks that determine access. Based upon ethnographic studies in the rural areas of Eastern Cape Province, the chapter examines the ‘everydayness’ of the state in contexts where everyone may have a right to speak, but many cannot make their voices heard where they might have some impact, and so are excluded. The specific case here involves the corruption associated with access to disability payments, where too often the poor and handicapped are not able to get the money they are entitled to because of illiteracy and a lack of knowledge of how bureaucracies work, while the able-bodied and better-off literate villagers score through networks such as the village social welfare committees. Ironically, paying a hefty fee for a private consultation with the doctor who certifies disability will also secure a healthy person the disability grant. Strikingly, this is a system which benefits women rather than men, as they are the ones who maintain the networks (although the main corrupt doctor is a man supported by the women who benefit from his dishonest certification).