Gender, Generation and the Experiences of Farm Dwellers Resettled in the Ciskei Bantustan, South Africa, ca 1960-1976

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of farm dwellers resettled in rural townships in the Ciskei Bantustan during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on the oral testimonies of elderly residents of Sada and Ilinge townships, the paper shows how gendered and generational inequalities within households were crucial factors shaping individuals' experiences of resettlement from the farms. The paper engages with an older literature that regarded the abolition of labour tenancy and linked resettlement programmes as the final stage of farm tenants' proletarianization. It highlights the problems of this linear narrative, and argues that men and women experienced and understood this process in radically different ways. Male labour migration and the remnants of farm paternalism meant that while resettlement cemented the status of migrant men, for women and non-migrant men this process was characterized by contradiction: on the one hand, escape from the spatial hegemonies of farm paternalism and, on the other, heightened economic exposure. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.