Elder Care in the African Context
Chair(s): Meurs, Mieke (American University, United States of America)
This panel discusses issues related in elder care in a comparative context with a focus on Africa, addressing issues of both family care and institutional care.
Presentations of the Symposium
Eldercare arrangements in Ghana: recent evidence and emerging issues
Aful-Mensah, Gloria1, Meurs, Mieke2
1University of Ghana, 2American University
Almost every country in the world is facing population ageing, and Ghana is no exception, with the share of adult population (60+ years) rising from 4.5% (1960) to 6.7% (2010) and projected to be 9.8% (2050). While care provision in Ghana is the responsibility of the family, modernization of families, urbanization, migration could be changing care arrangements in Ghana, and so, this study provides some recent evidence on eldercare arrangements in Ghana. While the literature defines eldercare needs in terms of both direct and indirect activities, eldercare needs may not only be contextual but perhaps be seen differently from care recipients’ perspective. Also, insights on attitude towards care provision, preferred and actual time spent on providing eldercare, and consequences of eldercare provisions are important to understanding care arrangements in Ghana. The study was carried out in four communities by interacting with some elderly folks (64 years and above), caregivers, community/opinion leaders, religious leaders, and representatives from the district/municipal assembly through focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews. Findings from the FGD shows how companionship is an important eldercare need but has been overlooked by many caregivers. Also, eldercare in Ghana has become nuclearized with declining role of the extended family, religious organisations and communities; market for eldercare is non-existent in rural areas; and there is eldercare deficit. Finally, beyond the burden associated with the provision of eldercare, the study found some positive effects which are mainly in the form of reuniting siblings and other family members, and some gains in respect in the society.
Exploring Ubuntu as a Normative Framework For Care of Older Persons in South Africa
Kasan, Juhi
Economic Justice Institute and University of Cape Town
In South Africa the number of Older Persons is expected to rise from 4.8 million (aged 60 and above) as recorded in 2017 to approximately 11.6 million by 2050 (UNDESA, 2017). This demographic shift coincides with an expectant epidemiological transition among older people: an increase in non-infectious disease, chronic disease and disability. These changes will rapidly increase the demand for care. At present, the majority of care for older persons in South Africa is situated within the home, provided mostly by women. Cultural norms of family solidarity and obligation, guided by the principle of Ubuntu, inform patterns and dynamics of caregiving. Ubuntu is revered as a philosophy and principle because it emphasises the reality of interdependence, lifelong vulnerability and relationality. In contrast to the political subject of the modern Western world, Ubuntu upends the myth that we are atomistic and self-sufficient. In addition, many scholars have pointed to the salience of Ubuntu in maintaining both the familial and social reciprocity that makes intergenerational care possible. However, there is an urgent need to investigate the ways in which Ubuntu is deployed to the detriment of those that see to the (social) reproduction of these invaluable forms of family/community caregiving. In post-Apartheid South Africa, Ubuntu informs a range of policy documents including The Older Persons Act (Act No. 13 of 2006). Due to the porousness of the concept, Ubuntu is often instrumentalized to reinforce a largely familalist approach to care. The lack of state-funded care for older persons is reflected through the dearth of formal long-term care facilities. While the Older Persons Act encourages home/family caregiving for older persons, this work often goes unsupported, unrecognised and undervalued. There is an urgent need to investigate the ways in which Ubuntu permeates thinking around care and further entrenches gender norms. This paper explores the landscape of Long-Term Care (LTC) facilities, community care and related policy in the South African context to uncover the ways in which institutionalised norms inform approaches to care practices.
Present children and absent parents in South Africa: The care burden in skip-generation householdsps
Mackett, Odile
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
In South Africa, nuclear households of married and cohabiting couples are not the norm as households tend to include extended family members. This has emanated from declining marriage rates, which have been consistent with global trends, and the prevalence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the early 1990s, leaving many children orphaned in intergenerational households. These disparities undermine the male breadwinner model as well as generational roles which are traditionally filled by parents and children within a household; resulting in gender-based and intergenerational conflict. In poor South African communities, households consequently become an important institution for filling care gaps where such care cannot be procured from the market, nor provided by the state. This contemporary phenomenon is partly informed by a rich history of migration in the Southern African region, particularly as the migrant labour system outsourced care of the sick, the elderly, and children to individuals living in rural areas; usually grandmothers. As migration patterns increased over both the apartheid and post-1994 periods, many rural households relocated to peri-urban areas. In contrast, many other workers continue their migration patterns while keeping ties with a rural home base. Despite the increasing prevalence of extended households in urban areas and the high unemployment rate amongst the working age, grandmothers remain an essential source of caregiving for children, particularly toddlers and infants. This is an important diversion from framing grandparents as dependents who add to the care burden. Focussing on women in the Noordgesig community, a peri-urban township located on the outskirts of Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa, the study brings to the fore the voices of urban grandmothers, through interviews, by carving narratives on why they perform this care, despite many of the parents being available to do so, how these care arrangements emerge, what implications this has for their ability to self-reproduce, and what the implications are for the distribution of resources within their households – both money and time.
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