Beyond Remittances: The Redistribution of Cash in Swazi Society

Beyond Remittances: The Redistribution of Cash in Swazi SocietyAuthor(s): Margo RussellSource: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Dec., 1984), pp. 595-615Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/160387 .

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The Journal of Modern African Studies, 22, 4 (1984), pp. 595-6I5

Beyond Remittances: the Redistribution of Cash in Swazi

Society

by MARGO RUSSELL*

In November I942 the Resident Commissioner, touring the then Protectorate of Swaziland, visited the Native Farmers Association near Mahamba. Upon taking leave of them he was given 19 bags of maize to be sold in aid of War Funds 'for the comfort of the Native troops gone North'. They also gave him half a crown, of which I/6 was, they said, for his wife, and I/- for himself, which he 'immediately returned and asked that it be given to War Funds'.'

THERE are unwritten rules for the distribution of money in all societies, notably about from and to whom it is appropriate to give and receive

money, and when. These rules differ from one society to another, and we err in assuming otherwise. This article examines some reported practices in the redistribution of earnings and other cash in Swaziland. It arises out of a reading of transcriptions of I 18 recorded interviews, 49 with wage-earners conducted at their place of work, and 69 with earners or their dependents in the rural areas.2 These wide-ranging interviews covered many topics besides the giving and receiving of sums of money between kinsmen. From this evidence I attempt to spell out the detailed nature of these rules. To ignore or to be ignorant of their

strength and complexity is to fail to recognise a powerful mechanism for redistribution, which goes some way to modify alleged inequalities between town and country, and between one homestead and another within Swaziland. Similar rules probably affect income distribution elsewhere in Africa.

These rules have their roots in what we may call 'traditional'

obligations, i.e. those entailed in the interdependence of earlier economic

* Senior Research Fellow, Rural Development Research Project, Social Science Research Unit, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni. This is a slightly abridged version of a paper delivered to the Third Workshop on Resource Use and Decision-Making in the Rural Homestead, held at the University of Swaziland, May 1984.

1 Lobamba National Archives, RCS 798/36, 7-13 November I942. 2 Interviews were conducted by Nikiwe Mbatha, Robert Dlamini, Vincent Sithole, and

Makhosazana Ntshingila of the Rural Development Research Project, University of Swaziland, I983.



MARGO RUSSELL

circumstances, and they are continually changing as new circumstances cause people to redefine both those to whom they are beholden, and the extent of that obligation. Since money - minted coinage and notes - signals the presence of a disrupting and transforming economy, we should expect such revisions to be fairly rapid. Not only are the economic foundations of the society modified as new systems of

production and exchange are introduced, with attendant shifts in

obligations, but when these are discharged through the medium of

money - with its versatility, exchangeability, and capacity to be con- verted into almost anything else - then this subtly transforms kinship ties which were once bonded by time spent together, with labour and effort shared. The relationship of a man with his father alters when, instead of coming home to plough with him, he sends E40 in a registered letter to pay for the hire of a tractor.

Money enters society, historically and structurally, as payment; it is

designed for calculability in exchange. Yet, having thus entered, it can be used as one of a range of goods and services that flow between

mutually linked kinsmen. But it is not easily adapted to this purpose, as Swazi practice shows when money is used as cows. The solution, for a royal decree to declare that a cow 'is' 10io or E5o or EIoo, conflicts with the known value of cattle in other transactions and leads to dilemmas. Money as a gift threatens to transform generalised reciprocity into carping calculation. Would the Resident Commissioner have refused a chicken in 1942? Half-a-crown smacked of payment, and he had no wish to be bought cheaply by the Mahamba Native Farmers.

Money in Swaziland presently serves this dual function. It is both a medium for payment and a 'scarce good' which lucky possessors are

expected to share. This article looks at what becomes of the earnings of workers not from the point of view of what they are spent on, but how they are redistributed as gifts and allowances to others. An

understanding of these practices is essential to the proper collection and

analysis of data on income distribution in Swaziland. Our basic interest in transfers of money is to establish how much

people in the rural areas have at their disposal. The question is

conventionally answered by some calculation of income per capita - that

is, the amount of money coming into a group divided by the number of members - and the accuracy of the resulting figure depends on the

completeness of the data. When national figures are calculated there are few problems, since

the national income is divided by the total population. Similarly, if we were to compare two rather separate sectors within a population - say,

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THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CASH IN SWAZI SOCIETY 597

nationals and foreigners - there would be few ambiguities. But any attempt to measure rural as distinct from urban income in Swaziland is liable to produce some major ambiguities because of the economic

interpenetration of the two sectors. To the well-established fact that rural homesteads derive most of their income from wage work in urban areas,1 is added the newer proposition that apparently urban workers are likely to be members of these homesteads.2

R. J. Szal and R. van der Hoeven's much-quoted 'finding' in 1976 that urban Swazi incomes are ten times greater than rural incomes was

early exposed as spurious because of their neglect of the 'considerable transfers from the modern to the rural sector through cash remittances and goods in kind'.3 But taking proper account of the remittance factor is more easily said than done. Despite Fion de Vletter's searching exploration of the transfer of wages back to rural homesteads,4 his own

subsequent calculations of their income levels share the shortcomings of most investigative surveys in Southern Africa, possibly elsewhere -

namely, the failure to grasp the complexity of these 'considerable transfers', and consequently to underestimate them.5

Transfers of earning are usually conceived as remittances, which are assumed to be (i) fairly regular fixed sums or proportions of earnings that are (ii) sent home by (iii) migrant workers. This misconception stems from misleading procedures where it has been assumed that

1 Cf. Fion de Vletter, 'Migrant Labour in Swaziland: characteristics, attitudes and policy implications', World Employment Programme Working Paper, 2-26/WP22, Geneva, 1978; 'A Socio-Economic Profile of Swazi Rural Homesteads', in de Vletter et al., The Swazi Rural Homestead (Social Science Research Unit, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, I983); and 'The Swazi Rural Homestead: a case study of subsistence, wage dependency and misguided rural development', Carnegie Conference Paper No. 285, University of Cape Town, I984.

2 According to Sylvie K. Kamalkhani, 'A Household Subsistence Level and Budget Survey in Manzini, July 1983', University of Swaziland, I984, p. 38, '68 % of all respondents belonged to an umuti in the rural areas'; two-thirds of these visited their rural homesteads at least once and

up to five times a month. In a random sample of 377 urban households in Mbabane in 1983, Jan Testerink and Margo Russell found that 46 per cent of the owners and 66 per cent of the tenants were also members of rural homesteads, and that three-quarters of them returned there at least once a month; 'Nkwalini-Mahwalala, Mbabane: socio-economic characteristics and housing preferences', Social Science Research Unit Paper No. 9, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, 1983, p. 43.

3 Fion de Vletter, 'Subsistence Farmer, Cash Cropper or Consumer? A Socio-Economic Profile of a Sample of Swazi Rural Homesteads. Programmes for Better Family Living', Department of Research and Planning, Ministry of Agriculture, Mbabane, 1979. See also R. J. Szal and R. van der Hoeven, 'Inequality and Basic Needs in Swaziland', Income Distribution and Employment Programme, International Labour Organisation, Geneva, I976.

4 de Vletter, 'Migrant Labour in Swaziland', pp. 25-46. 5 My own early pilot survey of Swazi workers attempted unsuccessfully to tap remittance

behaviour with two questions: one about contribution to annual agricultural production, and a second conventional question on monthly support for those at 'home'. I now recognise the results as incomplete; Margo Russell, 'Boundaries and Structures in the Swazi Rural Homestead', Social Science Research Unit, Research Paper No. 6, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, I983.



MARGO RUSSELL

questions put to the heads of homesteads about how much they receive from absent workers will, properly answered, reveal these remittances, and that any inaccuracies in the resulting figures are the consequence of poor recollection, inadequate understanding,1 or deliberate misrep- resentation by the informants.

Closer examination suggests errors in all three assumptions: (i) The

practice of allocating a portion of their earnings to other kinsmen is not restricted to migrants, since all workers tend to make such arrangements, including women. (2) The amounts transferred are not regular or fixed but fluctuate irregularly. (3) The remittances are not sent 'home', but to a range of individuals in urban or rural areas to whom, because of

specific relationships, various workers feel a particular obligation. Let us examine each of these statements in more detail.

i. The practice of allocating a portion of their earnings to other kinsmen is not restricted to migrants, since all workers tend to make such arrangements, including women.

All workers are subject to the same constraints and demands as far

as the redistribution of wages is concerned. The fact that some are

provided with sleeping quarters while others are not, may make a

difference to the way that meals are paid for, but not to the broader

principles by which wages are allocated. A man does not gain or lose

obligations to kinsmen simply because he works close to or far from the

homestead. Migrant workers no more shed obligations because they are

working away from home than acquire them because they are at home

(though they may be affected by sheer accessibility to fulfil obligations more easily evaded at a distance).

The neglect of this framework of obligation led de Vletter in a

recently published national study of rural homesteads in Swaziland to

count as income (i) all the wages of home-based ('commuter') workers, but (ii) only 'regular remittances' of migrant workers, despite his

awareness that the resultant figures would be 'somewhat

underestimated .2 His own earlier research had shown that'remittances sent home by miners were erratic',3 and that 'a considerable amount

1 Cf. M. V. Gandar and N. Bromberger, 'Economic and Demographic Functioning of Rural

Households: Malhabatini District, KwaZulu', University of Cape Town, 1984, Carnegie Con-

ference Paper, No. 56, p. 12: 'in an answer to a question on the reliability of remittances many

respondents said they could not rely on regular payments, but the question seems to have been

misunderstood' (my emphasis). 2 de Vletter, 'A Socio-Economic Profile of Swazi Rural Homesteads', p. 46. 3 de Vletter, 'Migrant Labour in Swaziland', p. 43.

598




of money and goods (often cattle) was brought home periodically by returning migrants'.'

The overall effect of de Vletter's method is to underestimate cash from earnings. Two-thirds of all his homesteads have absent workers - on average two at each - yet for a quarter of these no remittances at all were recorded.2 For the remainder, approximately 24 per cent of their earnings was counted to the homestead.3 His 'finding' that 'in absolute terms the greatest amount of pay was generated by commuters', is the spurious consequence of his method,4 and makes unwarranted assumptions about the availability of their pay, since commuters have a range of obligations, like absent workers, some beyond their homesteads.

As a consequence, the maldistribution of income is exaggerated, and de Vletter's statement that 'homestead differentiation in terms of sources and magnitudes of cash is extreme' must be treated with caution. Significantly, his figures on the distribution of wealth (rather than income) in rural areas show a much greater equality, which would have been greater but for his inclusion of earnings as wealth.5 To the extent that wealth was measured in possessions, this allowed for the redistribution of cash earnings.

In another recent piece of research, M. V. Gandar and N. Bromberger came to the conclusion that there was 'considerable poverty' in the Malhabatini District ofKwaZulu, having counted to household incomes (like de Vletter for Swaziland) only remittances from absent workers.6 The similarities between the economic situation in two rural areas of Southern Africa justifies brief consideration of the KwaZulu study,7 not because it demonstrates typical misconceptions, but because its carefully recorded self-doubts lend substance to the arguments here advanced.

l de Vietter,' Subsistence Farmer, Cash Cropper or Consumer?', p. 5 . A' guesstimate' of E Ioo worth of goods received per annum was included by de Vletter, in loc. cit. I983, p. 50, in his estimate of average homestead incomes.

2 de Vletter, 'A Socio-Economic Profile of Swazi Rural Homesteads', pp. I8, 21, and 49. 3 This was not a percentage calculated by de Vletter, albeit derived from his data (ibid. Tables

2 and 14, pp. I8 and 49) as follows: (I) For those homesteads receiving remittances in I978, the average was E40.2 from two workers, namely E20.I from each. (2) On the assumption that the wages (unrecorded) of those absent were the same as for those who were not, and since the mean number of the latter was I .4 while their mean monthly contribution was EI I 7, then the average monthly wage in 1978 was E83.86.

4 Ibid. p. 46. 5 Ibid. p. 57- 6 Gandar and Bromberger, op. cit. p. 24. 7 The similarities should not be pressed too far. There are almost no local opportunities of

earning wages in the KwaZulu District. Remittances are the major source of income. Household incomes seem to be about half those of Swaziland. In I98I, the monthly income per capita in KwaZulu was RI 4.8 (ibid. p. 8), compared to R26.6 in Swaziland (de Vletter, 'A Socio-Economic Profile of Swazi Rural Homesteads', p. 46), adjusted for inflation since 1978 at Io per cent per annum.



MARGO RUSSELL

Gandar and Bromberger based their calculations of rural household income on several factors,1 including remittances in the preceeding month, a technique which at best is only as reliable as the assumption that any one month is typical. This assumption they made reluctantly, expressing the misgiving that

remittances are likely to exhibit seasonal variation. In December for example, larger than normal remittances could be expected as migrants return home for Christmas. Lesser peaks could be expected in January with the need to pay school fees, April when migrants return for Easter and possibly October when some families hire tractors. 2

Swazi data confirm the fluctuating flow of cash. The blanket term 'remittance', with all its connotations of regularity and minimum

sufficiency, is too crude to describe the careful budgeting of workers'

earnings. Amongst Swazis in October, investment in agriculture in their rural homesteads is met through specific subventions from the employed, quite distinct from amounts sent to kin for recurrent living expenses. The evidence suggests that it is probably wrong to set agricultural expenses as a monthly claim on recurrent monthly income, as Gandar and Bromberger do, with the effect of depressing calculated income levels. School fees (a predictable annual investment), and medical

expenses (very high in the case of indigenous medicine),3 are also likely to be met independently of remittances as a direct call on workers'

earnings. What becomes of the unremitted balance of the wages of migrant

workers? This question must be asked, particularly when we are told that their incomes 'would have been, even after deduction of remittances, 10 (and more) times that of family members at home'.4 The assumption that most of this money is not eventually passed back to kinsmen, in cash or kind, is curious, especially since 'some said that although they did not receive regular payments their relatives could be relied on to send

money when it was needed '.5 Also, 'The sample included two abnormally large payments from relatives: one of R5oo for cattle purchase, the other R200 for a lobola, contribute to unusually high remittance figures for the

1 They use 'household' for what in Swaziland is termed 'homestead'. 2 Gandar and Bromberger, op. cit. p. 26, note 9. 3 Medical expenses were traditionally very heavy. Paid in livestock, they were borne collectively

by the homestead herd, implicit acknowledgement of shared responsibility for, and vulnerability to a social ill. In 1976, it was suggested that average medical expenses in Swaziland per household

be estimated at E7.25 per person for visiting a traditional doctor, and 25 cents for visiting a modern medical facility; Szal and van der Hoeven, op. cit. p. 39. Modern medical facilities are, of course,

very expensive, but subsidised by the state and/or Christian missions. 4 Gandar and Bromberger, op. cit. p. 22. 5 Ibid. p. 12.

600oo



THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CASH IN SWAZI SOCIETY 60I

month'. But how did the researchers know they were 'abnormally large' or' unusually high'? ' While such transfers of funds into the country may not be rare they are possibly uncommon enough to bias data for the particular month in which they occur.'l

To the contrary, I suggest they are common, and that their reluctant inclusion in the remittance calculation goes some way to redressing the imbalances that would otherwise have occurred. But it is the whole

pattern of transfer of earned wages to kinsmen that needs to be grasped. The earnings of absent workers are not primarily gobbled up in consumables, except in conditions of intensified proletarianisation.2 They are invested in cattle, brides, housing, education, and agriculture, as well as being spent on consumer durables, and the (always minor) cost-of-living of the absent workers themselves. It is the logic of this possibility of accumulation that continues to pull many landed rural people into wage work. Ruth First's evidence from adjacent, and once again, similar, Mozambique is instructive:

cases in which ploughs and oxen were not bought with money from South Africa are very rare. To become a farmer subsisting on agriculture alone an essential condition is the possession of oxen and plough. Mills, tools and sewing machines are also acquired with money from the mines.3

Similarly in Sihla, she reports that the accumulated wages of the mineworkers are spent on lobola, water tanks, wells, houses, and grinding mills, as well as furniture, cars, and trucks.4

Distant migrants may sometimes default in their obligations. Beth Rosen-Prinz and F. Prinz stressed the lure of the mines as a means of escape from several onerous pressures from older kinsmen.5 One of our informants said,

When my parents died I stayed inJohannesburg for quite a long time (7 years). I was no longer coming back to Swaziland. Why should I? There was no one that would miss me. People who knew me thought that I had died in the mines.

1 Ibid. p. 26, note 9. 2 If the essence of proletarianisation is total dependence on wages, usually through landlessness,

then there are degrees which correspond to the strength of alternative economic resources available to the worker - amongst which in Africa land would be conspicuous. I suggest that the worker with a productive economic rural base, who is consequently able to accumulate wages as savings for investment, is less intensively proletarianised than one whose wages are consumed in subsistence. By these standards, KwaZulu is probably more proletarianised than Swaziland.

3 Ruth First, 'The Mozambican Miner: a study in the export of labour', Centro de Estudos Africanos, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, 1977, mimeographed, p. 128, citing evidence from the Homoine District. 4 Ibid. p. I30. 5 Beth Rosen-Prinz and F. Prinz, 'Migrant Labour and Rural Homesteads', Working Paper WEP2/26 WP 3 I, World Employment Programme, International Labour Organisation, Geneva, 1978.



MARGO RUSSELL

I used to spend my money on anything I liked. I didn't feel like putting my money in the bank. There were many interesting things to see and do in Johannesburg.

But a strong sense of commitment to family obligations is more common. Most workers are accustomed both to send remittances during their

absence, and to share out their accumulated earnings at the end of a contract:

This money was saved for us, we were given it only when our contract expired. I bought cattle with some of the money and I gave my parents some which they used for things they needed at home.

2. Amounts remitted are not regular or fixed but fluctuate irregularly.

Although the obligation to particular people is constant, remittances are sporadic and fluctuating. While there are workers who set aside a fixed sum which they regularly remit, it is at least as common that the amount fluctuates. The workers who said, 'I send what I can', 'It

depends', 'I cannot say', are the counterparts of the recipients who said, 'I cannot say how much he gives me', 'Sometimes he gives me E2o, sometimes less'.

These fluctuations are often the consequence of other demands on the worker's income, 'I send between E30 and E40 to them. But it all

depends on the expenses I have this side.' Or it may be the consequence of collaboration between several kinsmen supporting a common de-

pendant: 'If my brother gives her more, I give her less'. The amount sent may fluctuate with the season. Fresh home-grown food is plentiful in high summer, and dried maize supplies are likely to be good in early winter. But the onset of the rains is recognised as a time of shortage of

home-produce, and allowances are likely to increase in recognition of a greater need for cash for food, especially as this is a time of most intensive agricultural effort: 'I usually send them more money during the ploughing season, because they need more food when they are

working in the fields.' The artificial cycle of the school system also exerts seasonal pressures

for extra money for fees, books, and uniforms in January and February. When remittances are made in person, rather than through the post or an intermediary, they are invariably accompanied by other kinds of

gifts.

When I go home I take food because I'm to be there with my wife. This month I will take a few cloth things, and sugar, meat, mealie-meal, vegetables, whatever I can. They expect me to bring something because I am the man from town with money.

602



THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CASH IN SWAZI SOCIETY

I give my mother about E2o. But I also buy things when I go... twice a month at the weekend with the children. I spend in the region of Ei5 on the things I take.

The amount above comes to either E35 or E5o, yet the latter informant

says she gives E2o, also surely the figure that the receiver would cite and that the unwary researcher would record.

Fluctuations in the amounts received, as well as their irregularity, have several consequences, mostly positive for the giver. It helps to define the transfer as a gift rather than a payment. The donor's freedom is enhanced, and the recipient is accordingly more grateful, although the transfer cannot be taken for granted. But the very openness of this

arrangement entails certain obligations. The earners are bound to take into account the particular transient needs of those to whom they feel a financial responsibility. The consequence is an inescapable ongoing intimacy with the social and economic circumstances of kin. Thus is created the collective concern which characterises Swazi domestic life, expressed within a firm framework of rules which order and rank the

responsibilities of kin for one another. The fluctuating unpredictability of money transfers means that their

reduction or omission is less damaging than otherwise to recipients who are forced to organise their affairs to minimise dependence on any one source. Indeed, the system works this way precisely because such commitments in Swaziland are seldom exclusive. Each person is netted into a web of interdependencies. Social relationships are ties not simply of affection but of mutual material obligation, reinforced by the constant passage of gifts.

3. The remittances are not sent 'home', but to a range of individuals in urban and rural areas to whom, because of specific relationships, various workers feel a particular obligation.

In the West, marital relationships tend to define the bounds within which earnings are shared. Money is for wives and children. A wider

range of payments still within the family created by this marriage -

parents, siblings, grown-up children - is rare rather than the rule. By contrast, marriage in many African countries is simply one of a number of relationships within which the transfer of money is expected. Women in Swaziland are rarely dependants in the western sense. They produce and manage a substantial part of the food supply for their households. The importance of their economic role is recognised in the practice of demanding compensation whenever their services are lost to their

603



homesteads through marriage. Even as babies, girls are more highly valued than boys, as seen in the greater number of cows an unmarried man must pay to 'buy' - as the Swazis say, 'kutsenga' - a girl-child he has fathered and wishes to adopt as a member of his father's homestead.

The economic role of men in the twentieth century has been

increasingly to make cash available, through work or enterprise, especially while they are young and vigorous; and, when older, to act as executives of homestead production. But the division of labour is not as clear cut between the sexes as this suggests. Men also provide critical intermittent labour to agricultural production at home, and women not

only constitute 26 per cent of the formally employed labour force,1 but also raise substantial cash through marketing, handicrafts, brewing, medicine, etcetera.2

One of the consequences of this division of labour, in which everybody has a significant part to play, is to create a pattern of obligation and

dependency very different from the West. Apart from a great deal of

interdependence between husbands and wives, their marital relationships are incidental to the overarching structure of the more complex domestic

groups at the homesteads, and in the lineage and clan beyond. Interdependencies between adjacent adult generations remain as im-

portant, if not more so, than those between spouses. Those at work, whether near or afar, must share their earnings with several people both within and beyond the homesteads.

Kinship terminology indicates the lines of responsibility. All Swazi have several people they call 'father', 'mother', 'brother', and 'sister'.

Intimacy with, and responsibility for, these classificatory kin are ordered and ranked by well-understood principles of the logic of lineage, affinity, and birth order. For example, if a man's biological father should fail or die, then his father's eldest brother becomes 'father'. The strength of their mutual obligations to each other will depend, inter alia, on how

early in life the 'son' joined the household of his second 'father'. Where there is no male kinsman to assume such a responsibility, a woman in the father's lineage may become 'father'.

1 Swaziland Government, Wages and Employment, 1982 (Mbabane, 1983). 2 de Vletter, 'A Socio-Economic Profile of Swazi Rural Homesteads', p. 46; Rosen-Prinz and

Prinz, op. cit. p. 38; Margo Russell and Makhosazana Ntshingila, 'Sources of Swazi Rural Homestead Income', Social Science Research Unit Paper No. 13, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, 1984; and Margo Russell, 'The Production and Marketing of Swazi Rural Women's Handicrafts: a report commissioned by the Rural Employment Policies Branch of the International Labour Organisation', presented to the I.L.O. African and Asian Interregional Workshop on

Strategies for Improving Employment Conditions of Rural Women, held in Arusha, August I 984.

604 MARGO RUSSELL




My mother's brothers are all dead, so my mother is ultimately responsible for the children of their widows. They report to their paternal grandmother first, but she says, 'You should go to your father', meaning my mother. Our case may be a bit unusual because my mother's lobola was never paid. My lobola will go to my mother's family when I marry. Because of this lobola not being paid her family have very free access to her. She was never taken by my father's people. I as eldest daughter spend part of my money buying clothes and shoes for these cousins who live with us... At the back of my mind is the idea that I am doing it for my mother.

Since each worker faces the demands of several simultaneous obli-

gations, and must continuously stretch his/her wage to make some allocation to all of them, it follows (I) that some people will receive transfers from several different earners - e.g. a married woman may receive money from both her husband and from each of her working children; (2) that within any one homestead there are likely to be several people in receipt of such transfers - e.g. from spouses or

children, but sometimes from more distant kinsmen, such as brothers, nephews, and grand-children; and (3) that several people in the homestead may simultaneously receive sums from the same wage-earner.

To record such a range of possible cash flows into the rural homestead would require the utmost tact, patience, and probing if the actual

position is not to be misunderstood. Particular practical difficulties are raised when the same person supports several different people in the

homestead, since the amounts transferred to each are unlikely to be the same, and discrepancies can lead to jealousy and dissent. Reluctance

by an informant to reveal the amount transferred can be motivated less

by malice than by a keen appreciation of the necessity for discretion and confidentiality in the interests of domestic accord.

A man routinely has obligations, which he may or may not honour, to transfer some of his cash earnings to the following:

(a) To the woman in whose kitchen he eats. This may be his mother, his wife, his brother's wife, his father's mother, his mistress, or some other woman. This is money for food. Women as the managers of kitchens look to all wage-workers who eat in their kitchens to provide money to enable them to offer a more varied diet than they could on the

agricultural products of gardens and fields alone. Although 98 per cent of Swazis attempt to be self-sufficient in the staple maize, and although more than half usually succeed,1 no Swazi goes without some processed,

1 Margo Russell, Nikiwe Mbatha, and Vincent Sithole, 'A Sample Survey of Maize-Growing

in Swaziland', Social Science Research Unit Paper No. i, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, October I982, and de Vletter, 'A Socio-Economic Profile of Swazi Rural Homesteads'.



MARGO RUSSELL

packeted, and marketed food as a regular part of the diet, from sugar and tea to cooking oil and salt.1 In the rare instance that a man lives and cooks alone, he will obviously have to make this allocation for food to himself, as distinct from his pocket money for e.g. clothes and recreation.

(b) To the women in whose kitchen his children eat. These may be his wife, his mother, his mistress past or present (or her mother), his grandmother, his brother's wife or, more rarely, somebody quite unrelated by blood or marriage. As this list suggests, there is a remarkable range of

possibilities in Swaziland for the care of a man's children, a consequence of norms which prize fertility and children, abhor contraception, and

delay marriage. In a study of 50 rural women in 1973, Carol Allen found that 41 per cent claimed over half of all their first-born children had been born out of marriage, that one-third had had children by more than one man, and that 45 per cent alleged their husbands had fathered other children in casual liaisons.2 Claims to paternity outside of

marriage are readily made by men, rather than being shamefully denied, as in many western societies.

Fathers frequently 'buy' their children and congregate them in the

paternal clan homestead, without marrying their mothers. The husband of a woman with children from previous liaisons is expected to support only his own, since the others are the responsibility of their own fathers, or failing that, of the mother and her parents.

Although some men default, the obligation to support the women in whose kitchen their children eat is so institutionalised that it can be used for personal gain:

My husband's mother has even taken my husband's children (from other women) away from us, claiming that I ill-treat them. She has taken them because she wants my husband to give her maintenance money. She wants him to give her more than half his wage.

(c) To the women with whom he sleeps. Here are included both properly married wives - with whom, by definition, he sleeps - and others with whom he may have liaisons of varying permanence, from brief affairs,

1 Marlene Capetta, 'Population, Food and Nutrition, Swaziland, I940-1982', in de Vletter et al. op. cit. Xolile P. Guma, 'Cash Income and Expenditure', in ibid. p. 141, Table 16, lists

the mean monthly food expenditures for a sample of 87 rural Swazi homesteads during June to

August 1978; 80 per cent or more bought sweets, cold drinks, jam, sugar, biscuits, bread, and flour each week. See also de Vletter, 'Subsistence Farmer, Cash Cropper or Consumer?', p. 6o.

2 Carol J. Allen, 'Dimensions of Swazi Households in Rural and Urban Areas', Ph.D.

dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Cambridge, 1974, pp. 343-7- She also found that 12

per cent of the children in her sample of Ioo households had been tsenga'd by their fathers.

606




even (rarely) prostitution, to very steady relationships approaching marriage, both conceptually and in biographical fact.' The principle of polygyny legitimates men's promiscuity, although 'other women' are disliked as much for their claim on the husband's purse as his affections. In a different category, but exercising much the same sort of threat, is a man's mother.

(d) To his mother. The earlier Swazi family structure - as recorded, for example, by Hilda Kuper2- made it likely that a man's mother would control the kitchen in which both he and his children ate. Yet a clear distinction must be made between these obligations and those to mothers as the provisioners of somebody's kitchen, your brother's if not

your own. This remains very strong, and a man will give money to his mother, even if neither he nor his children eat in her kitchen. As one

daughter-in-law complained:

A man gives first to his mother. She comes before his wife. And she tries to get your money also. It would be better if our husbands gave us the money to give to our mothers-in-law. But his money goes to her behind your back.

Obligations to mothers are particularly strong for young workers who have few obligations:

I went toJohannesburg in I 55 and I came back in 1972 ... All the time I never forgot the situation I had left behind at home. I sent money to my mother each month.

When I was a small boy I used to herd cattle for a Boer called du Toit. He used to pay me 40 cents a month. I used the money to buy shirts. There was never anything left that I could give my mother at home.

(e) To his father. In some people's accounts the money is given to 'parents': 'I just give them a lump sum. They share. I put it in their hands'. Others distinguish carefully between their parents. A father with a working wife and working children says, 'We manage our wages separately. Our children also give us money separately and help us in buying food.'

Money transfers between a son and his father are complicated by two circumstances. The first is that the latter is the head of the homestead, and as such is responsible for co-ordinating and managing the production of subsistence crops. He therefore must receive, in addition to any

1 Nikiwe Mbatha, 'Ambiguities of Swazi Marriage', Social Science Research Unit Paper No. 5, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, 1983.

2 Hilda Kuper, An African Aristocracy: rank among the Swazi (London, I947).



MARGO RUSSELL

personal allowance, money for investment in the food crops of the homestead. This is paid annually when ploughing starts after the first

rains, usually October. Swazi subsistence agriculture has been tightly drawn into the money economy for some years, not so much by the

relatively slight selling of crops,1 as through the buying of inputs with the explicit encouragement of the Ministry of Agriculture, which recommends imported hybrid seed, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and mechanised ploughing. Research has shown that this obligation to finance the annual agricultural cycle is widely honoured by wage- earners, particularly since it is perceived that the effective funding of this activity reduces demands which would otherwise later be made for

bought food.1 The situation is further complicated by the act of cattle purchase. The

father, as the eldest male, owns the homestead herd, on behalf of its

members, and will usually himself buy the cattle, though wives on the

spot are also drawn into these transactions. Since the family's cattle will be used to effect the marriage of sons, they have a particular interest in the herd, and will give their fathers money to buy cattle. In this case the son's particular claim to them will be acknowledged, even though they will be registered at the dipping tank in the name of the father. A son may instruct his father to buy cattle by means of an earmarked

remittance, but he is not bound to do so. He is, however, obliged later to assist in providing lobola - namely, cattle for the marriage of his

son(s). A prudent father is likely to invest his accumulated savings in livestock:

I used to give my salary to elder people in Durban to look after. They used to visit our home anytime. So they would take the money along and give it to my parents. In this way my parents bought me two head of cattle. During this time I never went home.

The blurring of the property rights of fathers and sons in the collective herd makes it difficult always to draw a clear line between money given to fathers (i) for themselves, (ii) as custodians of collective wealth, and

(iii) as a thinly disguised form of personal saving. Similar personal and collective interests may be seen to intrude in money given to mothers

1 de Vletter, 'Migrant Labour in Swaziland', found 41.6 per cent of homesteads sold crops, but in such small amounts that they contributed only 8.7 per cent of annual cash income. Five

years later, Roland Freund and Basil Maphalala, 'Economic Circumstances of Swazi Nation Land

Homesteads, I982/1983', Swaziland Cropping Systems Research and Extension Training Projects, Malkerns, I984, found a very similar incidence of cash crops in four development areas. See also Guma, loc. cit. pp. 130-I.

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who, through the management of food supplies, may enhance the welfare of a man's wife and children.

The obligation to mother, as the person most likely to feed not only you, but also your brothers and their children, and to father, as head of the homestead in which they live, leads by extension to life-long latent

obligations to brothers and their children. If a man should fail or die, then his siblings will take on many of his responsibilities, including possibly marriage to his widow through Kungena or levirate.1 Particularly conspicuous in our interviews were instances of a man's siblings paying for his children's education. Once again, classificatory kinship terms indicate how such responsibilities are allotted:

I find myself looking after the children of my father's brother's daughter. I call her my sister. As her brother, I am expected to pay for her children's education.

For the last six months my brother has been at home without a job. He did not have a chance to go to school. Its difficult for him to earn a better living and bring up his children and bring them to school. To make a living with three wives is strenuous ... Roughly I've got so send them 10 bags of fertiliser. With children's school fees I can't afford it. I have sent five but I'm the only one who provides.

(f) To his grandmother. Swazi grandmothers have a position of power and influence, often being the ritual focus of their families, having invariably outlived their husbands.2 Young workers will give money to their paternal grandmothers, but this obligation falls away for those older Swazi to whom 'gogo' means their own mother. Maternal

grandmothers are unlikely to receive this attention - 'We forget our mothers' mothers' - unless by children with unmarried parents, whose mothers become their effective grandmothers.

These obligations are conceptually and in principle distinct, but may in practice coalesce, as when the person you sleep with is also the woman in whose kitchen you and your children eat. They stand irrespective of need, although the particular sums transferred will be affected by a consideration of needs. Even when there is no need at all, transfers will

1 According to Brian A. Marwick, The Swazi (London, I966), p. 49: 'If there is no heir in a house upon the death of a man, his brothers will take over (ngeng) the wife of that house in order to produce an heir... Even when a man dies unmarried the brothers will conceive it to be a duty to lobola one of his lovers and raise a family to the deceased.'

2 Peter Kasanene, 'Religion and the Aged', Proceedings of a Conference on Ageing, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, 1983.



take place, as if to symbolise and celebrate the social bond. Since the

system is imperfect, not all men honour their obligations. There are

neglected wives, abandoned widows, and women struggling to feed children on inadequate resources. But they are the minority, their

hardship is often temporary, and responsibility for them can be traced to appropriate kin. For most the system works - money moves steadily from workers to their kinsmen. Children continue to give presents to rich and successful parents:

The two elder children are working in Mbabane. They give to me, but its just a gift. Not every month, maybe after three months. When I go to Mbabane they take me out to lunch just to please me. The highest they give me is E5, and they also give money to their mother. I also give money to their mother [a businesswoman in her own right].

Husbands give their wives money, even when the latter are in work and able to support themselves:

My husband gives me money every week. I use it in my business. I invest it so that I will be able soon to build a house. We both have bank accounts. I don't think his other wives have bank accounts. They spend their money on food and other necessities. They depend on what they have been given by this man.

My wife is in Manzini. She has no children with her. I give money to her. She was here this weekend and I gave her E40. She does what she likes with it. Maybe clothes. Not food. When I go shopping I buy food for her too. My wife has a small business.

Because the 'elastic' nature of the Swazi kinship system stretches to embrace 'fathers', 'mothers', 'brothers', and 'sisters' when nature fails, this brief listing obscures the ramifications of dependency and support. Philip Myer mentions the legal obligation to maintain not only parents that are old and indigent, but also uncles, aunts, grandparents, brothers, and sisters.1 But well-institutionalised social pressures make

legal action rarely necessary. Provided that they are seen to be in need, even distant kinsmen share in earnings.

Given the human frailty and unseen contingencies of contemporary Swazi life, these transfers can tbecome very onerous. Just as some calculus of the wants of recipients propels donors into such transfers, so their wealth draws the needy to them. Those earning high wages are under constant onslaught from kinsmen to redistribute their income, or in the words of one of them, to 'pump it out'.

1 Philip Myer, 'Legal Aspects of the Aged', in ibid.

6Io MARGO RUSSELL



THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CASH IN SWAZI SOCIETY 6 11

What then are the obligations of working women? As the interviews

clearly showed, there is much less agreement about what these are, mainly because of their more recent entry into the labour market as earners. Practice has not yet been institutionalised, being influenced by previously prevailing economic parameters. Traditionally women have

provided direct labour for the homesteads in which they lived, and this was not easily transferable; while unmarried, they were obliged to help the family of their fathers, thereafter they worked instead for the homesteads of their husbands.

Women who earn wages possess a new flexibility and discretion in

allocating their economic contribution; yet many adhere to the old

pattern, transferring their allegiance and cash to their new homesteads at marriage. Such practices are legitimated by tradition, but are not so necessary as they once were, and this is perceived by some wage-earners and by the potential beneficiaries of a wider pattern of disbursements.

Since the role of adult women is to provide for their households, it is widely recognised that they need money in order to supplement the home products that are still the staple of most rural families. Since an

inability to purchase such essential items will affect the well-being of entire homesteads, people have an interest in ensuring that their women have sufficient money to prepare good meals, etcetera. This rebounds to the advantage of women. Claims can be less legitimately laid against their earnings than those of men, since these are rightly perceived to be likely to be spent on the common good. The same internalisation of responsibility for the well-being of domestic groups has been observed in the West and decried by radical feminists as an aspect of the

ideological exploitation of women. The obligations of unmarried women to their parents remain. If they

withdraw their labour from their homesteads by moving into paid work

they will commute this into cash contributions to their parents. The

position of such women is like that of the young men who also have to make payments to those in whose kitchen they or their children eat. When the kitchen in which a woman and her children eat is her own, this legitimates her keeping the lion's share of her wages to herself.1

Gandar and Bromberger conclude their study of rural incomes in KwaZulu with a plea for 'a closer understanding of the financial relationship between resident household and absent migrants'. They

1 A fuller analysis of women in work is being made by Makhosazana Ntshingila, University of Swaziland, whose fieldwork transcriptions I am grateful to have shared. See her 'Rural Women in Wage Employment: a report on a small sample in Central Swaziland', Kwaluseni, 1984.



MARGO RUSSELL

properly observe that 'The income level of rural households is dramati-

cally affected by wage remittance behaviour of absent members'.l Academic calculations of income levels of rural households are

likewise dramatically affected by our understanding and treatment of the 'wage remittance behaviour of absent members'. 2 If the foregoing is correct, then it becomes clear that it does not routinely make sense to set the wages of a particular household against its expenditure. The cash income from employment is derived from a variety of wage packets, and is not limited to the earnings of members of the domestic group.3 The wages of workers are not automatically channelled into their own

households, but may find their way to others, where they are unlikely to be centralised in any single purse.

This disjunction between, on the one hand, those who live in a

particular homestead, and on the other, the wage earners who are

contributing to the support of various members, makes the calculation of income per capita doubly difficult. After having traced laboriously all the external flows into a homestead - a task fraught with the dangers of double counting - the numerator is faced with the equally difficult

problem of defining the membership amongst whom this income is shared.

Sometimes the practical problem of defining homestead membership is ameliorated by the Swazi practice of 'transferring' persons to their

income, rather than the reverse - hence, dependants are often incorpor- ated as residents into their homesteads.4 When it comes to members not seen by the enumerator the matter is never simple. Absent sons may fairly readily be conceded to belong to the homestead: not only are several of those interviewed likely to be in receipt of a portion of their

earnings, but the workers concerned may usually spend at least some

1 Gandar and Bromberger, op. cit. p. 23. 2 Understanding and treatment are separate actions. The pressing problem is to convert

understanding into effective procedures for data collection. Western models are not particularly helpful.

3 Allen found, op. cit. pp. 261-3 and 400, that the male head was the sole source of monetary support in only a quarter of her sample of 44 rural homesteads, and that he was one support amongst others - wives, children, brothers, sisters, daughter's husbands, and 'wives' relatives and distant relatives' - in half of these homesteads. In 4 cases, money came from non-residents who were not members of the immediate family or domestic group.

Similarly, Kamalkhani records, op. cit. pp. 35 and 36, that in one month 12 of her sample of

oo00 households received an average of E2o as 'money from relatives other than rural umuti

[homestead] or absentees', 14 received cash or goods from rural umuti, and Io received cash from absent members.

4 According to Allen, researchers realise that homesteads are extended in unusual ways but know who to count as dependants.

6I 2



THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CASH IN SWAZI SOCIETY

of their time living in the homestead. They are likely to maintain a house (indlu) there. Their wives are expected to be important to the homestead, both in agricultural production and in perpetuation of the lineage.

But how should daughters-in-law be treated who do not come to live in the rural homestead, despite the patrilocal rule that they should?

They may instead live in urban areas as second wives of sons who have

already placed a wife in the homestead of their parents. Is such an urban wife a member of the homestead? Are her children? By patrilineal rules

they certainly are, but their inclusion in the homestead statistics may be misleading, reflecting no longer strictly rural conditions. And what about absent married daughters? Although in strictly legal terms they no longer belong to their original homestead, they are often significant financial contributors, and may in fact return there for a protracted period, after the birth of their first child.

The research worker faces in each homestead the difficult problem of deciding whom to include as members. In Swaziland, our initial strategy to elicit the subjective view of membership from participants was thwarted by their practice of throwing questions back at the enumerators. 'Do you want us to include those who are away?' 'Do

you want to know of those who have died ?' etcetera. Clearly, homestead

membership is a vast potential network of patrilineally linked kin, and

appropriate definitions must be determined by purpose. This was recognised by our informants, and we were forced back on our own criteria.1

The practical implication of all this is that we come to the task of data collection singularly ill-prepared by our conventional training, which leads us to think, amongst other things, that incomes are best conceived as flows per month, and that they accrue to a household, namely to 'a group of persons who share a dwelling and who combine to provide themselves with food and other essentials of living'.2 But is household an appropriate concept for Swazis? They 'combine' into homesteads (imiti), and subdivide into kitchens (emadladla); they do not 'share a dwelling', but build a series of separate houses (tindlu); and they diffuse their cash incomes beyond the confines of any of these structures. The superficial resemblance of Swazi urban living patterns

1 For a discussion of some of the problems of deciding what those assumptions should be for calculation of income per capita of homesteads, see Social Science Research Unit, Research Paper No. I 2, University of Swaziland, Kwaluseni, 1984, pp. 21-7.

2 Kamalkhani, op. cit. p. 5.

6I3



to 'households' should not mislead us into trying to identify western social structures usually associated with this particular concept.'

Contrary to our expectations, formed in response to the ideological stress on hierarchy and collectivity in Swaziland,2 control over money in the rural society is highly individualised. After earners have discharged their several obligations to redistribute money, there are likely to be several men and women in the homestead structure with the ability to make expenditures at their own discretion. The elaborate system of communal pressures ensures that a number of adults will have some kind of private purse over which they exercise highly individualised control.

The complex pattern of exchanges of earned money is part of a broader pattern of reciprocity that characterises Swazi life. It is a highly generalised reciprocity, and it coexists uneasily with the calculating spirit that earning and spending engender. It is still considered very ill-mannered if you immediately reciprocate a gift. This does indeed leave the giver at an advantage, but it is considered only polite to tolerate this indebtedness.

Exchanges then are not necessarily rational in the short run, and some are decried by those who have moved decivisely into the western

economic ethos. One daughter tells how she receives a monthly allowance of dried beans from her pensioner mother on the South African border, who then, through the same kinsman courier, approaches a second daughter with a request for food. The underlying effect of these

apparently irrational exchanges is to reinforce the bonds and thereby

strengthen the apparatus of obligation that will function to sustain the

group through the unanticipated crises of drought, conflict, and

eventually death, by ensuring that the channels for the flow of money and goods are kept open.

CONCLUSION

The existence of powerful kinship obligations in Africa has been

acknowledged in western academic accounts for decades without an

apparent reform of concepts and strategies for acquiring data. There

have been loud calls for revision in the social sciences in the Third

1 For a debate on the appropriate unit for analysis of Swazi data, see A. Black-Michaud,

'Homesteads versus Households', Malkerns Research Station, Ministry of Agriculture, 1981;

Russeli, 'Boundaries and Structures in the Swazi Rural Homestead'; and Funekile Simelane,

'Problems of Data Collection in Rural Swaziland', Workshop on Sociological Contributions to

Farming Systems Research, Lusaka, November I984. 2 This ideology is expressed by a man who said, 'In Swazi custom if a woman... .brings anything

of hers into the home of the husband, everything automatically becomes the property of her

husband. We say so. But he cannot sell them out or give it to someone else without the consultation

of the wife. It is like that also between the father and his sons because he is the boss of the

homestead.'

6I4 MARGO RUSSELL




World, especially because of existing theoretical inadequacies,1 but reforms at the micro-level are at least as important, since here is

generated the data over the interpretation of which theorists can argue. 'Significant' debates about such an important issue as the emerging class structure of contemporary African states are fuelled by the 'evidence' collected, unglamorously, from surveys of homes made by enumerators in the employ of the state or a private researcher. The western bias in this data-gathering inevitably flows from the expertise that not only guides most of such attempts, but also trains the local

experts, who would appear too passively to submit to inappropriate procedures, under the misconcpetion that they do not know best,

The often implicitjustification for the adoption of external conceptual schemes is that people are becoming more individualised with the advance of capital, families are becoming more nuclear, responsibilities are shrinking, rural ties are being severed, and western points of view are becoming more appropriate. Such assumptions need to be subjected to the most searching criticism. Incorporation into a world economy at the periphery produces its own distinctive social patterns, which will

vary with the historical and economic circumstances of different

regions. These need to be grasped in their particularity, not smothered under blanket assumptions of either the 'development' or the 'under-

development' schools of thought. We know that people in the Swazi rural areas do not subsist on one

tenth of the incomes of those in towns; yet despite early published criticisr?,l this fatuous conclusion continues to be cited, appealing to some perverse inclination to exaggerate disparities and deprivations.3 These need to be most carefully recorded and analysed, not exaggerated. Then, at the level of theory, we may properly understand the impact of industrial capitalism on a peripheral state in Southern Africa, and in addition, at the level of practice, we may take appropriate initiatives to meet real rather than supposed needs.

This article has attempted painstakingly to assemble what every Swazi knows about remittances. Its justification is to persuade people that common knowledge of the minute functioning of society is the springboard of every social investigation. Without it, such enquiries might be an expensive waste of precious time and resources.

1 See, for example, the Proceedings of the Second Southern African Universities Social Science

Conference, Dar es Salaam, 1979, Vol. III. 2 de Vletter, 'Subsistence Farmer, Cash Cropper or Consumer?'. 3 The elective affinity of the intelligentsia for 'the bad news', a phenomenon of our time, might

be understood as an attempt to assuage feelings of guilt about their personal privileges by public statements of their awareness that disparities exist, and by open denunciation of the system which

patronises them.



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Beyond Remittances: The Redistribution of Cash in Swazi Society

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