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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 13. June 15 1981

"Breadwinner's Concession"

"Breadwinner's Concession"

For those women who are the sole supporters of children, a "breadwinners concession" is often granted with the proviso that the children must remain in the homelands so as to ensure they do not eventually acquire residence rights in the urban areas. Women from the rural areas, or a different urban jurisdiction, may also be denied permission to marry under these laws. Families are broken and the rate of prostitution and that of children born out of wedlock has risen to alarming proportions as a result.

The ramifications of these laws are intricate and far-reaching. For instance, a migrant worker living in a single hostel risks being prosecuted for "illegally harbouring" his wife.

Women workers also find themselves victims of the crude surveillance measures taken by a jittery police force. Domestic workers living on the rooftops of high-rise flats in Johannesburg - locations in the sky, as they have been tagged - are locked in every night and freed in the morning. Employers are required to keep duplicate keys to servants' rooms and to present them on demand to police or other officials. Sleeping women are subjected to early morning raids by male officials during school holidays, ostensibly so that searches for children on "illegal visits" can be conducted.

Since the introduction of the Group Areas Act in 1952, more than two million blacks have been forcibly moved as part of the separate development plan. Well over half the victims of mass removals are women and children, who constitute the so-called surplus population. Their removal into the homelands or adjoining areas simply relocates their problems of unemployment, overcrowding, poverty and disease. The authorities have forged, in effect, a migrant labour class with no permanent rights of residence in the urban areas. The few annual contracts for work in the cities are seldom available to black women. They have to work in the border industries, which do not have to observe minimum wage legislation. A 1978 survey of the Ciski found that 63 per cent of the women were unemployed and that under the guise of archaic "customary law" deserted women can be denied the use of land, since only male heads of households have the right to gain land allocation. They are recruited as seasonal workers, paid by the day or by piece rates, or even in kind. Child labour is a common feature of these areas.

The plight of women in the homelands defies description. Surrounded by the despair of hungry, malnourished children and old and disabled people, these women scratch the barren soil in vain.

The Institute of Race Relations 1978 survey shows that 50 per cent of all two to three year olds are malnourished. The infant mortality rates are close to 50 per cent. Graves are continually being dug for fresh little corpses. The rural areas, especially the homelands, are characterised by overpopulation, destitution, and starvation.