Poverty: Causes, Responses and Consequences in Rural South Africa Elizabeth Francis, April 2006 Development Studies Institute London School of Economics Houghton St London WC2A 2AE
[email protected] CPRC Working Paper No. 60 Chronic Poverty Research Centre ISBN: 1-904049-59-1 Elizabeth Francis is a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at the London School of Economics. Acknowledgements The research on which the case study is based was carried out as a collaborative project with Colin Murray and Rachel Slater, of the University of Manchester, under the title ‘Multiple Livelihoods and Social Change’, funded by the UK Department for International Development. The project involved comparative research on poverty, livelihoods and social differentiation in North West Province and the Free State, South Africa. I should like to thank Ben Mosiane and Nancy Moilwa, of the University of the North West, who assisted me in the research, and staff at the North West Province Department of Land Affairs. Abstract This paper examines recent contributions to the analysis of poverty, particularly those emphasising the constraints on the poor posed by social relations and institutions that systematically benefit the powerful. It proposes an analytic framework for study of the causes of poverty, responses to poverty and the consequences of those responses. This framework is then applied to a case study from rural South Africa. The case study underlines the importance of understanding the processes linking poverty at the local level with the regional and national political economy. It also suggests that responses to poverty in this case may be unsustainable. (i) Table of Contents Abstract (i) 1.