Intergenerational family care: legacy of the past, implications for the future

This is a study, based largely on a wide range of interviews, of the manifold effects of child care by grandparents in lower‐income multi‐generational families in Cape Town, and the wider implications of these findings for the long‐term effects of apartheid legislation, family and household patterns, and future welfare provision. The study revealed the particular but often hidden impact on the elderly of apartheid legislation in its many aspects, frequently as a consequence of their childcare functions. For African elderly, citizenship provisions and ‘independent homelands’, as well as influx control and its replacements, had particular effects; both groups were affected in unforseen ways by group areas legislation, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and its residual consequences, and the differential provision of relevant services: health, housing, educational and recreational facilities, and pension payments. The data highlighted the very different effects apartheid had on child care and the position of the elderly, owing particularly in Cape Town to the operation of the Coloured Labour Preference Area policy and the different controls on housing allocation by separate authorities. In addition, historical, cultural, and legal differences between the African and coloured communities played an important role, and the mechanisms operating in these areas were examined. As well as the immediate consequences for household patterns, the paper traces the long‐term implications for mutual family support and for care of the elderly. The actual position in situations covered by the Roman‐Dutch duty of care between family members was considered for its implications for future law reform. In addition, in looking to the interface between family care and necessary state provision in a future South Africa, the article spells out some of the consequences for future welfare arrangements by the state.