The cultural form of saving as a group: Flexible savings group strategies in the new South Africa

This dissertation examines the adaptation and innovation of the cultural form of saving as a group by black women who are members of savings groups in the townships of Langa, Guguletu, and Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa. The aim of this dissertation is to determine if and how the members of savings groups have created flexible savings group strategies to participate in the opportunities of the new South Africa. It also explores how group members express Ubuntu (humanity) toward one another and how women receive empowerment from their participation in savings groups. I gathered research data on the practices and activities of three types of savings groups: (1) savings and credit associations (SCAs), (2) black women's long-term investment groups, and (3) small housing savings and finance groups. This involved conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with two kinds of informants. I conducted sixty-three interviews with members of one or more of the three types of savings groups and fourteen interviews with specialized resource persons, such as representatives of non-governmental organizations and private sector business consultants/managers who worked with many of the savings groups. I also engaged in participant observation of various savings group meetings, workshops, and other activities. My findings illustrate that the members of black women's long-term investment groups and small housing savings and finance groups adapted flexible SCA practices, which acted as local accumulation strategies that recombined and selectively used existing and new patterns of behavior. Such practices enabled them to engage in new black economic empowerment and housing development initiatives. The priorities and goals of the members of the investment and housing savings groups also resulted in their flexible expression of Ubuntu that often modified and/or limited established forms of assistance among group members. However, the members of all three types of savings groups gained empowerment, especially economic empowerment, from such groups and used these savings groups to respond to the gendered division of labor that placed women as the primary caretakers of the household.