Comparison with Ethiopia

I recently visited rural Ethiopia when attending a friend's wedding and realised that it was the first time I had travelled to socioeconomically deprived area since living in the Transkei. Prior to my time in South Africa I had been to various developing countries as a backpacker but I now see things in a different light having actually lived in similar areas.

The comparisons were obvious, lots of children running around with no shoes on and toddlers wearing nothing but a loose fitting T-shirt. Curiosity from most at the sight of white people carrying backpacks in the mountains with expensive looking sunglasses and cameras. There was great hospitality at the mountain camps and nothing seemed too much trouble for anyone.

However, it was the differences between rural Ethiopia and the Transkei that were eye opening. The most obvious difference was that during the day just about everyone seemed to be working. Most were farming the land or tending to animals, others were carrying huge loads in or out of the mountains and many of the children were 'looking after' their younger siblings. The other striking thing was the communal nature of the work. The fields of barley were far too big for a single family to work alone and often had numerous workers dotted around. It was clearly harvest time and we were told that families grouped together so that on a single day everyone would help a single family with a harvest and the next day they would all move on to help another family from within the group.

There are some very hard workers in the Transkei of course, mostly these are women who carry huge loads of wood to heat their home and cook and clean for large families. What you don't see though is the constant industry on the land, there are animals and some small maize fields but this is always kept within a family and is very small scale in comparison. There are often groups on men hanging around who seem to have little to occupy themselves and have very little interest in farming.

There must be many historical and cultural reasons for this of which I am not aware but I can't help thinking of two potentially destructive factors. Firstly the only prospect of work for most men in Transkei is to migrate to the mines in the north. This is really tough physical work and not for the faint hearted so I suspect that many of the hardworking men from the Transkei are actually absent and therefore the ones left behind tend to be the less committed workers.

The other factor is the supply of government grants. Many families are almost completely dependent on government grants, either for young children, for disability or old age pensions. I can't help thinking that before grants became available there must have been much more subsistence level farming going on in this very fertile land and that these days it is far easier to find a grant and buy a sack of maize meal than to grow it yourself. It would be a sad thing if true but it would be interesting to find out just how much farming practice has changed since the mass introduction of the grant system