Abstract
This study examines kinship care of Muslim older persons as an indigenous practice in South
Africa in relation to developmental social welfare in the country. In South Africa,
developmental social welfare is the preferred approach to social work and social welfare
service delivery. This is a fundamental shift away from the previous apartheid welfare regime
to an inclusive welfare system. During the apartheid era, welfare services in South Africa
followed Western perspectives and were implemented based on racial discrimination and
exclusion in service delivery. In this milieu, the needs of most of the population, which is
made up of diverse indigenous, religious, and cultural communities, were ignored.
Indigenous knowledge systems were disregarded, therefore, notwithstanding their pervasive
presence and practice in South African society. In the post-apartheid era, the government
adopted the social development approach to social welfare, also referred to as developmental
social welfare, to address historical injustices in social work and social welfare, so that
service delivery could be more representative of and responsive to the needs of the county’s
diverse clients and communities.
This study explores kinship care of Muslim older persons in South Africa in this context. The
aim was to develop knowledge of how Muslim people care for older persons within their
religious and cultural environments, and to appraise this practice in relation to the postapartheid
government’s mandate of inclusive social welfare for all. Kinship care of Muslim
older persons was understood as an indigenous knowledge system based on its informal
practice as a religious and culturally rooted practice that manifests in specific ways in its
localised context. A grounded theory study was implemented to understand the nature and
functioning of kinship care of older persons in the Muslim community and to assess its
iv
formulation as part of developmental social welfare service delivery to Muslim clients. Older
persons and their caregivers from ten intergenerational Muslim families in Cape Town were
interviewed about their experiences of kinship care. Participants were located in mainly
impoverished townships and working-class areas in different parts of Cape Town and were
purposively selected to participate in the research. A textual analysis of Islamic religious
sources informed the empirical research.
The findings of the research revealed that among Muslim families, kinship care functions as
mutual intergenerational relationships that serve survival and adaptive functions. Family
preservation and survival based on reciprocity, mutual support and the authoritative role of
older persons in the family characterises this environment. In these arrangements, older
persons play a vital role in upholding the well-being of the family rather than being recipients
of care alone. Kinship care is a preferred model of care as it reinforces intergenerational
solidarity over generations, while institutional care is viewed negatively as it challenges the
Islamic worldview of the care of older persons. Religion and the country’s poor socioeconomic
conditions were found to be central drivers in reinforcing these care arrangements
in the home and in the community. On the basis of religion, the participants embraced their
role seeing it as fulfilling a religiously ordained duty. But these conditions also impacted on
caregivers and the older persons themselves, who functioned without adequate support
services to ameliorate care burdens, especially for women who are the main providers of
unpaid care work. For developmental social welfare to be successful in respect of the Muslim
community, the state will have to make concerted efforts to integrate appropriate indigenous
care models and support services into its policies and practice. The study concludes with
identifying a model of kinship care with practice principles to facilitate this outcome.
Intergenerational households and extended families are the main family type in South Africa.
v
Accordingly, the study provides insights that could inform formal social and welfare policies
related to indigenous and cultural systems in general, and indigenous models of kinship care
in South Africa that is poorly understood. Its relevance extends further to Africa, to Muslim
communities globally and the Global South due to the high prevalence of religious and
culturally endorsed kinship care systems of older persons in these contexts.