Debt/credit, money and social relationships in the underground credit markets of Soweto, South Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID3093271
AuthorsDetlev Krige (0000-0002-1791-6133, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume58
Issue3
Pages403-429
Publication date2019-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Science Information (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0539-0184 • E-ISSN: 1461-7412
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0539018419851767
OpenAlexW2947830131
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited42

This article engages with contemporary debates about debt and money from the vantage point of an ethnographic study of unregulated, small-scale moneylending business who continues to operate in the township of Soweto's poorer neighbourhoods. Following Peebles' argument that reading poor people's unwillingness to bank with formal institutions as a sign of ignorance is unwarranted, this article describes persistent dynamics of underground credit markets and personalized credit relationships, demonstrating how the practice of ukumashonisa (extending cash money as credit) by neighbourhood lenders are embedded in social fields shared by lenders and borrowers. This article further demonstrates how the vilification of the figure of the township moneylender ( mashonisa) by a broad coalition of civil society groups, trade unions, the state and commercial financial institutions, assisted in the financialization of poor people's monies. This public consensus about the depravity of the neighbourhood moneylender is not shared by all Sowetans, especially poor and unemployed Sowetans who have been pushed into a greater dependency on both money and intense personalized social relationships as they try to survive. Seeking out personalized credit relationships, and turning debt transactions, contracts and relationships with local moneylenders into exchanges that take on the appearance of gifts rather than commodity exchanges, continues to remain a strategy for people who are no longer able to count on stable wage work as their primary source of income

Business · Debt · Economics · Financial system · Financialization · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion · South African History and Culture · Finance

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