The Moving Line Between State Benevolence and Control: Municipal Indigent Programmes in South Africa

What is it about?

“Indigents” are a new category of poor citizens in South Africa, The term is used for administering municipal welfare. Once the poor register to be helped as municipal indigents, they gain access to free basic services, but they also enter a bureaucratic underworld where policies are changed, and eligibility criteria and sanctions are unevenly applied. Surveillance of indigent households has turned indigency into a “regime” for managing the poor.

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