In Predatory Welfare, Erin Torkelson explores how the direct cash transfer program instituted in South Africa revised and reworked post-apartheid racialized and gendered dispossession, despite its promise of ameliorating extreme poverty. Beginning in 2012, she focuses on how poor Black South African women assert their entitlements to social assistance and responsibilities to familial care against the pressures of expropriation built into the grant payment system. Because the grants did not cover monthly bills, recipients were pushed into predatory loans collateralized by welfare payments. Torkelson finds that the state-sponsored but privately-run program was fundamentally undermined by its reliance on digital financial technologies which encoded wider forces of colonial rule, nationalist politics, and global development. Even when the government assumed control of grant payment in 2018, the neoliberal bent of fiscal policy continued to drive recipients into debt in new ways. Drawing on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork and organization – in grant payment queues, loan offices, grocery stores, Parliament, and the Constitutional Court – Torkelson demonstrates how cash transfers can offer a means to making racial capitalism more acceptable and how recipients can push back to demand reparation.
By:
Erin Torkelson
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 445g
ISBN: 9781478038719
ISBN 10: 1478038713
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 26 May 2026
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
List of Abbreviations ix Prologue. She’s Got the Receipts xi Introduction. Life on an Installment Plan: Separate Development in Postapartheid South Africa 1 Part I. The Cash Paymaster Services Distribution System (2012–2018) 1. Surplus People Rebooted: Debt, Development, and Difference 33 2. Bantustan Banking: Dirt Roads and Superhighways 61 3. Sophia’s Choice: A Western Cape Road Map of Debt 91 4. Hellish Home Economics: Financializing the Cultural Politics of Care 124 Part II. The Post Office Distribution System (2018–2023) 5. Deserving and Undeserving Welfare States: Hegemonic Struggles Within the Ruling Party 177 6. Postal Banking: The Debilitating Effects of Public Infrastructures 177 7. Transferred Justice: Historic Debt and Future Repair 207 Conclusion. Building Solidarity Through Debt 235 Acknowledgments 243 Glossary 247 Notes 249 References 265 Index
Erin Torkelson is Senior Lecturer of Geography at the University of the Western Cape.
Reviews for Predatory Welfare: Debt, Race, and Cash Transfers
“Who owes what to whom? Can the intergenerational debts of racial capitalism be repaid, let alone repaired? What role, if any, might basic income payments play in this process? Far beyond a simple story about the ills of financialization to be redeemed by a romanticized state, Predatory Welfare is a beautifully detailed ethnography about the intertwined histories, presents, and potential futures of racialization and social welfare in South Africa.”—Hannah Appel, author of, The Licit Life of Capitalism “What is so critically important about the cash payments made to poor rural South Africans portrayed in Predatory Welfare? Torkelson, a geographer, shows readers that predatory capitalism in ‘unimportant’ places is a window onto the production of odious debt everywhere. This exemplary research is a must-read not only for South Africanists but also for all those committed to reforming the global financial architecture.”—Anne-Maria Makhulu, author of, Making Freedom
