The scale is startling. Statistics South Africa reported that in 2023 nearly eight million children, 38% of the country’s child population, lived in households headed by grandparents. Our grandparents carry authority and responsibility in an extraordinary share of South African homes.
That contribution takes place within a labour market in which about one in three people in the labour force cannot find work. Stats SA has also found that about half of older people live in households with no employed members, and more than half live in extended households.
For many families, the Older Person’s Grant of about R2,400 a month becomes the most dependable income available. Money intended to support one older person is stretched across food, electricity, school costs, transport and the needs of several generations.
The weight is also gendered. Women make up about 61% of South Africa’s older population, and Stats SA found that grandmothers accounted for more than two-thirds of grandparents living with children in 2023.
The familiar figure of the gogo at the centre of a household reflects love and leadership, but also a distribution of unpaid care that policy too often takes for granted.
‘The future of the people’
I am fortunate to serve as the director of Ikamva Labantu – meaning “the future of the people” – a women- and community-led organisation that works alongside township changemakers to build thriving communities.
What I see every day is that our elders are not simply part of our past; they are central to the future of our people.
Every day, I see older women stretching their grants across a household while also collecting children from school, preparing meals and caring for relatives. They delay buying their own medication and essential items, because another’s needs feel more urgent. And caring for themselves, accessing even essential healthcare, is difficult due to limited and costly public transport.
There is strength and agency in this contribution, but we should not romanticise it. Public policy that casts older people only as dependents misses the direction in which care and money often flow. The risks faced by our elders are also underrepresented.
A study commissioned by Ikamva Labantu in 2024 found recurring reports of economic abuse among older people in Cape Town’s townships. Relatives may take a bank card, demand grant money or control an older person’s income against their wishes. Participants also described neglect, emotional abuse, physical harm and isolation, often within relationships on which they depend for care. Unemployment and substance use can intensify household pressure, but they never excuse abuse.
South Africa’s policy framework gives us a strong foundation. The Older Persons Act 13 of 2006 recognises older people as rights holders and provides for community-based and home-based care. The challenge is to ensure that this intent reaches older people consistently, including those who are frail, homebound or living far from essential services.
That means protecting older people’s control over their grants, making reporting routes understandable and safe for an elder, offering practical support and respite to family caregivers, and ensuring that food, transport and healthcare reach the older person as well as the household around them.
It also means sustaining community services such as Ikamva Labantu’s home-based care programme and senior clubs. These programmes do not replace the government. They extend the reach of public services, ensure our elders are not isolated and can seek support through trusted relationships, and ensure regular contact and referrals close to where older people live or at their homes.
Circles of Care
On 1 October, International Day of Older Persons, Ikamva Labantu will hold 16 simultaneous Circles of Care events at senior clubs across Cape Town’s townships. Older people will meet police, healthcare providers, government departments, social services and caregivers for health screening, rights information and direct links to support. The purpose is practical: to make protection and care easier to reach, and to build relationships that continue after the event.
But one day of attention cannot carry a generation that supports the rest of us every day. South Africa’s older people are helping to raise millions of children and sustain households through a punishing economic period.
We should celebrate that contribution without using it as permission to endlessly ask more of them. Their care for others cannot come at the cost of their own food, health, safety or dignity.
The question is not whether our elders still contribute. The evidence is all around us. The question is whether the systems around them recognise the true weight of that contribution and share it fairly. Older South Africans have not retired from caring for us.
We must stop retiring from caring for them. DM
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