In addition to the danger of depoliticization, there is another problem
with the existing systems of cash transfers in the region. As pointed out
in earlier chapters (the introduction and chapter 2), southern African programs
for addressing poverty via social assistance continue to be modeled
on the old, EuÂ�roÂ�peÂ�an social demoÂ�cratic conception of “the social,” a
conception that presumes a “normal” situation of widespread and near-Â�
universal wage employment. For this reason such programs have mostly
avoided (or evaded) addressing the millions of healthy working-�age men
who are durably excluded from the world of employment. Payments of
social grants therefore tend, in practice, to go largely to women who provide
child care and retired older people and can respond only in a very
limited and indirect way to the crisis created by the disappearance of the
low-�skilled, manual labor jobs that once sustained much of the country.