Chart ii: showing travelling time to De Doorns
b.
Age, marital status and children
Most of this group is aged between 20 and 39 years of age, but the women tend to be older,
with 19% of women aged above 40 years old. Around half of interviewees are married among
both men (52%) and women (46%) with a further 8% of women being widows.
A large number of the De Doorns Zimbabwean labour force travel as married couples. Overall,
51% of married respondents are living with their spouse at De Doorns. A further 9% of
respondents indicate that their spouse is elsewhere in South Africa, although not in De
Doorns, meaning that 60% of the married group has a spouse within the country. The large
number of couples may be partly owing to the great distances involved in getting to De
Doorns, and the difficulty in getting home, or to the seasonal nature of the fruit picking; two
people picking may mean double the money in those few months, after which couples return
to Zimbabwe. However, what raised a concern in the light of absence of both parents, was the
question of where were the children, and more importantly, who was caring for them?
75% of women report having children, which points to a large number of single mothers as
only 54% are either married or widowed. 48% of men report having children. Between them,
they report 551 children, of which 419 are under age 18, and 244 are under ten.
Only 54 of these 419 minor children are with their parent/s in De Doorns, or around 13%.
Respondents indicated how 357 of their children under 18 years are being taken care of, as
follows:
54% were being raised by a grandparent
26% were being raised by their mother only
10% were being raised by their father only
7% were being cared for by an aunt or older sibling
3% were reported as having no caregiver (9 children)
43
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