When Retirement Isn’t Rest: oGogo and Survival in a Failing Labour Market
- Avela Njwambe and Rozeena Das
August Women’s Month calls us to honour women who are making great strides in the country. This Women’s Month, we want to acknowledge grandmothers, who we affectionately call oGogo, as the quiet pillars that carry the country on their backs, especially in a context of labour market failures that shift the costs of survival onto them.
High unemployment, especially among Black women, sitting at 40.2% (Statistics South Africa, 2025), alongside a chronically underfunded state welfare system and widespread labour migration, compels working age women (25 – 64) to be separated from their children, effectively shifting the burden of care onto grandmothers (Hall, 2019, Mokoene & Khunou, 2022). As a result, there are 6,7 million grandparent headed households caring for 9,7 million children aged 0–17 (Statistics South Africa, 2023).
Furthermore, the high unemployment rates and the absence of adequate income support for most working-age unemployed people, has meant that many households are forced to rely on the SASSA Older Persons Grant (OPG) (valued at around R2,400 per month), to sustain food and daily needs for the whole household (Howson et al, 2024, Torkelson, 2026). In larger households where the dependency ratio is even higher the OPG is stretched very thinly (Moore, 2024). Here, grandmothers absorb both the emotional and material responsibilities. Serving as both caregivers and breadwinners, they head households and support adult children, grandchildren and extended family members (Nkosinathi & Mtshali, 2016) often without recognition or support.
Relying on ageing women, particularly older Black women already made vulnerable by a lifetime of inequality, risks deepening the social crisis and makes this system unsustainable (Hoveni, 2023, Moore, 2024). Retirement should be a time of rest, yet for many grandmothers in South Africa, especially those in rural areas facing significant socio-economic hardships, their old age has become a phase of intensified responsibility, absorbing the consequences of a failing state and a collapsing labour market (Hoveni, 2023).
This Women’s Day, as we celebrate the role of grandmothers, we should also confront an even harder question: why are so many households forced to depend on older women to fill the gaps left by unemployment, inadequate social protection and limited care infrastructure? Without this reflection, we will continue to celebrate women’s strength while reproducing the very conditions that exhaust them. True recognition means addressing state failure, labour market gaps and shifting resources, not romanticising sacrifice.
This Women’s Month, we call upon the state of South Africa to confront labour market exclusion of the working-age population that burdens oGogo, because Black women deserve rest, not a lifetime of carrying inequality.