INSTITUTIONALIZED CHILD CARE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA

“When people start an orphanage, they tend to focus on the needs of the most
vulnerable children… What we’ve found through our research was that
vulnerability was not taken away as the children grew up. It was actually just
delayed until the children left… there are not orphanages because there are
orphans, there are orphans because there are orphanages.”
– Chhin, 2015
In Cambodia, fewer than 40% of children under 18 living in orphanages had neither
parent alive. (USAID and Holt International, 2005.) It is statistics like these that fully
reveal the disparity between the Western definition of orphanhood– the death of one’s
parents, and the one at play throughout the developing world. Throughout Sub-Saharan
Africa, the term “orphan” is much more associated with homelessness and living on the
streets than it is parental mortality.
An assessment of institutionalized housing for OVC in urban South Africa
requires an understanding of housing patterns and living situations of the local
populations with the highest rates of parental mortality. Housing alone is a complicated
topic in South African society, as one of the biggest markers of societal division during
the apartheid era. (DuPlessis, 2004) Historically, white South Africa sought to maintain
policies which kept the majority African population separated from its business and
residential districts. Africans were societally defined at the time period as the black ethnic
groups comprising South Africa’s population minus its White English, White Afrikaaner,
and South Asian populations, with descendants of interracial couples receiving a third
distinction of colored. African ownership of land or property was restricted to extremely
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