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I conducted fieldwork for this project between January 2012 and May 2013.

I had originally planned to spread the fieldwork between two sites in KwaZulu-Natal province. This would have generated a comparative dataset. However, as fieldwork progressed it was decided, with guidance from my supervisors, to remain in the one study site as a greater depth of data was emerging after the initial fieldwork period of 2 months. The fieldwork site was located close to my home, and easily accessible. As a result the decision was made to exclude the second site from fieldwork, and instead spend the remainder of time allocated for fieldwork continuing research in

Khaya’manzi.

Throughout the fieldwork period, I was relieved to find that people of all ages were interested in becoming involved in my research. Older women were, however, more

likely than younger women to put themselves forward and volunteer to be interviewed and become involved. Younger women were more timid, although once I had

approached them and arranged to meet and discuss the project, they were willing and participated enthusiastically in the research. No participants decided to opt out of participation in the research.

It is now necessary to consider my position as a researcher, whilst working on this doctoral thesis and to be reflexive about the process of social research. This process is an intrinsic constituent of ethnographic enquiry (Hammersly and Atkinson 2007) and is central to the African femininity perspective (Tamale 2008).

I am a married, white female British researcher in my twenties, with two stepchildren. This project provided the opportunity for me to implement a detailed research project in an area that is predominantly black African, with high unemployment and low

household income levels. As such, it is inevitable that the research was conducted from an outsider perspective. This could have created an imbalance of power relations between the participants and myself. It has been suggested that outsider researchers do not have enough in-depth knowledge about the studied community to develop a true representation of its situational reality (Thomas et al 2000; Robson 2002). However, I believe that my own experiences of working within the development sector across Southern Africa, and my proficiency at understanding and speaking isiZulu allowed me to develop a positive rapport with participants and become an accepted outsider to the community.

On numerous occasions, female participants either in interviews or informal conversations asked me about my home life, my family, my stepchildren or my

husband. I found that being able to share stories of a family-oriented home-life with the women I was interviewing created a stronger rapport between us and made them feel

more comfortable about discussing their own situations. This was particularly the case with younger women. At various times, joking about our husbands, or boyfriends and telling anecdotes about children broke the ice at the beginning of an interview.

I never noticed when introducing myself as a British national, any prejudice or even comment from any of the research participants. Introducing myself as such, however, to migrant women in Khaya’manzi kindled a kind of solidarity between us, as they often understood that I was, a migrant too.

However, my being British did lead to an interesting debate one day with a white, English-speaking South African neighbour from my village. She is a woman who my partner and I know well, and she visited us at our house one evening just prior to the start of my fieldwork. We entered into a conversation about my fieldwork and PhD research, and she expressed strong opinions about the fieldwork area and farm workers living there. She even stated that as I was English, and not South African by birth, I wouldn’t “be able to understand” the black people. She was clearly referring to the community’s socio-cultural context rather than any language difficulties, as she knew I was able to speak isiZulu. She also suggested that I should not be upset if I did not find anything of interest because of the difficulty caused by the lack of understanding she was referring to that was, in her opinion typical of my nationality. I believe that this example demonstrates the lack of understanding typical of white, South African farm owners in the area.

Before I ventured out into the field, other, numerous white South African neighbours and friends warned me about the perils, dangers and evils of the rural, black farming communities. They provided examples of horror stories of crime and insecurity and warned me against taking unnecessary risks and venturing far from populated areas. I interpreted some comments as disapproval: in venturing beyond the gated, white

populated, farming village of my home, I was blurring the boundaries of my identity, and how I should behave as a white woman from the farming community. In doing fieldwork in black areas, I was venturing into the spaces of an “other”, which is somewhere inappropriate to go.

For the most part, I, however, found black African community members friendly, giving, generous with both their time and meagre supplies (I was never without a cup of tea in my hand!). I felt comfortable walking alone in isolated areas, although always took care to carry a mobile phone and notify my partner where I was going and what time to expect me home. I sometimes felt a little bit harassed, when sitting at the

shebeen (illegal store selling alcohol) at the end of the month, when it is a popular hangout for men to drink, whilst spending some of their wages. However, this is no different to feelings I had when working in a bar in the neighbouring white town, when it was close to closing time.

Throughout the whole fieldwork period, there was one single occasion when I felt ill at ease. In December 2012, I had finished interviews for the day, and stopped at the cash store to buy rice for supper at home. A policeman stopped me and suggested that I stay in the car, or go home and return later. I then noticed an ambulance and paediatric unit response car in the car park of the store, close to where I had parked. I asked the police officer what had happened, and he explained that a man had got drunk, and hit his stepchild on the head with a tholemba (machete). The child was bleeding to death but paramedics were doing their best to stabilise him. I reversed the car, and was about to head towards home, when the man in question was roughly pushed towards a police van. I recognised that he was the boyfriend of a woman I had spent many hours talking to outside the store and at the crèche opposite. The child had attended the crèche. However, the next morning, news came through that the child would recover, the man was in custody and everyone carried on with their daily lives.

Any other challenges I encountered were caused by the manner and attitude of participants towards each other and myself.

I was seen as a young married white woman with resources: a large four-by-four car, clothes, a husband and a home. I noticed in some situations, perhaps because of my personal circumstances some women were envious of me, and others perceived that I was very affluent and should help them financially. In particular, a number of the younger women who participated in this study, either through the process of

observation or the pre-arranged interviews, presented their children to me as hungry, inadequately dressed and unwell as a tactic to solicit my sympathy, and hopefully a financial donation. In most cases, this was found later to be untrue, as very few participants in this study went without food. However, their actions were caused by a reaction from them to my physical characteristics, and a process known as “tata ma

chance” which is a Zulu term that comes from the English catch phrase, adopted by the

national lotto draw, and aptly used to described individuals who are willing to “take a chance” to obtain money from another by a slightly comical, but still calculated and underhand means. Participants who “tata ma chance” could have become quite an obstacle to achieving quality interviews with younger women, as they were not honest about their personal circumstances. However, I managed to overcome the situation through use of humour, often by teasing the women in question in front of neighbours and other people, and laughing with them. In this way, I let the participants know that I understood that they were trying to use the situation to their, mostly financial benefit. Once this understanding was gained and barriers were broken down in our relationship, I was able to discuss interesting topics with the women, and they happily voiced their opinions on many issues and situations.

Whilst communication with participants did not prove to be problematic, particularly male participants within family group interviews often made incorrect assumptions about my level of proficiency at speaking and understanding isiZulu. When convening group interviews, I spoke very little, only occasionally offering prompts to ensure that the conversation was steered towards topics of relevance to the thesis. Men often entered the interview situation late, after we had started, and so missed my introduction, which would have been the only opportunity for participants to hear my proficiency at speaking and understanding the language. As such, men would often assume that I could not understand what they were saying, and would direct more polite comments and discussion towards me, mostly spoken in isiZulu, but interspersed with words of English, in an attempt to ensure I could understand them. However, they would then add comments, or additions to their statements, or even instructions to the women in the room directed at the other family members, under the assumption that I would not be able to understand their rudeness. In these situations, I was never able to correct the situation, and demonstrate my level of understanding, and as such this provided an insight into the underlying and hidden power relations within the household,

particularly between men and women, that I would otherwise have been excluded from witnessing.

A final challenge that I encountered is related to the very high prevalence of HIV in Khaya’manzi. Whilst there are no accurate statistics for infection, as Khaya’manzi is located outside of population surveillance areas, the high levels of national and international labour migration to the area, combined with the poverty levels mean that HIV is highly prevalent (AFRA 2002). It is estimated that infection levels within women of reproductive age (14 to 35 years) could be as high as 75% (AFRA 2003). Despite the gradual shift of HIV to be considered a chronic condition, because of the now widespread availability of improved antiretroviral therapy (ART), which prolongs life and improves the health of infected individuals, death rates are still high in

populations with high levels of infection (Bor et al 2013). During the fieldwork period, six research participants died from HIV-related causes. As well as the practical

challenges this posed in terms of returning to interview these participants, the experience of the deaths of these people I knew was a difficult situation to come to terms with.

I was invited to attend four of the funerals, and was able to go to two of them. One was a small occasion, as the deceased had few relatives still alive. The ceremony was a Christian service held at a local church and led by a pastor. The second service, was a traditional, rural South African funeral, held at a Zion bush church. The ceremony was focused on the return of the body of the deceased to the ancestors for guidance, care and peaceful passage into what is believed to be the next stage of existence. I can honestly say that this service was the most emotionally draining funeral I have ever attended. This experience did, however, enable me to understand the religious context of the studied community far better than I had previously.

3.8 Conclusion

In this chapter I have presented the main issues and observations surrounding

methodology, methods and analysis, ethics, reflexivity positionality and the experience of carrying out fieldwork for this PhD in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The chapter presented the sequential exploratory methodology used in this thesis, and discussed the multiple methods employed in order to answer the three research questions:

1. What are women’s intergenerational understandings of landscapes of fertility within the changing socio-economic context of rural South Africa?

3. To what extent does the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa contribute to women’s landscapes of fertility?

The next three chapters, Chapters 4-6, present the findings of this research study, each of which answer one of the above three research questions. Chapter Four is divided into parts A and B. Part A presents the descriptive statistics that illustrate women’s change in fertility preferences between 1998 and 2003, and factors that may be associated with this change. Part B of the chapter offers insights gained from qualitative fieldwork into the inter-generational differences in women’s fertility preferences, and the potential reasons for these differences over a lengthened timeframe in an exploration of the perspectives of women from different generations.