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‘TATA MA CHANCE’: ON CONTINGENCY AND THE LOTTERY IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2012

Ilana van Wyk
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Abstract

Since its inception in March 2000, the South African National Lottery has been treated as both a developmental boon and a dangerously exploitative new consumer product. In both discourses the poor feature prominently: as recipients of Lotto largesse and as its most frequent victims. Both academics and the National Responsible Gambling Programme have traced the poor's participation in the Lottery to their financial illiteracy and to their extraordinary millennial hopes. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town's townships in 2008–10, this article puts paid to such interpretations by looking at the economic realities and lottery participation of ‘the poor’. I contend that poor people in these areas have adapted enormously flexible ways of dealing with the multiple contingencies that mark their lives. This flexibility often translates into very modest investments in the Lottery, both financially and in terms of hope. As such, playing the Lottery is just one of a range of ways in which people ‘make a plan’ and ‘tata ma chance’ (take a chance).

Résumé

Depuis son lancement en mars 2000, la loterie nationale sud-africaine est traitée à la fois comme une aubaine pour le développement et un nouveau produit de consommation qui exploite dangereusement l'individu. Dans un discours comme dans l'autre, ce sont les pauvres qui occupent une place prédominante, en tant que bénéficiaires des largesses du Lotto d'une part, et en tant que victimes les plus fréquentes d'autre part. Les chercheurs et le National Responsible Gambling Programme (mis en place pour favoriser une pratique raisonnable du jeu) ont tous deux attribué la participation des pauvres à la loterie à leur faible niveau de connaissances financières et à leurs espoirs millénaires extraordinaires. Basé sur vingt mois de travaux ethnographiques menés dans les townships de Cape Town entre 2008 et 2010, cet article met un terme à ces interprétations en étudiant les réalités économiques et la participation des « pauvres » à la loterie. Il soutient que les pauvres de ces quartiers ont adapté des moyens extrêmement flexibles de surmonter les nombreux aléas de leur existence. Cette flexibilité se traduit souvent par des investissements très modestes dans la loterie nationale, tant en termes financiers qu'en termes d'espoir. En tant que tel, jouer au Lotto n'est qu'un moyen parmi d'autres de « prévoir » et de « tata ma chance » (tenter sa chance).

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 82 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Popular Economies in South Africa , February 2012 , pp. 41 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2012

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