Abstract:
Background: Adjustment to the onset of disability has complex reverberations relating to both
socially engendered disadvantage and the realities of functional limitation. Pre-existing ways
of understanding disability can meaningfully shape this experience.
Objective: This study aimed to provide an exploratory understanding of the experience of
becoming disabled in a low-income, under-served, rural South African community. In
particular, it was interested in how people with disabilities constructed their struggle within
the conceptual split between disadvantage caused by ‘malfunctioning’ bodies (a ‘medical
model’ view) and that caused by social organisation (a ‘social model’ view).
Methods: Seven people between the ages of 39 and 47 who had acquired a physical disability
within the last 4 years were recruited in a rural area of Limpopo province, South Africa. Semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted, and the resulting data were thematically
analysed. The authors were positioned as both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ to the participants and
sought to use this orientation to best understand and stay faithful to participants’ views while
simultaneously applying participant’s experiences to conceptual knowledge in disability studies.
Results: Four themes emerged: (1) emotional impact of onset of disability, (2) being introduced
to disablist prejudice, (3) being required to take on a ‘disabled’ identity and (4) socio-economic
implications of becoming disabled. The findings reflected a complex set of adverse experiences
in the lives of the participants, spanning disadvantages based on embodied, cultural, relational
and environmental factors, which were superimposed on existing, generalised poverty in their
local communities. Participants made sense of their predicament in multiple, evolving ways.
Conclusion: This study contributes to the understanding of the complex predicaments, and
sense-making, of persons who have acquired a disability in a rural, impoverished Global
South environment.
