QAKA, SOUTH AFRICA – FEBRUARY 12: Noxolo Jeke, age 33, a mother of seven children carries a bucket of water after fetching it in a river close to her house on February 12, 2024, in Qaka, a rural village close to Port St Johns in Eastern in Cape Province, South Africa. She lives in a one-room house with seven children aged 16, 15, 12, 9, 6, 5, 1 and survives on government social child grants, totally around 175 Eur a month. Sometimes she works at a farm and makes extra income. The family...
more »
QAKA, SOUTH AFRICA – FEBRUARY 12: Noxolo Jeke, age 33, a mother of seven children carries a bucket of water after fetching it in a river close to her house on February 12, 2024, in Qaka, a rural village close to Port St Johns in Eastern in Cape Province, South Africa. She lives in a one-room house with seven children aged 16, 15, 12, 9, 6, 5, 1 and survives on government social child grants, totally around 175 Eur a month. Sometimes she works at a farm and makes extra income. The family face a daily struggle to eat, pay for school uniforms, clothes etc., and the government grant money they rely on every month only lasts for a couple of weeks. An increasing number of South Africans are struggling to eat properly due to extreme poverty, unemployment, high inflation. More and more children are malnourished and stunted and turn up in hospitals, especially in Eastern Cape Province and in many townships around South Africa’s main cities. Most of the residents in the village live on social grants and often the unemployment rate is 80-90 % in these rural villages. Thirty years of democracy in South Africa has brought small changes to rural people in South Africa, but the majority party African National Congress (ANC) relies on the rural and poor masses for votes every election, a time when promises of a better future is again communicated to the people, and sometimes they receive free food parcels and t-shirts. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
« less