Portraits of Poverty...

This group of about 21 poor and unemployed people stay in a 'white squatter camp' near Pretoria. They all live together in a fenced off plot. Each person lives in their own 'tin shack' made of corrugated iron sheeting . . . 








They have cows, pigs and dogs roaming around the yard. The cows are milked everyday and the milk sold to provide extra income, They all have their meals together in a communal dining area. For the rest they depend on the goodwill and charity of the community. The community is made up mainly of older people but there are a few younger ones. Everyone has to work, some sterilize the milk and others sweep and clean the yard. When I visited the compound briefly about a month ago, it was sweltering hot and the tin shacks were like ovens inside and of course in the winter they are bitterly cold...

Almost twenty years after the end of apartheid our country is still totally divided among racial lines...even the poorest of the poor live apart...and terms like 'so called coloureds', whites, blacks and indians are still regularly used and many government reports require companies to report along these 'racial' terms. 

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regards, Ivan

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