Oxfam SA not surprised by rising poverty levels, calls for bold policies to end poverty and inequality
23 August 2017
Oxfam South Africa notes with grave concern the grim reality of rising levels of poverty painted by the Statistics South Africa report “Poverty trends in South Africa: An examination of absolute poverty from 2006-2015”.
The report indicates that since 2011 the number of South Africans living in poverty has risen to 55.5% of the population, which is over half of the country’s citizens.
The report further indicates that those greatly affected and impacted by poverty are not surprisingly children up to 17 years, black Africans, women, and people from rural areas, with rural provinces like Limpopo, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal more affected.
The report is a clear indication of failure to dismantle the legacy of apartheid 23 years into the democratic dispensation. The apartheid spatial geography of pre-1994 showed the same problems in the same areas – mostly in former Homelands – as highlighted in the report. During the apartheid era, poverty had the face of a black African, a woman, a child and was largely rural, as it is today.