Durban - KwaZulu-Natal is home to the poorest municipality in the country, where thousands of people struggle to buy enough food to survive.
Of the 10 poorest municipalities in the country, five are in the province.
And it is the youth who are the most affected, and without urgent intervention, the country and province face a bleak future, a delegation heard this week.
These facts were presented at the 10th annual Population Association of Southern Africa conference at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), with the theme “Implications of the Demographic Transition in Southern Africa: Past, Present and Future”.
Demographers, popular scientists and statisticians from around the world gathered to engage in dialogue and exchange research on furthering the study of population in southern Africa.
Helen North from Statistics SA presented her research, “Profiling the Poor”, to great acclaim. The findings, however, were sobering. North said 38 percent of the population was comprised of youth (those under 35) with two out 10 young people based in KZN.
She said those who lacked education would be doomed to a life of poverty.
North said 27 million South Africans live below the poverty line, surviving on just R779 a month. This amount often has to feed entire households.
“With KZN being the second-most populous province in the country, a quarter of poverty-stricken people live here. Of that figure, 57 percent of households live below the poverty line. That means hundreds of thousands of people don’t have enough food to eat in KZN.”
North said poverty is measured from poor to non-poor, calculating consumption of food and non-food items essential to daily survival.
Those living below the breadline are further divided into three sub categories;
* Those on the foodline who survive on less than 2 100 kilojoules a day. There are 10 million people surviving on R325 a month per household.
* The next category survives on R501 a month, but these families are able to make trade-offs between wants and needs. There are 8.6 million people who can choose between food items and other needs such as school shoes or airtime.
* The final category is the upper bound poverty line who survive on R779 a month. There are 27 million people who are barely managing, but are slightly better off.
North said of the South African population, 31 percent are non-poor.
Focusing on KwaZulu-Natal, she said in 2001, 28 percent of people were living below the poverty line. However, this number decreased as more people moved into the third tier below the poverty line, which meant while they were still struggling financially, they were able to afford food. This was mainly due to the success of social grants, which ensured a measure of food security.
Currently, there are a million people living in absolute poverty in the province, with the poorest regions being Msinga (also the poorest in the country) and Maphumulo.
North said now that the statistics were available, the question was how to chart the way forward, to improve the lot of the poorest of the poor.
“Poverty is self-perpetuating and its manifestation makes it hard to determine cause and effect. In field work last year, we visited a family in KZN where two adults were caring for 16 children surviving on grants. Is that family poor because they are born poor or are they poor because they did not receive a proper education and skills development to improve their lives?
“The poverty issue is not a statistical issue, but a human one.”
Dr Esther Muia from the UN Population Fund, said young people make a difference in the world and that more investment in their futures had to be made.
She said not enough education and skills resources were being provided for the youth across Africa.
“Someone invested in me a decade ago and believed in me. We need to do that for young people. The largest percentage of the world’s population is under 35 and unless we start investing in them, we have no future.”
Officials from the provincial Department of Social Development were at the conference and said now that they had the statistics they could work towards the provision of social interventions in the province.
Some facts:
* 44% of women are affected by poverty compared with 26% of men in KZN.
* 61% of people in KZN live in traditional settings, of which figure 47.5% live below the poverty line.
* 24% of the population live in urban or formal dwellings, of which 11.9% live in poverty.
* 10% of the KZN population live in informal dwellings, of which 31% live in poverty.
Sunday Tribune