Developing South Africa’s human capacity is a matter of national survival. Basic education, workforce development and micro-enterprise are essential investments in a nation where 1,000 South Africans die daily of AIDS, there are over 1.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, and the legacy of Bantu education continues to cast an ominous shadow.
Education remains unequal and inaccessible to most of the population. Nearly one in four people are illiterate and unemployment rates are soaring. Universities are not producing globally competitive graduates and employers in nearly every industry struggle to find qualified workers.
The AIDS pandemic is killing many skilled and experienced employees. At the same time, many young and educated South Africans are fleeing their homeland to pursue higher paying jobs. To attain an education, African youngsters must overcome a bevy of obstacles: poor school infrastructures, unaffordable school fees and uniforms, inadequate school materials and limited transportation, teacher shortages, classroom language barriers, health issues, violence, hunger, and poverty. Over one million children do not attend school. Fourteen million youth live below the poverty line on less than two dollars a day.
African women have the highest unemployment rates in South Africa, the lowest salaries and the least access to assets across all race and gender categories. As a result, Black women are more likely than any other racial group to depend on self-employment for survival. They own approximately 70% of informal businesses in South Africa, working primarily as street hawkers and spaza (local shop) managers. These businesses tend to be informal, unstable and therefore incapable of lifting the women and their families out of poverty.
In the next decade, it will be critical to develop the skills of South Africa’s women and youth and guarantee them sustainable livelihoods. Project People Foundation is a committed and compassionate ally in this struggle.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault Remarks
CNN South African Correspondent, Charlayne Hunter-Gault served as Honorary Patron for PPF’s Celebrating Life Concert in St. Louis.
I know these are difficult times for Americans, but I want to just say that however difficult they may be there, you need but walk the paths I walk everyday to see how much more dreadful life is for people here, especially women and children. With the exception of those who have been the beneficiaries of the generosity and dedication of organizations likes yours, there has been no rising tide to lift the boats of the millions of women and children like the one I saw today as I went to buy my groceries. Sitting on a not so safe safety isle, a woman who looked to be in her twenties, stood begging in tattered clothes next to her little daughter whose eyes were dim from hunger of who knows how long. She should have been in school, but instead she was sitting in the street helping her mother beg for pennies. And yet, they both smiled at me and almost made me ashamed to be heading to the grocery story to buy nutritious food for me to make dinner later on.
Theirs is the face of poverty in South Africa, and while many men are also engaged in a struggle for life, the legacy of the oppressive, decades-long white minority rule, by every measure, it is the women who are hit hardest in every conceivable way—from those with the highest AIDS infection and death rates to those with the least chance of escaping a life of poverty life through education.
The face of Nomsa is another one that will be indelibly imprinted in my head and heart. Her mother died when she was five or six and as the woman at the orphanage where she finally landed put it, her stepfather "took her for his wife." In the process, he infected her with the AIDS virus. Finally, an alert teacher noticed something was wrong and managed to get at the awful truth of her little life and she was immediately removed from the house, the stepfather arrested. He later died of AIDS complications.
Thanks to the kindness and generosity of people like you, Nomsa was able to live a relatively normal life for a while. Except when she had to tell her story on occasion, her smile returned and for a while, the head of the orphanage described her as even "cheeky" on occasion—a South African term for acceptably sassy. But only for a while. After an outbreak of chicken pox, only a minor inconvenience for most children, as I recall from my own case years ago, Nomsa's immune system, severely compromised by the AIDS virus, could not withstand even that normal childhood nuisance and she died at the age of 12.
Statistical Sources: Statistics SA Mid-Year Population Estimates, 2007, Statistics SA, March 2006 Labor Force Survey, UNICEF South Africa Annual Report, 2007, The South African Human Sciences Research Council Giving & Solidarity Report, 2007.
