Poverty levels on increase in SA
TSHWANE: As poverty continues to bite in most parts of South Africa, more people are migrating to Gauteng and the Western Cape, and that “tempo” could increase, statistician-general Pali Lehohla warned yesterday.
“Of course they differ, but you see the highest in Limpopo, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West and Free State,” Lehohla said as he released findings of the poverty trends in South Africa at a press briefing in Pretoria.
“When it comes to Gauteng and Western Cape, you see poverty dropping. We cannot stop migration from all the provinces that are poor to the urban ones.”
Lehohla said with dim prospects of opportunity, the developed two must brace for an influx of inhabitants.
“Migration is a given, and the tempo will increase. You will see more poverty in the urban areas as urbanisation creates more poverty for the modern centres.”
The study has also revealed a phenomenon described by Lehohla as “the feminisation of poverty”.
“This is where gender becomes more important. Females are much more exposed to poverty than males – 53 against 57. If the household is headed by a female, the strength of poverty increases dramatically. We can see a 17 percentage points difference between a female-headed household compared with a maleheaded household.”
He said it was very concerning that more children live in poverty than any other age group.
“How can we think about the future? If children live in poverty more than everybody else, there is no future. Simple. The drivers of that poverty, some are social – how we conduct our lives, obviously anchored in the destructive force of apartheid.”
He said in South Africa, statistics show that 60% of fathers say they are married while only 31% of mothers claim to be married.
“If we don’t tackle some of these things, we are never going to solve the problems of South Africa.
“(Thabo) Mbeki said we can build all these RDP houses and do all the things, but if we do not deal with the psycho-social issues that inflict South Africa, we are never going to get this right. That’s why the moral regeneration movement was created and, unfortunately, I don’t think we are doing that well,” said Lehohla.
The statistician-general said while he cannot tell people to get married, parents must fulfil their responsibilities to their children.
“Why is it that children must be the poorest? The numbers say so. Children live in poverty.”
The report, released yesterday, is titled “An examination of absolute poverty between 2006 and 2015”.
Poverty estimates are essential for monitoring and tracking progress towards achieving the poverty targets outlined in the government’s National Development Plan and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. – ANA
See Business Report