Natural expansion

摘要

The rural Eastern Cape in South Africa charms with its rolling green hills, mud and breeze-block houses with chickens and goats roaming through the family mielie (corn) patches, and clean air so crisp that lungs can ache when the winter winds blow. What is not as charming is the abject poverty behind these seemingly idyllic pastoral scenes, where women work back-breaking hours and fight against unacceptably high illiteracy and unemployment rates. According to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA)'s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the first three months of 2019, the expanded unemployment rate for the province was 48.3%.