At The Bovine Head Cookers’ Market, sheep heads, which arrive frozen in municipal plastic bags, are deftly skinned and chopped with cleavers. The meat is then boiled in big pots, each straddling three paraffin stoves. It’s a messy business. But the market is clean and orderly — the result of a joint effort between iTrump, the municipal agency charged with regenerating Thekwini’s inner city, and traders.

Lindiwe Mvula is eighth in line, waiting with her trolley outside a recycling plant in Johannesburg’s Newtown. She’s there to sell the used cardboard and plastic she collects and she isn’t pleased with her haul. At the rate of 25c a kilo of cardboard she reckons it’s worth about R20 — not a lot for a hard day’s work. Mvula is just one of many who collect Jozi’s consumer cast-offs to make a living.

Take a walk through Ntuthukoville, a low-income residential area in Pietermaritzburg. The roads are clean. Gardens are well cared for, with flowers and shrubs, paths and edgings. Old car tyres have been used as planters to shore up the steeply sloping ground. Residents have done all the work, transforming an impoverished settlement into a model of community self-help.

Selina Boyani’s Soweto shack, which she shares with four children, is a little larger than a single bed. It is dark, cramped and poorly ventilated, but it has one crucial advantage: it’s only a 10-minute walk to school for Nombulelo (17), the oldest child. That means no expensive taxi fares and no long hours spent commuting. These are important issues for a single mother supporting four children with the money she earns doing domestic work two days a week.