Our unemployment rate , currently sitting at 32.7% makes for very depressing reading. The picture gets even more gloomy when we consider the fact that people who are willing and still able, have stopped looking for work. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
Life is becoming difficult.
In this edition we focus our attention on the fact that, as South Africans, we are not immune to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Whatever happens in that part of the world, however remote, affects us directly.
Ask the motorist who has been confronted by the fuel price adjustments or the Putco bus commuter who finds that their trip home from Gandhi Square in Johannesburg now costs 10% more.
Life is hard even for salaried people, who are not getting any increases in their pay packets. Unless one is imbued with the wisdom of an economist, it is almost pointless to talk about the plight of the unemployed.
What can you really do with a R370 monthly grant? What sort of grocery basket can you take home with the money?
Many of our homes are run by grandmothers whose only source of income is their monthly pension grant. Generations of grandchildren and other dependents rely on this money to ease their lives.
Those who fare better —if that is even the correct framing of their hardship — receive child grants. State funds meant for the child becomes the primary capital to keep food on the table.
This is the pain our lead story this week is tackling. As is the parlance of the streets, there is no more soft life.
Somewhere on our social media pages, we lamented the closure of sugar giant Tongaat Hullett.
When companies like these close, it is not only the shareholders who are hit in the pocket. Entire families collapse; breadwinners lose their strength to provide, children drop out of school and the drug and prostitution industry gain new entrants.
A factory that closes is a human story of desolation and heartbreak.
God forbid that one day soon, the single mothers who want a better life for their children will not be able to send them to school because they will not be able to afford the transport costs.
School transport runs on fuel, not charity and goodwill. The men and women who keep this industry afloat also have to take care of their living expenses.
Our unemployment rate, at 32.7%, makes for depressing reading. The picture becomes gloomier when we consider the fact that people have stopped looking for employment even though they are willing and able to work.
The price of bread is no longer just a hackneyed cliche. It is not a matter of mirth, something we can joke about. It is a reality. People are finding it hard to get by.
Tightening the belt has become an empty phrase because the girth on which the belt should rest has thinned.
The madness of the US-Israel-Iran war is doing no one any favours. It must end soon, otherwise the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich.