Jabu Mhlabane

The swish of long grass and the twittering of birds are complemented by the song and laughter of a group of grass collectors in rural Mpumalanga. They spend the cooler morning hours gathering long grass from the veld.

Villagers gathered for the launch of a multipurpose community centre in Matibidi last month as jam-packed tourist buses whizzed past the rural village to upmarket resorts in Graskop, Mpumalanga. Spirits were high and drum majorettes raised puffs of dust as they executed their steps with military precision.

Sarah Mazwai and her family are counting the days to March: they will be moving into a new four-roomed house after living in informal settlements for the past 15 years. Mazwai is the family’s sole breadwinner, earning R200 a month as a domestic worker.

As he clutches the title deed, or "happiness letter" as he calls it, to his family’s new R20 000 home, Themba Banthom relates how poverty, illness and unemployment have ravaged his life. "Life became very difficult after I lost my job five years ago," Banthom said.

Eleven-year-old Lerato Nkosi dreams of becoming a doctor. To realise her ambition, she dodges her mother’s protective gaze to join her boisterous peers on their walk to Vulamasango Primary School in KaNyamazane, Mpumalanga.

Twelve-year-old Promise Sibitane is a mournful figure as she stands at the entrance of the Thembalethu home-based care centre. She stares in the direction of her mother’s old house near Schoemansdal on the border between Mpumalanga and northern Swaziland.

Four Limpopo women have literally plucked the opportunity to make money from trees. The group near Tzaneen has set up a small factory and can barely keep pace with the demand for their jams and fresh fruit juices. They already supply local hotels as well as school feeding schemes.

You can usually tell when a woman has been physically abused. The bruises are all too visible. But emotional abuse is harder to detect. Its wounds are well-hidden inside an often-broken and embittered heart. Victims of emotional abuse go largely unnoticed.

The 60-year-old woman from Ndwendwe tribal trust near Durban is the brawn behind a successful brickmaking project run by middle-aged women. "You’ve got to use your brains to make money," she says.

What began as an emergency plan by 15 sangomas to save valuable natural resources is becoming a feasible business venture