Jeremy Seabrook

Poor rural migrants have become like characters in the folk-tales they no longer tell their children: fleeing the countryside to escape the evil spirits of want and poverty, they find the old enemies lying in wait for them in the urban slums that are their destination. Global poverty is in flight from rural areas and rushing headlong to the cities.

If there was ever a critical moment for a universal income support mechanism such as a Basic Income Grant, it is now. This becomes very clear when looking at social security through the lens of the Aids epidemic. Nearly half of all South Africans live in poverty, half of these have no access to social grants and numerically speaking, South Africa has the largest HIV epidemic in the world.