Kids at a community meeting in Elsies River, Cape Town. South Africa’s Bill of Rights includes a section dedicated to the specific rights of children. (Image: GCIS)

South Africa’s Bill of Rights, chapter 2 of the constitution, is one of the most progressive in the world. It protects the human rights of everyone in the country – citizen, visitor, refugee or migrant.

Its preamble reads:

This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.

The bill was adopted in 1996, just two years after the first democratic elections that finally ended formal apartheid. All laws and organs of state must respect the Bill of Rights. The state must protect and promote the rights it sets out, and make sure they are fulfilled.

But do you really know your rights? Our no-nonsense guide will help you understand your rights, and the rights of everyone else.

You can also read the full text of the Bill of Rights in 11 of South Africa’s official languages.

Jump to your rights:

Equality

Everyone is equal.

You have the right to the same protection by the law as everyone else.

Nobody is allowed to unfairly discriminate against you because of your race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language or birth.

Human dignity

You have inherent dignity.

You have the right to have your dignity respected and protected.

Life

You have the right to life.

Freedom and security of the person

You have the right to freedom.

You have the right not to be deprived of your freedom for no reason, or for an unjust reason.

You have the right not to be put into jail without a trial.

You have the right not to be a victim of violence, whether it’s violence done by other people, or by the state.

You have the right not to be tortured.

You have the right not to treated in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way.

You have the right to control your own body.

You have the right to make your own decisions about pregnancy, childbirth and whether or not you want to have children.

Slavery, servitude and forced labour

Nobody is allowed to enslave you, make you work for no pay, or force you to work.

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Privacy

You have the right to your privacy.

Nobody is allowed to search you or your home, take your belongings, or monitor your private conversations, texts, phone calls or emails.

Freedom of religion, belief and opinion

You have the right to practise any religion you want. Nobody may force you to follow a religion.

You have the right to your own opinions and beliefs.

Freedom of expression

You have the right to express yourself freely, to say what you want to say.

You have the right to get information from a free and open media.

You have the right to be told new information and ideas, and to tell other people new information and ideas.

You have the right to create any art you want.

You have the right to learn and research whatever you want.

But you can’t abuse your freedom of expression to encourage war or other violence, or promote hatred for other people because of their race, ethnicity, gender or religion.

Assembly, demonstration, picket and petition

You have the right to come together with other people to demonstrate, picket or present petitions – as long as you do it peacefully, and don’t carry weapons.

Freedom of association

You have the right to spend time with anyone you choose.

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Political rights

You have the right to make your own political choices.

You have the right to take part in the activities of any political party, and recruit members for that party.

You have the right to campaign for any political party.

If you are a citizen, you have the right to free, fair and regular elections.

If you are an adult citizen, you have the right to vote in elections for the political party of your choice – and to keep your vote secret. You also have the right to stand for public office and, if elected, to hold that office.

Citizenship

If you are a citizen of South Africa, no-one can take that citizenship away from you.

Freedom of movement and residence

You have the right to freedom of movement – to travel anywhere in South Africa.

You have the right to leave South Africa.

You have the right to live anywhere in South Africa.

If you are a citizen, you have the right to a passport.

Freedom of trade, occupation and profession

You have the right to choose your own trade, job or profession.

Labour relations

You have the right to fair labour practices at work.

Workers have the right to form and join a trade union.

Employers have the right to form and join an employers’ organisation.

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Environment

You have the right to live in an environment that does not harm your health or wellbeing.

You have the right to have the environment protected now, and for future generations.

Property

No-one may take your property away from you.

The state may only take your property for specific reasons – for a public purpose or in the public interest. If it does have to take your property, it has to pay you the right price for it.

Housing

You have the right to proper housing.

The state must work to make sure you have housing.

You have the right not to be evicted from your home, or have your home torn down, without a court ordering it.

Healthcare, food, water and social security

You have the right to basic healthcare. This includes the right to reproductive health care – for contraception, pregnancy and childbirth.

You have the right to the food and water you need.

You have the right to emergency medical treatment. If your life is in danger, no hospital or healthcare worker may refuse to treat you.

If you can’t afford to support yourself or your family, the state must help you.

Children

Every child – anyone under 18– has the right to a name and nationality from birth.

Children have the right to be cared for by their parents or family, or to get proper foster care if needed.

They have the right to basic food, shelter, healthcare and social support.

Children must be protected from abuse and neglect.

They also have the right to be protected from work that is harmful or takes advantage of them.

Find out more about children’s rights.

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Education

You have the right to basic education, whether you are a child or an adult.

You have the right to further education.

In public schools, universities and colleges, you have the right to be educated in the official South African language of your choice – where this is possible.

Language and culture

You have the right to use whatever language you want, and take part in any cultural life – as long as this doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.

Cultural, religious and linguistic communities

You have the right to enjoy your culture, practise your religion and use your language.

You may also form, join and maintain cultural, religious and language organisations.

But you can’t exercise these rights in a way that infringes on the rights of others.

Access to information

You have the right to access any information held by the state.

You have the right to get any information held by someone else if you need it to protect or exercise your rights.

Just administrative action

You have the right to fair, legal and reasonable decisions by government or public officials.

If a decision harms your rights, you must be given written reasons.

The law must allow you to challenge unfair decisions in court or through an independent body. It must also make sure the government respects your rights and that public services run efficiently.

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Access to courts

You have the right to have any legal dispute settled in a fair public hearing by a court or by another independent and unbiased body.

Arrested, detained and accused people

If the police arrest you, you have the right to remain silent. They must tell you this right as soon as possible, and explain what could happen if you do speak.

You have the right to speak to a lawyer.

No-one can force you to say anything that could be used against you in court.

You must be brought to court as soon as possible – within 48 hours, or by the end of the first court day after 48 hours.

At your first court appearance, the court must either charge you with a crime or explain why you are being kept in jail. Otherwise, you must be released.

Limitation of rights

Some of your rights are limited if exercising those rights would infringe on the rights of others. Rights may also be limited under strict conditions such as a state of emergency.

These limitations may only be set out in laws that apply to everyone, and only if the limitation is reasonable and can be justified in a democratic society. The importance of the right must be examined, as must the purpose of the limitation and whether there are less restrictive ways to achieve the purpose.

Rights can never be limited without good reason. And some core rights – non-derogable rights – may never be limited, even under a state of emergency.

The non-derogable rights are:

• Equality
• Human dignity
• Life
• Freedom from torture and cruel treatment
• Freedom from slavery and forced labour
• Children’s rights
• The rights of arrested, detained and accused people

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The text in all languages

Read the full text of the Bill of Rights (PDF) in 11 of South Africa’s official languages:

Afrikaans | English | isiNdebele | isiXhosa | isiZulu | Sepedi | Sesotho | Setswana | siSwati | Tshivenda | Xitsonga

Constitutional and statutory bodies

Constitutional Court of South Africa – The highest court in South Africa on constitutional matters. It interprets, protects and enforces the constitution.

South African Human Rights Commission – Independent state institution established by the constitution to promote, monitor and assess observance of human rights.

Public interest law centres and legal advocacy organisations

Legal Resources Centre – Nonprofit public interest law centre that provides legal services to poor and marginalised communities.

Section27 – Public interest legal organisation focusing on access to healthcare services and basic education.

Lawyers for Human Rights – Nongovernmental organisation offering legal services and advocacy, including refugee and migrant rights programmes.

Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits University – Human rights law clinic engaged in legal research, strategic litigation and advocacy.

Academic and research-based human rights centres

Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria – Academic department and advocacy centre working to promote human rights through education, research and litigation.

African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University – Research institute focused on human mobility, migration and related policy issues in the Southern African region.

Social justice and community advocacy organisations

Black Sash – Nongovernmental organisation promoting social justice and access to social protection in South Africa.

Equal Education – Movement advocating for equality and quality in public education, involving learners, parents and community members.

Sonke Gender Justice – Civil society organisation that supports gender equality and works to prevent gender-based violence.

Ahmed Kathrada Foundation – Nonprofit organisation promoting nonracialism, constitutional democracy and active citizenship.

Migrant, refugee and anti-xenophobia organisations

Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town – Nonprofit organisation providing support and advocacy for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA) – Civil society network that promotes the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants in South Africa.

International human rights bodies in South Africa

Unicef South Africa – South African office of the United Nations Children’s Fund, focusing on child rights, education, health and protection.

UNHCR regional office for Southern Africa – The United Nations Refugee Agency’s regional office supports and protects refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa and neighbouring countries.

Amnesty International South Africa – Branch of the global human rights organisation, focusing on advocacy, campaigns and research on human rights in South Africa.

Human Rights Watch (Africa division) – Monitors and reports on human rights developments in South Africa and across the region, with periodic investigations and advocacy.

News and information

GroundUp – Independent news service reporting on community-level issues, socioeconomic rights, service delivery, housing, education, migration and legal developments.

Spotlight – Public interest health journalism platform monitoring South Africa’s response to TB, HIV, health systems performance and health rights.

Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism – Nonprofit health media organisation producing evidence-based reporting on public health policy and social justice impacts.

Africa Check – Nonprofit fact-checking organisation verifying public claims and data across Africa to support informed public debate and counter misinformation affecting policy and rights.

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Image credits

All images are in the public domain, licensed as Creative Commons (CC). Credit for specific images as follows:

• Political rights, citizenship, children, communities, just administration, arrested & accused people courtesy of GCIS. Licensed CC BY-ND 4.0.
• Slavery, servitude & forced labour courtesy of Image Journeys. Licensed CC BY-ND 2.0.
• Limitation of rights courtesy of JackAZ Photo. Licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
• Human rights bodies courtesy of Brian Smithson. Licensed CC BY 2.0.
• All other images courtesy of MediaClub. Licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated August 2025.
Comments? Email mary1alexander@gmail.com.

Disclaimer: This is a guide. It is not legal advice.

The post The plain language guide to South Africa’s Bill of Rights appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

Map of South Africa showing the percentage of households living in poverty in each municipality, according to data from the Statistics South Africa Community Survey 2016.

South Africa’s poorest province is the Eastern Cape. The wealthiest province is Gauteng. Around 880,000 of the mostly rural Eastern Cape’s people live in poverty. In Gauteng, a city region with the best opportunities for jobs, some 610,000 people live in poverty.

These numbers are calculated from Statistics South Africa’s 2016 Community Survey.

Poverty in South Africa has deep historical roots that show up in more recent movements of people.

Map of South Africa showing estimated numbers of people living in poverty. The numbers are calculated from the population, poverty headcount and average household size of each municipality.

The reason so many South Africans live in poverty, in a middle-income country, is apartheid and colonialism. Apartheid was a crude attempt at social engineering designed to make black South Africans a cheap and plentiful source of labour. It was preceded by centuries of Dutch and then British colonialism that had the same goal, but with cruder mechanisms.

Colonialism and apartheid excluded the majority of people from meaningful participation in the economy. It made South Africa poorer than it should have been.

South Africa has a wealth of resources. But for centuries, this potential was squandered.

A government policy designed to keep most of its people poor seems absurd. But until 1994 South Africa was not a democracy. The only electorate the government had to please was white people.

Colonial and apartheid planners purposefully built a system that prevented black South Africans from earning, prospering and contributing to the wealth of the country. That sucked the potential for growth out of the economy.

Click animation to view from the start.

Today, geographical patterns of poverty on the map of South Africa still correspond to the apartheid “homelands”, barren rural regions far from cities, packed with people but with little infrastructure, no development and few jobs. Municipalities with high percentages of people living in poverty are today often found in regions that were once homelands.

But when we look at total numbers of people living in poverty, the cities stand out. Cities have larger numbers of people, so more people living in poverty are likely to be found there.

Migration from the rural areas to the cities is an important feature of recent South African history. Apartheid laws confined the poor to the rural areas. Once those laws were lifted in the late 1980s, poor people began to move to the cities – where they often stayed poor. And they keep moving.

How is poverty measured?

People are living there. Children play and adults work in Alexandra township, one of the poorest areas in Gauteng. Alex lies on the border of the wealthy suburb of Sandton, said to be the richest square mile in Africa. (CA Bloem)

Poverty is easy to see, but less easy to define – or to measure across a city, a province or a country. Many measures of poverty use money. If a person lives on less than a certain threshold income they are considered to be living in poverty.

Income is used for the three national poverty lines developed in South Africa. These are the food poverty line (set at R531 per person per month in April 2017), the lower-bound poverty line (R758) and the upper-bound poverty line (R1,138).

Another picture can be painted when we look beyond income to the other ways people experience poverty. How does poverty reveal itself in people’s health, their level of education, the dwelling they live in, how they cook their food, the water they drink? Poverty examined according to different types of deprivation is known as multidimensional poverty.

For its 2016 Community Survey, on which the maps on this page were based, Statistics South Africa used the South African Multidimensional Poverty Index.

Click animation to view from the start.

The index calculates the poverty of households according to four aspects of life: health, education, living standards and economic activity.

These four are known as the dimensions of poverty. Each dimension is assessed according to different indicators.

The poverty indicators

The health dimension has only one indicator: child mortality, or whether a child under the age of five living in the household has died in the past year.

Education has two indicators. One is years of schooling, or whether no person in the household aged 15 or older has completed five years of schooling. The other, school attendance, looks at whether any school-age child seven to 15 years old does not attend school.

Living standards has seven indicators, to do with fuel, water, sanitation, type of dwelling and ownership of assets. What fuel does the household use for lighting, heating and cooking? Is there piped water in the dwelling? Does the household have a flushing toilet? What kind of dwelling does the household live in? What does the household own?

Economic activity is measured by joblessness: whether all the adults, people aged 15 to 64, are out of work.

Each household is scored according to these indicators. If the score is 33.3% or more, the household is living in poverty – they are “multidimensionally poor”.

Intensity of poverty

The score also measures the intensity of poverty.

In the 2016 Community Survey, the average intensity of the poverty experienced by multidimensionally poor people in the nine provinces ranged from 40.1% in the Western Cape to 44.1% in Gauteng.

* Estimate

In Gauteng, only 4.6% of the population live in poverty. But the poverty experienced in Gauteng, the wealthiest province, is the most intense.

The multidimensional poverty index is not intended to replace the other important measures of poverty.

The food poverty line, for example, is the rand value below which people are unable to buy enough food to give them the minimum daily energy requirement for adequate health.

The multidimensional index, Statistics South Africa says, should rather be seen as “a complementary measure to these money-metric measures”.

How do we fight poverty?

According to the World Bank, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. This is not only inequality of income. As the bank said in a report: “Inequality of opportunity, measured by the influence of race, parents’ education, parents’ occupation, place of birth, and gender influence opportunities, is high.”

South Africa’s social welfare system attempts to reduce the worst deprivations of poverty. This “social wage” is paid to the poor in a number of ways.

It includes free primary healthcare, no-fee schools, RDP housing and housing subsidies, free basic water, electricity and sanitation for the poorest households, and social grants.

When South Africa became a democracy in 1994, social protection was introduced as a short-term measure to ease the dire poverty created by apartheid. But social grants are now the only livelihood of many South Africans, and remain essential to reducing poverty.

Sources

• Statistics South Africa Community Survey 2016
• Community Survey 2016: Provinces at a Glance
• The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index
• Statistics South Africa: Poverty Trends in South Africa
• World Bank and Statistics South Africa: Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa
• South African Social Security Agency: New social grant amounts
• South African Social Security Agency: Statistical reports

Read more

• Animation: Measuring the dimensions of poverty in South Africa
• Infographic: Exploring poverty in South Africa’s provinces
• The provinces and ‘homelands’ of South Africa before 1996
• Map: Distribution of South Africa’s races
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• Infographic: Population density in South Africa’s provinces
• The economies of South Africa’s provinces
• South Africa’s population

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 8 July 2025.
Comments? Email mary1alexander@gmail.com

The post Mapping poverty in South Africa appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

DOWNLOAD GRAPHIC IN JPEG | DOWNLOAD GRAPHIC IN PNG

In the last 20 years, much of the migration from rural areas has been to Johannesburg, which has been South Africa’s largest city since 1950.

Read more: South Africa’s population

South Africa’s population in 1960

Total population: 17,396,367
Urban population: 8,110,012 (47%)
Rural population: 9,286,355 (53%)
Population of the largest city: 2,136,849 (12%)
Population of other cities: 5,973,163 (34%)

South Africa’s population in 1970

Total population: 22,502,502
Urban population: 10,758,221 (48%)
Rural population: 11,744,281 (52%)
Population of the largest city: 2,764,138 (12%)
Population of other cities: 7,994,083 (36%)

South Africa’s population in 1980

Total population: 29,077,143
Urban population: 14,080,606 (48%)
Rural population: 14,996,537 (52%)
Population of the largest city: 3,201,915 (11%)
Population of other cities: 10,878,691 (37%)

South Africa’s population in 1990

Total population: 36,793,490
Urban population: 19,146,228 (52%)
Rural population: 17,647,262 (48%)
Population of the largest city: 3,708,875 (10%)
Population of other cities: 15,437,353 (42%)

South Africa’s population in 2000

Total population: 44,896,856
Urban population: 25,542,270 (57%)
Rural population: 19,354,586 (43%)
Population of the largest city: 5,605,027 (12%)
Population of other cities: 19,937,243 (44%)

South Africa’s population in 2010

Total population: 50,979,432
Urban population: 31,718,383 (62%)
Rural population: 19,261,049 (38%)
Population of the largest city: 7,991,825 (16%)
Population of other cities: 23,726,558 (47%)

South Africa’s population in 2016

Total population: 55,908,865
Urban population: 36,505,693 (65%)
Rural population: 19,403,172 (35%)
Population of the largest city: 9,615,976 (17%)
Population of other cities: 26,889,717 (48%)

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 28 February 2018.

More infographics

The post Infographic: South Africa’s rural and urban population from 1960 to 2016 appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

MARY ALEXANDER • 9 APRIL 2024
Published by Africa Check on 19 April 2024

A photo of an open-air toilet on the verge of a road running through the shacks of an informal settlement is doing the rounds on social media with the claim it’s the work of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC).*

The toilet has no walls, roof or door. The photo shows a smiling woman looking at it.

A common caption reads: “That’s what we call Public Toilets, Big Up ANC iyasebenza.” In isiXhosa and isiZulu, “iyasebenza” can be translated as “it works” or “it is working”.

South Africa is set to hold national and provincial elections on 29 May 2024. The claim started circulating online in late February.

Opinion polls suggest the vote may be the most pivotal in 30 years, with the ANC forecast to lose the parliamentary majority it has held since 1994.

The party’s main opposition are the Democratic Alliance, the Economic Freedom Fighters and, possibly, the newcomer uMkhonto weSizwe Party, backed by popular former ANC president Jacob Zuma.

The supply of basic services such as sanitation (toilets and sewage systems) – as well as roads, housing, electricity, clean water and rubbish removal – is a hot political issue in South Africa.

Regular power blackouts known as loadshedding have plagued the country for years, and over 100 major protests against poor service delivery have erupted every year since 2009.

The claim can also be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.

But does the photo really show an unenclosed public toilet erected by the ANC?

Open toilets in City of Cape Town informal settlements

A reverse image search reveals that the photo has been online since at least January 2010 – more than 14 years ago.

It appears in a blog post headlined: “Khayelitsha open-air toilet ‘deal’ is ludicrous!” Its caption reads: “Cllr June Frans stands next to one of the open air toilets in Khayelitsha. Their position right next to the road is very clear.”

Khayelitsha is a large township in the Western Cape province. It’s part of the City of Cape Town municipality, which includes Cape Town itself as well as surrounding towns and townships.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has governed the City of Cape Town since 2006.

The photo shows an open public toilet the DA municipal council installed in the Makhaza informal settlement of Khayelitsha in 2009.

It was one of 1,316 public toilets the DA set up in informal settlements that year, on condition that the community would build structures around them. Residents enclosed 1,265 of the toilets, leaving 51 in the open.

In 2010 the ANC took the DA to court, saying the toilets violated residents’ constitutional right to dignity. The Western Cape high court ruled in the ANC’s favour and ordered the DA to enclose the toilets.

During the case the DA claimed that when the ANC controlled the municipality from 2000 to 2005, over 4,000 open public toilets had been installed with the same condition that they be covered by residents.

In 2011 the Social Justice Coalition, which works in townships across the municipality, reported that in Khayelitsha, in some cases, “as many as 500 people are expected to share one chemical toilet”.

Nonetheless, census data shows that the Western Cape has the highest percentage of households with access to a flushing toilet. The province is governed by the DA. South Africa’s eight other provinces are under the ANC.

According to the 2022 census, 93.9% of Western Cape households have a flushing toilet, with Gauteng next at 89.7%. The lowest share is in Limpopo (35.2%) followed by Mpumalanga (54.9%).

* Some claims posted on Facebook and Instagram may have been deleted by users after they were rated via Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program.

The post Open public toilet installed by South Africa’s ruling African National Congress? No, photo snapped in opposition-controlled Cape Town in 2010 appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

The shacks of Vrygrond township and the walled Marina da Gama housing complex in Muizenberg, Cape Town. South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. (Mikael Colville-Andersen, CC BY 2.0)

Poverty is easy to see, but less easy to define – or to measure across a city, a province or a country. Many measures of poverty use money. If a person lives on less than a certain threshold income they are considered to be living in poverty.

Income is used for the three national poverty lines developed in South Africa. These are the food poverty line (set at R531 per person per month in April 2017), the lower-bound poverty line (R758) and the upper-bound poverty line (R1,138).

Another picture can be painted when we look beyond income to the other ways people experience poverty. How does poverty reveal itself in people’s health, their level of education, the dwelling they live in, how they cook their food, the water they drink? Poverty examined according to different types of deprivation is known as multidimensional poverty.

For its 2016 Community Survey, on which the feature Mapping poverty in South Africa was based, Statistics South Africa used the South African Multidimensional Poverty Index.

Click animation to view from the start.

The index calculates the poverty of households according to four aspects of life: health, education, living standards and economic activity.

These four are known as the dimensions of poverty. Each dimension is assessed according to different indicators.

The poverty indicators

The health dimension has only one indicator: child mortality, or whether a child under the age of five living in the household has died in the past year.

Education has two indicators. One is years of schooling, or whether no person in the household aged 15 or older has completed five years of schooling. The other, school attendance, looks at whether any school-age child seven to 15 years old does not attend school.

Living standards has seven indicators, to do with fuel, water, sanitation, type of dwelling and ownership of assets. What fuel does the household use for lighting, heating and cooking? Is there piped water in the dwelling? Does the household have a flushing toilet? What kind of dwelling does the household live in? What does the household own?

Economic activity is measured by joblessness: whether all the adults, people aged 15 to 64, are out of work.

Each household is scored according to these indicators. If the score is 33.3% or more, the household is living in poverty – they are “multidimensionally poor”.

The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index

The intensity of poverty

The score also measures the intensity of poverty.

In the 2016 Community Survey, the average intensity of the poverty experienced by multidimensionally poor people in the nine provinces ranged from 40.1% in the Western Cape to 44.1% in Gauteng.

Poverty headcount and intensity in South Africa’s provinces

In Gauteng, only 4.6% of the population live in poverty. But the poverty experienced in Gauteng, the wealthiest province, is the most intense.

The multidimensional poverty index is not intended to replace the other important measures of poverty.

The food poverty line, for example, is the rand value below which people are unable to buy enough food to give them the minimum daily energy requirement for adequate health.

The multidimensional index, Statistics South Africa says, should rather be seen as “a complementary measure to these money-metric measures”.

Sources

• Statistics South Africa Community Survey 2016
• Community Survey 2016: Provinces at a Glance
• The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index
• Statistics South Africa: Poverty Trends in South Africa
• World Bank and Statistics South Africa: Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa

Read more

• Mapping poverty in South Africa
• Infographic: Exploring poverty in South Africa’s provinces
• Map: Distribution of South Africa’s races
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• Infographic: Population density in South Africa’s provinces
• The economies of South Africa’s provinces
• South Africa’s population

Researched, written and designed by Mary Alexander.
Updated 24 June 2019.

The post Animation: Measuring the dimensions of poverty in South Africa appeared first on South Africa Gateway.

KwaZulu-Natal is the second-poorest province in its number of people living in poverty, but North West has a larger share of poor households in its population.

The Northern Cape has the fewest poor people, but 6.6% of households in its small population live in poverty.

In Gauteng, only 4.6% of the population live in poverty. But the poverty experienced in Gauteng, the wealthiest province, is the most intense.

Poverty in South Africa’s nine provinces

Sources

• Statistics South Africa Community Survey 2016
• Community Survey 2016: Provinces at a Glance
• The South African Multidimensional Poverty Index

Read more

• Animation: Measuring the dimensions of poverty in South Africa
• Mapping poverty in South Africa
• Map: Distribution of South Africa’s races
• The nine provinces of South Africa
• Infographic: Population density in South Africa’s provinces
• The economies of South Africa’s provinces
• South Africa’s population

Researched, written and designed by MC Alexander.
Updated 17 July 2018.

The post Infographic: Exploring poverty in South Africa’s provinces appeared first on South Africa Gateway.