Blog Action Day

For this year's Blog Action Day, the issue that is at hand is poverty. Now in the past few months, the economic crisis in the United States has worsened considerably, and more and more people are becoming part of the poverty. The unemployment rate has risen to 6.1% at the end of September, which is the highest it has been in several years. But the poverty of the United States of America cannot even compare to what situations other people around the world are facing.

Africa, home to over 800 ethnic groups, has many of the poorest nations on the earth. Specifically I will further examine South Africa's economy and lifestyle as a model for much of the rest of the continent. In South Africa, the unemployment is still at about 25%, which may be a decrease from a decade ago, but is still extremely high. After all, that means that 1 out of every 4 people there are unemployed. If you were to travel to South Africa, you might not notice that the poverty is so great, because the upper and middle classes are actually fairly wealthy. It is the lower class that fights poverty the most, and if you travel to one of their slums, you will see what I mean.

The poverty in South Africa can be traced back to Apartheid in the country, where blacks did not get to see any of the financial income of the country. Back then, unemployment was a crime equivalent to treason for a black person. Even with the end of Apartheid, the situation did not get much better. There was no way that the government could just take the land from the wealthy whites and hand it off to the blacks. So still today, millions of people in South Africa live in slums like these. Their houses are nothing more than shacks with metal walls and roof, and a dirt floor. The sewage system is virtually nonexistent other than the streams running throughout. And there is trash everywhere.

The conditions that I just mentioned are what many South Africans have to live through everyday of their lives. And the next time you think that America is in poverty, remember the slums across all of Africa.