The kindness of Harriet Bolton and clothing factory workers

MY WIFE'S matric results secured her a welcome bursary from the Garment Worker's Industrial Union (GWIU) that paid for her studies at the University of Durban-Westville. We are eternally grateful for that bursary that would completely alter the trajectory of my wife's future.

- SELVAN NAIDOO, KIRU NAIDOO AND ADVOCATE ZANDILE QONO-REDDY

In this journey of our life, a set of fortunate events, together with the hard work of clothing factory workers, conspired to give us a better life that is a priceless gift to our children and their future.

In that time of my mother-in-law working at the textile factory, many women were able break that cycle of poverty that trapped our indentured ancestry for more than 100 years.

In 100 years from 1860 to 1960, life's journey for the majority of South African Indians was a wretched existence.

In a journal article, "The Culture of Poverty" and the South African poor by Geoffrey H Waters, in 1978, it was estimated that 64% of Indians in South Africa, lived below the poverty datum line.

Hopes to break that endless cycle of poverty were often dashed, as conditions to accelerate advancement was not conducive.

Limited employment opportunities, apartheid-era job reservation, successive world wars, colonial and apartheid-era depredations together with depressed economies, all contrived to keep advancement at bay.