Suffer the poor children

We need to have a brutal conversation about poverty and acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, our own people perpetuate it - not always consciously, but we add to the never-ending cycle.

- Thando Nondywana

We must start asking the difficult questions. Why are women and young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds so quick to fall pregnant, not just once, but many times?

Back home, the Eastern Cape is plagued by extreme poverty and yet the rate at which women are continuously pregnant is just horrific.

Walk through the poorest informal settlements and the scenes are no different: women and young girls who are barely adults are already mothers to three or four children.

And in many households, there are seven or more people, with the majority, if not all, unemployed - not by choice.

But there's no proper support system and absent fathers, leaving the burden to fall on the family. For the lucky ones, boyfriends rely on sporadic odd jobs to scrape by.

This is not just an economic crisis; but a cycle of brokenness, trauma and sometimes neglect, recycled by poor judgment and actions.