How the other half lives
By Aislinn Laing
5:30 AM Wednesday Sep 4, 2013
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From http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11118965
Mamelodi. File photo / Getty Images
A white, middle-class South African family renounced their home comforts to spend a month living in the shack next door to their black housekeeper in an impoverished township.
Julian and Ena Hewitt, both 34, and their daughters, Julia, 4, and Jessica, 2, left their home in a suburb patrolled by private security guards outside Pretoria on August 4. They moved just 9km down the road to a settlement in Mamelodi township, which was built by the apartheid Government to house black people working in the capital.
The family rented a 9sq m tin shack with no electricity or running water and a bucket toilet shared by 20 others. They survived on 100 rand ($12) a day, the median wage for black South Africans.
Hewitt, a social entrepreneur, rose at 3.40 each morning to catch a train to work in Johannesburg. His wife, a former JPMorgan trader, stayed at home with their two daughters, cooking meals on a Primus stove and washing clothes under a tap shared by 20 families.
Some have condemned their move as a “stupid experiment” and exploitative. Others applauded their courage in bridging South Africa’s massive wealth divide.
By Aislinn Laing
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September 7, 2013 at 3:37 am
Reblogged this on The End of Poverty: Together, We CAN Do It!.
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September 10, 2013 at 12:22 pm
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