With approximately 70% unemployment and a population of around 120 000, Grahamstown has many people who are living in poverty. How do people without jobs survive?

These 2001 census statistics don't lie and it is doubtful if the next census, in 2011, will show lower unemployment figures. So how do people without jobs survive? Are they growing food? Are families living off the elderly pension of R1008 or children’s grants of R250 a month? The local Umthathi Training Project, one of the longest surviving projects in town, harbours some answers.

Food is a basic necessity for survival and the Umthathi Training Project's main focus is on growing food for self-sustainability. Michelle Griffith, the Agriculture Coordinator at Umthathi emphasised how important it is to enhance knowledge about health, nutrition, gardening and cultivation.

Umthathi has successfully started numerous school and community gardens within a 250 km radius of Grahamstown. The number of children trained by Umthathi facilitators in 2009 was 1453 in 18 outreach schools and 531 in 14 local schools. Griffith says “it is vital that children have sustenance to grow and learn. The school gardens support the feeding scheme to provide enough food. Sometimes if there is excess children are able to take vegetables home to their families.

In 2009 the community gardens programme trained 555 people (427 female and 128 male) between the ages of 18 and 85 – of these people 468 were unemployed. The community can buy produce from the gardens and the sick and elderly are given food.

Griffith and her colleague Sicelo Dyira, Umthathi’s Community Liaison Officer, estimate that about 25% of the population in Grahamstown grow their own food. “There seem to be more difficulties training the youth that live closer to town. Gardening and growing food has a stigma attached, some people say it is a poor mans job and a lot of young people don’t want to wear gumboots and dig in the dirt all day long! It isn’t the type of job they want – they want decent paying office jobs instead,” said Dyira.

If people choose to not grow their own vegetables they choose to rely on pensioner's money, social grants and money that might come in from a family member with a job. “In Xhosa culture your family is not just your immediate family it goes back generations – and we must help each other wherever we can” said Dyira. “It is a big responsibility.”