The second MUPCI workshop will take place at the City of Cape Town on 15^th May 2009. The workshops for the six remaining targeted municipalities will take place during July and August 2009. The feedback collated from all eight MUPCI workshops will form the basis for the MUPCI Supplement to the South Africa Survey.

One of the issues raised at the MUPCI workshop in Tshwane was the relationship between HIV/AIDS and poverty.

While HIV/AIDS does not afflict poor people alone, the effect of this pandemic on poor households is far more severe than in wealthier ones. This newsletter looks at how poor households in South Africa are affected by HIV and AIDS.

In 2008, UNAIDS estimated the number of HIV infections in South Africa at 5.7 million. According to the organisation, one in every five adult South Africans, or 18.1% of the adult population, was infected in 2008.

Normally, HIV positive adults who are not on antiretroviral drugs fall ill, and are often unable to continue working. The United Nations News Service estimated in 2004 that the labour force will have shrunk by 24% by 2015, owing to AIDS.

People working in the trucking sector have the highest rate of infection at 59%, according to the South Africa Survey published by the South African Institute of Race Relations. The second highest rate of infection was in people working in the farming sector with a 45% infection rate, followed by those in the gold mining sector with 30%, the forestry sector with an average 30% infection rate, and people in the coal mining sector with an average 15% estimated infection rate.

The implications of these figures are grim:

·         Households where a breadwinner is no longer able to work suffer a loss of income, making these households more vulnerable to several manifestations of poverty.

·         Following the death of parents, children are often left destitute and are more likely to be caught in the poverty trap.

·         The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimated the number of AIDS orphans in 2007 at 1.1 million children. While UNAIDS estimated that there were 1.4 million AIDS orphans in South Africa. Unicef estimates that by 2010, there will be 1.7 million AIDS orphans in the country.

·         While some of these children are taken in by grandparents or other adults, more than half of these children are not taken in by the extended families or friends. The Institute estimated that there were 719 000 child-headed households in South Africa in 2004.

The municipal outreach project aims to provide extensive research, such as that used in the above analysis, to municipalities covered by the Municipal Outreach Project. This will be done by means of publications, the project website, and workshops. A monthly publication called Fast Facts for Local Government (F3LG) is sent to local councillors, officials, and development organisations in the eight municipalities covered by the project. A weekly newsletter is posted on the project website on Fridays, and e-mailed to project beneficiaries. The annual Survey, published by the Institute, will be posted to municipalities and extracts posted on the project website.

-Nthamaga Kgafela