As Eastern Cape communities are hit by spiralling food inflation and unemployment rates of 42.4%, the province’s elderly residents are using their state pensions to look after families in crisis and often have to rely on loans in the last weeks of the month.

In Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, pensioners are selling scrap metal for food as whole families rely on their grants to survive and the cost of food often leaves their cupboards bare before the end of the month.

The grandparents insist they will sacrifice what they have to for a better future for their grandchildren.

“We love them and we want to make sure their future is safe and not going to suffer like us,” said Nombembe Nolusapho Olivia (70), the recipient of an old-age grant. She said her monthly pension of R2,080 must go very far in her household.

“My granddaughter is attending school and I am paying school fees every month and they need to eat and we also need to eat,” she said.

Olivia and her family live in a dilapidated shack in Mthatha. She said though she received a grant to care for her grandchildren as well, she was trying to save to build a better house for them.

“This shack is not safe. We don’t have food. Our young children are eating yesterday’s pap.”

She said that because none of her children is working, the whole family depends on her grant.

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