Mother Teresa once said, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.”

What is poverty? And what is it’s relationship to race?

White poverty is not new, or specific to South Africa. Yet perceptions of who can or cannot be poor (or rich) persist in the mind of many of her citizens.

In a country where the gap between rich and poor is ever-increasing, poverty in South Africa no longer has an exclusively black face. More and more white people are joining the ranks of the poor on a daily basis. Poverty is becoming less of a racial issue and more of a South African problem.

Having been deprived of their previously ‘privileged’ position, the white poor are now seeking ways to adapt or at least survive.