When white South Africans resort to begging

Johannesburg, South Africa - Linda Elfs, 58, spends eight hours at a street corner in Harteebesport dam, a small tourist town in the North West Province of South Africa, begging for money.

She is too young to get state pension and "too old to be hired", she says.

A former nurse and bartender, she joined the ranks of the unemployed white South Africans eight years ago, and life has since become a struggle.

"On a good day I make R400.00 ($37.57), which is not enough to pay for rent or food," Elfs says. 

Donovan Moolman, 46, has been begging in the streets of Johannesburg for six and a half years. With just a matric certificate, he struggled to find employment and began doing menial jobs like gardening and painting homes.

Now, he says, those jobs are gone. 

"Once you find yourself in the streets, it's hard to break the cycle," Moolman told Al Jazeera. "We are struggling to find work because we don't have homes. People won't give you a job without a residential address because they don't trust you."
 
Poverty - still believed to be the preserve of black South Africans - now knows no colour. It is finding its way to white communities once associated only with wealth and privilege.  

Stories like Elfs' and Steyn's were unheard of when white South Africans were in power during the apartheid era. 

Credit : Al Jazeera