Lamb for 12 on $400 Monthly Shows South Africa Welfare Addiction
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Sprawled on a faded black two-seater couch covered with cigarette burns, Eva Matthys, 72, is instructing her 13-year-old granddaughter on how to cook minced lamb -- for 12. That’s how many family members share the government-subsidized house in Brandvlei, a town in South Africa’s Northern Cape province.
Side dishes: macaroni and bolognese sauce. What pays for the meal: South Africa’s taxpayers, via 4,540 rand ($418) in monthly government benefits. Nine of the residents in the house, from Matthys’s baby great-granddaughter to Hendrik, her husband, receive one kind of aid or another. Only one of the 12 works.