South Africa’s housing market In one of Africa’s largest economies, the middle class cannot buy a home because they cannot get loans Neliswa Khumalo, 46 years old, shares a peach-coloured four-roomed government-subsidised house with her three children in Soweto, an urban sprawl west of Johannesburg. She qualified for this house in 2002 because her salary as a shop assistant was under $350 a month. MsKhumalo’s fortunes have changed and she now works as an office administrator earning around $1,200 a month. Ms Khumalo would like to sell her RDP house—named after the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP)—and move on.…
