Anchor the MDGs to economic progress, Africans say

For 17 years Peter worked as a machine operator in a South African textile plant. It was not high-paying work, but it paid the bills and kept his family above the poverty line. When he lost his job because foreign imports were cheaper, he told University of KwaZulu-Natal researcher Claire Ichou, he was plunged into poverty — and despair. “Peter explains very painfully how he has lost his dignity,” she wrote in an academic paper. “He declares that his wife does not respect him. He tells us that his children are starving.” In Peter’s eyes, she continued, “a man without a job is not a man and there is nothing he can do. He has no status.”