- With no one else working in the household, her headboard sales pay for food, electricity and transport to buy materials.
- When customers are scarce, she limits food credit to basics only to make sure her family does not go hungry.
Phatheka Mpukwana from Port St Johns is supporting her family with the money she makes from selling headboards.
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Mpukwana is a qualified social worker, but after struggling to find work, she decided to start a small furniture business.
"I had to think of something that would bring money into the house," she said. "We needed to eat."
She travelled to Durban to complete a carpentry and headboard course and began making headboards from home.
Her household includes six adults, including siblings aged between 29 and 47, as well as her brother's children.
"No one is working," she said. "We all depend on what I make."
She charges about R1,700 per headboard, but says business is unpredictable.
"Some months I get clients, some months I don't," she said.
When work is quiet, Mpukwana takes food on credit from a foreign-owned spaza shop in her area.
"We cannot go to bed hungry," she said.
She said the family only takes food on credit when necessary and limits it to basic items.
"We take maize meal, cooking oil, flour, sugar and tins," she said. "We don't choose meat or cereals. We take what keeps us full."
She said her food credit has never gone over R1,500.
"I can't take more than what I expect to earn," she said. "That money is not only for food. There is electricity and other costs."
She usually buys electricity for R100 at a time and adds more during the month, sometimes as little as R20.
Mpukwana also has to set aside money to hire a car to travel to Mthatha to buy materials, and sometimes to Durban for specialised supplies.
"This is not easy," she said. "The business helps us survive, but it is very fragile."
Her hope is to grow the business enough to avoid food credit in the future.
"I want to open a furniture shop one day," she said. "I don't want to live on credit forever."
