Sibongile Biyela cracks her knuckles and will not meet my eye. “I feel very bad when I turn my anger to my children and lose my temper and hit them. I don’€™t have anything and they need things and they keep on asking, but I just don’€™t have anything to give them. Then I feel very guilty because this breaks my relationship with them and hurts them.”

Ntombazana Zenzele nods in agreement. “Sometimes I feel guilty about why I even gave birth to my children because I can’€™t support them. I also have self-blame for hitting them. They ask for so many things and I get so frustrated.”

Biyela, 28, and Zenzele, 31, live in the vast, sprawling informal settlement of Umbhumbulu, on the southern outskirts of Durban. Both are unemployed.

Zenzele has four children and a total income of R260 from child grants for her two youngest children, aged five and three. She gets no financial support from the children’€™s father, who is unemployed. She tries to stretch the money to cover the needs of all her children, but it is impossible. Her two school-going children are particularly in need of so many things for school.

“The children feel hurt because they don’€™t meet the school’€™s requirements. They can’€™t go on school trips because I can’€™t pay. This makes them cry, although they know I don’€™t have any money.”

Biyela has two children, aged nine and five. The little one gets a R130 grant as she is under the age of seven.

“I depend on this money for both the kids. I don’€™t get any support from their father and he never even comes to see the children.

“My 9-year-old son doesn’€™t understand why other children have things but he can’€™t have them. He cries and gives me a lot of problems.”

She speaks softly, but the guilt weighs heavily on her as she shifts around on the cold drink crate she is sitting on.

“If I could not punish them, and rather explain things rather than hitting them. If I could talk to them and try to show them the economic problems’€¦”

Buyisile Mathe lives in Bhambayi, an informal settlement on the opposite side of Durban. After three years of unemployment, she has had a part-time job that brings in a little money for the past eight months.

While this has improved her life materially, Mathe is far from happy. Stuck in an abusive relationship for four years, Mathe struggles to see a way out and this is undermining her and destroying her four children’€™s trust in her.

“I have wounds all over,” says Mathe, wearily pulling up her parrot-bright dress to show me the latest one, a slash on her knee.

“He threatens me and harasses me. He hits me, sometime using spears and knobkerries, and sometimes a knife. It has happened so often I can’€™t even count. You see, he is a drunkard and he drinks every weekend and when he is drunk, then he treats me like this.”

Despite the fact that Mathe is not dependent on her unemployed man for money, she feels trapped by the situation.

“I tried to leave him and go away but his brothers came to see me and asked me to go back. So I went back because it is part of respect for his family and also for our child, who is 17 months.”

Mathe also feels trapped by the fact that domestic violence is so common.

“I am using my mind deeply to think what am I going to do. At times, I think that if I leave him and go to another man then maybe he will do the same because this is what happens. So I better do the best I can with what I have.”

However, Mathe’€™s three other children from a previous relationship are angry with the the fact that she cannot leave her partner. Her two older sons have both dropped out of school and the eldest, now 21, has built his own shack some distance away.

“I am caught between my children and him. They were very happy when I left but now that I have gone back, they have lost trust in me. They say I can’€™t stick to decisions. My eldest son fought his step-father, but I said he shouldn’€™t. When I went back to him, he became angry with me and he burnt all my clothes.”

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation’€™s Gender Co-ordinator, Lisa Vetten says the stories of Biyela, Zenzele and Mathe point to our society’€™s “complete lack of support for single mothers”.

“We need to ask, where are the fathers and what are they doing to take more responsibility for their children?” says Vetten. “Even if a man is unemployed, he can help to take care of the children so that the mother can look for a job or just have time to herself.”

Vetten adds that South Africa cannot project itself as a society that cares about children when the Child Support Grant only caters for children under the age of seven and offers no safety net for those who have no income.

“Even when women are employed, they are clustered in the lowest paid, least skilled jobs. These jobs don’€™t pay enough to enable a woman to support herself and her children, yet society assumes that the mother will take care of the children.

“We also live in a consumer-oriented society that has particularly targeted children. It is very hard for a child to understand that they can’€™t have something that other children have got.

“Women feel trapped by their circumstances, and take out their frustrations on their children. But this causes a vicious cycle. The more self-hate the mothers feel, the more they lash out. It is hardly an environment where a person can parent at their best. Yet society is quick to blame single mothers if something goes wrong with their children, as was the case in the rape of Baby Tshepang.”