The effects of climate change are already being felt in some of the world’s poorest countries. Charlotte Sterrett, Oxfam Australia Southern Africa Program Officer, recently travelled to South Africa to see the impacts first-hand.

Thandi lifts up a handful of soil and watches as it disappears through her hands. Once rich and fertile and capable of producing bountiful crops, the soil is now bone dry.

“The ground used to be soft and easy to dig by hand; water was freely available just under the surface and food was plentiful; there was a lake nearby that provided fish for us to eat,” Thandi says. “But now the land is dry and hard and there is no water under the surface; even the lake has dried up.”

Thandi sits with a group of men and women under the shade of a large tree in Hluhluwe, a small town in KwaZulu-Natal province in the north-eastern corner of South Africa. Hluhluwe is a poor community struggling to contend with eight years of drought, high unemployment, rising poverty and some of the highest malaria and HIV rates in the country. Now, after years of fighting for access to adequate health care, food, clean water and sanitation and striving to reduce the effects of HIV and AIDS and conflict, the Hhuhluwe community is facing another battle — climate change.

This is what has brought me here. Oxfam Australia works with 10 partners in UMKhanyakude to help communities with high levels of HIV grow and obtain enough food to eat. While largely unaware of the term ‘climate change’, the local communities are concerned about the effects of prolonged drought and extremely low rainfall on their crops.

Understanding climate change

Hluhluwe is one of six communities I am visiting in UMKhanyakude to get a better understanding about the effects of climate change here — what impact it is having, what communities know about it and how they are adapting to it.

Climate change is an area of work Oxfam will be placing a greater focus on in coming years. The findings from this research in Hluhluwe will be incorporated into our current projects in UMKhanyakude and be shared with partners and Oxfam affiliates across the Southern African region.

As I talk with the men and women of Hluhluwe, the conversation quickly turns to the weather and how it has changed in the past 50 years. “The weather is much hotter and drier and more humid,” says one. “We can’t tell as much difference between summer and winter anymore,” says another. “We used to talk about when the drought would end; now we are thinking that maybe it is not going to end,” says another. “I don’t see how things are going to get better.”

Although the people of Hluhluwe have experienced droughts and floods for as long as they can remember, since the mid-1990s they have noticed a gradual drying of the land.

The ground was once so lush that people could use their hands to dig for water just below the surface. But those times have long gone. Even the rainwater tanks that were installed as a solution now stand dry. The local council sends a truck to fill up the tanks, but there is no delivery schedule, nor any guarantee the truck will return. While we are there a truck comes, but is only able to half-fill one tank. This water will only last a week or so.

The recent murder on three lesbians and the sacking of a deputy health minister overshadowed the celebration of National Women’s Day, a public holiday in South Africa.

The day commemorates the national march of women on August 9, 1956 to petition against legislation that curtailed an African's freedom of movement during the apartheid era. The women sang a protest song of which the phrase: "you strike a woman, you strike a rock" has come to represent women's courage and strength in South Africa

South Africa's 1996 constitution, one of the world's most progressive, was the first in the world to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, these murders showed the country is failing to live up to its constitutional promise to protect all its citizens, the international rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.

My wife and I recently traveled to Mamelodi, South Africa (30 minutes outside Pretoria) with 300 other volunteers from Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, OH. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I had never been to Africa before, but I was very excited to experience the culture and develop relationships with the people there. I was amazed at the love, joy and hope that seemed to radiate from the townships despite the fact that most people we met were either unemployed (80%), had HIV/AIDS (40%) or did not know where their next meal would come from.

While we were there we built 10 homes, planted over 250 sustainable vegetable gardens, provided a library full of 7,000 donated books and had a children’s camp each day for over 1,000 kids! While all that is definitely an accomplishment, the most fulfilling part of our trip was the amazing friendships we developed with the South Africans. I was so encouraged by their ambition and hope for the future — something that we, as Americans, have in common.