South Africa is facing a hunger crisis. 

This is according to recent submissions by advocacy groups to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC)’s Inquiry into the country’s food system. 

The first phase of the inquiry was held in March this year, and heard evidence from civil society organisations and government institutions. The second phase in July turned the focus to the private sector across the food chain, including farmers, food manufacturers and retailers.

Submissions by the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) included findings that more than a thousand children died last year because of preventable acute malnutrition, and an estimated 14 million people in the country go hungry. 

Over the coming weeks, Health-e News will share the stories of people behind these statistics in an eight-part series, Hungry For Change, looking at the difficult choices families make when there is not enough money for food.

Our community journalists will take readers into the homes of vulnerable communities across South Africa, and report on the sacrifices people make to keep food on the table.

Our stories will look at how hunger affects young children and older people, and how poor access to basic services, unemployment and rising food costs shape what families can eat.

Some stories will also focus on communities finding their own ways to cope, from growing their own food to pooling money through food stokvels.

Throughout the series, a photo essay called “What’s on your plate?” will document meals eaten by households featured in our stories, and look at what those meals cost, how many people they feed and what they provide nutritionally.

The aim is simple: to show our readers what hunger looks like beyond the statistics, and the desperate measures people go to to feed their families.

Health-e News will add stories from the Hungry For Change series below as they are published.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Part 1 | On the brink of hunger: ‘I sell sex and chicken feet to feed my children’

Health-e News shares the story of a Johannesburg mother who turned to sex work to feed her three young children. Her youngest was hospitalised with malnutrition earlier this year.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Part 2 | When hunger hits, Limpopo widower tells children to drink water and have faith

In the second part of our series, we share the story of a Limpopo widower who has to feed himself, his three adult children and his two young grandchildren with R50 a day. When food runs out, he advices them to drink water. And to have faith.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Part 3 | When Food Runs Short, Gogo Toti Goes Hungry So Grandchildren Can Eat

In the third instalment of our Hungry For Change series, Health-e News tells the story of 68-year old gogo Toti, who lives near Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape. Gogo Toti often skips meals so her younger grandchildren can eat. Living with arthritis and on chronic medication, she shares her two-roomed house with her five adult children and six grandchildren. Her adult children and three oldest grandchildren are all unemployed, and the family survives on grant money.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Part 4 | Hunger Is Driving KZN Women to Recycle for Food

In our fourth story as part of Health-e News‘ Hungry For Change series, Nokulunga Nkabinde from Embo, west of Durban in Kwazulu Natal, shares how her family and many others from her rural community, rely on the small income generated from collecting discarded aluminium cans and selling them to a nearby scrap metal buy-back centre in order to feed their families. A group of women, mostly the breadwinners in their families, work together to earn about R800 per month each to supplement social relief grants and fight off hunger.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Part 5 | How one food stokvel helps 45 North West families fight hunger

 In Tsetse Village outside Mafikeng in the North West, a group of fourty-five women have clubbed together to form the Reabetswe Food Stokvel, a community savings group that helps their families buy groceries in bulk, stretch limited incomes and put food on the table. Many of the women are unemployed and rely on social grants. Founder, Mapiti Seleka says her R370 contribution each month supports her own family as well as her sister and her four children, and means they no longer need to borrow money from informal lenders to buy food.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Part 6 | Childhood hunger: When school meals stop, one Free State community steps in

In this story as part of our Hungry For Change series, we turn the focus on childhood hunger in South Africa. For many school children, a daily meal they receive at school under the government’s National School Nutrition Programme will be the only food they eat for the entire day. For some children at the S.A Mokhothu Primary School in Nyakallong in the Free State, this has become a lifeline.The We Care Daycare Centre, based at the school, realised that children’s need for food extended beyond the school term, and they decided to keep the kitchen open during school holidays. 

______________________________________________________________________________________

Part 7 | ‘No hunger here’ – How a Lenasia community garden helps unemployed families put food on the table

In our final community instalment in our Hungry For Change series, we highlight the initiative of a group of volunteers in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg who started a community garden to feed their families and sell affordable fresh vegetables to residents. The garden was started by 42-year-old Mannini Ntlaba in 2022 after she was retrenched from her job. Other unemployed residents started joining Ntlaba and the small garden grew into a community initiative. Today, the garden covers about a hectare and produces spinach, cabbage, broccoli, kale, beetroot, carrots, onions, tomatoes, maize and bell peppers. During harvest the team produces about 5,000 bunches of spinach and two pallets of tomatoes, alongside other seasonal crops.

______________________________________________________________________________________

IN PHOTOS | What’s on your plate? Seven meals show what food insecurity looks like in South Africa

For some families, dinner is pap and spinach. For another, chicken and bread must stretch across a household of 12. At a Free State school, a plate of samp, beans and vegetables may be a child’s main meal of the day. As part of our Hungry for Change series, Health-e News community journalists asked people to show us what is actually on their plates.

Registered dietitian and public health nutritionist Helen Donkin from the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (ADSA) analysed seven of the meals, using portion sizes estimated from photographs and nutritional information from the South African Food Data System (SAFOODS). From Gauteng to Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, North West and the Free State, these meals tell different stories about what food insecurity looks like, and solutions found by some communities to fight off hunger.