Food Insecurity
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
In the first part of our Hungry For Change series, 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. A Johannesburg mother of three says she sells chicken feet on the street and sex to men to make sure her young children have something to eat. 32-year old Zinzi* from Lenasia South has never been to school and cannot read or write. She has three children – two boys aged four and three, and one daughter who is one year and nine months old. Zinzi* came to South Africa from Mozambique with her husband in 2014, hoping to escape poverty and hunger. She separated from her husband in 2019. Illiterate and unemployed, she was financially dependent on her husband, but says he hasn’t supported the children financially for the past
In the second part of our Hungry For Change series, Health-e News shares 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. When there is not enough food in Sekhwele Mnisi’s home, he tells his children to drink water and have faith that God will provide. The 66-year-old widower lives with his three adult children and two young grandchildren in a two-bedroom house in Ga-Motodi village near Burgersfort in Limpopo. Mnisi’s oldest daughter, 24-year-old Karabo, and 19-year-old son, Thoriso, are also unemployed. “My other daughter, Dipolelo, is 21 but still attends high school.” Karabo has two young children, a two-year-old toddler and an eight-month-old baby. “We have many mouths to feed.” R50 a day to feed four adults and two children The pensioner says
On a chilly weekday morning, gogo Thozama Toti sits next to a stove, watching her granddaughter prepare a meal of noodles. Another grandchild waits patiently on a bed inside the dilapidated three-roomed mud house in Emaxelegwini informal settlement near Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape. The 68-year-old grandmother already knows the noodles will not be enough to feed all twelve members of her extended family. Hunger is a constant presence in their home. Gogo Toti shares her home with her five adult children and six grandchildren. Living with arthritis, she says life has been a struggle since moving to the settlement from her village in 2002, about 10 kilometres away, in search of work. Gogo Toti found employment as a domestic worker, but by 2021 at the age of 63, arthritis forced her to stop working. Today, all five of her adult children, aged between 31 and 45, and her three
Five-year-old hands grip a small yellow hammer, crushing aluminium cans outside a small house in Embo, west of Durban. By the end of the day, Nokulunga Nkabinde hopes the bulging clear bag filled with cans will earn enough money to buy some vegetables, bread and a few eggs for her family. Many unemployed women in the rural community are also the breadwinners in their families. For some, collecting discarded cans has become the only way they’re able to feed their children. Nkabinde (31), a mother of two boys aged seven and five, spends her days collecting discarded beverage, beer and energy drink cans before selling them to a nearby scrap metal buy-back centre. “I turn cans into cash,” she says with a smile. “As I am unemployed this is how I make a living. The money I earn from collecting and selling cans, I use to buy food like vegetables,
Every month Mapiti Seleka puts aside her R370 unemployment grant, knowing that when food prices rise again, she will not have to face them alone. Together with 44 other households in Tsetse Village outside Mafikeng, she belongs to the Reabetswe Food Stokvel, a community savings group that helps families buy groceries in bulk, stretch limited incomes and put food on the table. The 41-year-old mother of a six-year-old daughter is unemployed but married, and says her family manages to buy just enough food and cover other essential expenses with her husband’s small income. She says the stokvel has changed more than how her family shops. “Now in December we can also buy juice, biscuits and meat.” “Before the stokvel, December was just pap and hope.” Seleka says in the past, she relied on her social grant and loans from mashonisas, or informal money lenders, to help support her family. Three
For some children at a Nyakallong school in the Free State, the school term means at least one guaranteed meal a day. When caregivers at the We Care Daycare Centre, based at S.A Mokhothu Primary School, realised that children’s need for food extended beyond the school term, they decided to keep the kitchen open during school holidays. The centre, established in 2001 to support families affected by HIV, orphans and other vulnerable children, feeds up to 200 children a day during the first week of school break. “We realised there is a need for us at We Care Daycare to provide a plate to these kids beyond the school term,” says Rebecca Ndaba, one of seven caregivers at the centre. “Because of high unemployment in Nyakallong, many families struggle to provide even one meal a day.” Hunger doesn’t take a holiday During the school term, learners at S.A Mokhothu Primary