Empty promises, empty stomachs — South Africa’s hunger emergency
(Photo by Bill Wegener on unsplash)
Malnutrition in South Africa, especially in places like the Eastern Cape, is not just a technical or policy problem – it is a national societal failure. The constitutional right to food is being violated daily, and we must demand political accountability, not just community resilience.
In a country where more than a quarter of the population faces hunger, and one in four children under five is stunted, we must call this what it is: a national emergency. Malnutrition is not just a poverty indicator; it’s a form of violence; slow, preventable and committed against children who have no say in the conditions into which they are born.
Nowhere in South Africa is this more evident than in the Eastern Cape, where the crisis has become catastrophic. In recent months, children have died from acute malnutrition in rural clinics and peri-urban settlements while government departments pass the buck. The South African Human Rights Commission has declared that the rights of these children to basic nutrition have been violated, calling for urgent action to address this humanitarian crisis. Constitutionally, every child has the right to basic nutrition. In practice, that right has no teeth.
At the Southern Africa Food Lab, we believe this crisis demands urgent, systemic action and that must begin with listening. Our work centres on bringing grassroots voices into dialogue with decision-makers, not for show, but to forge real consensus on how to rebuild local food systems that serve the most vulnerable. Food system governance must be accountable. Rights must translate into meals, not just legal jargon.
World Hunger Day (28 May) should shake us from complacency. This cannot be another awareness-raising moment lost in the news cycle. The consequences are real: children too hungry to learn, infants stunted for life, mothers forced to go without so their children might eat.
In Worcester, we’ve seen what’s possible. With support from the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership and the Centre for Excellence in Food Security, local actors are linking school nutrition, urban agriculture and early childhood development into a joined-up strategy. This is not a pilot project. It’s a working model of how decentralised food governance can create real change, if it’s properly supported.
In KwaZulu-Natal, newly trained smallholder farmers lost everything in the floods, but didn’t give up. With backing from Woza Nami, local organisations and local government, they replanted and adapted, and are producing again. What helped them succeed? Local markets, practical support, community solidarity. Again, this illustrates the impact of community resilience combined with constructive collaboration.
But let’s be clear: community resilience is not an excuse for government failure. Where is the political will to fix the national school nutrition programme? Why are we still missing the chance to use public procurement to support small-scale farmers? Why do we keep talking about the right to food in abstract terms when children are dying?
It’s time to move from policy to practice and from statements to systems.
The South African Constitution enshrines the right to food. But rights mean nothing without political accountability. We must build a public mandate for food justice; one that elevates the voices of communities and demands urgent, coordinated reform.
Professor Thuli Madonsela, Law Trust Chair in Social Justice and a law professor at Stellenbosch University and patron of the Southern Africa Food Lab, recently emphasised that access to food is a matter of justice, not just kindness. She underscored that “the Constitution is not a statement of intent; it is the law of the land”, and that the right to food must be enforced with the same urgency as any other constitutional right.
This World Hunger Day, don’t just call for awareness. Call for action. The children of the Eastern Cape, and every hungry child in South Africa, deserve more than a promise. They deserve a future. DM
Scott Drimie is co-director of the Southern Africa Food Lab housed at Stellenbosch University. Kennedy Dzama is a chair of the lab’s advisory board.
This article was published on the Daily Maverick on World Hunger Day 28 May 2025.