The Covid-19 lockdown is taking a potentially deadly toll on children, with reported child hunger on the rise and unemployment at a high. Spotlight takes an in-depth look at what this means for young children and asks the experts about potential solutions. In February, Spotlight visited...
A top level report to the Western Cape government paints a stark picture of the lockdown food crisis in some communities.One community reports: "Families are starving, struggling and urgently waiting for food hampers. The situation is very bad." Another says "hunger is going to dramatically increase...
The Minister of Finance has announced an austerity budget at a time when the fissures of unresolved historical inequality, poverty and suffering are made so much sharper. The lives of people are going to be made so much worse, at a time when redistributive and...
Government is failing its hungry children spectacularly, writes Mandy Wiener. I don't know what it feels like to be hungry - true, gnawing, hollow hunger. But what I do know is that it is a feeling I would never want myself or my children to experience. In fact, it...
By Faranaaz Veriava and Sasha Stevenson The Pretoria High Court judgment affirms that school nutrition is a component of the right to basic education. The Pretoria High Court judgment affirms that school nutrition is a component of the right to basic education. The judgment in the school nutrition...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns that followed have disrupted private food supply chains and the public support systems the poor rely on for food and good nutrition. But these problems have also triggered many creative and entrepreneurial responses. Corinna Hawkes of the Centre for...
Hunger has increased across the board under South Africa’s Covid-19 lockdown – and new evidence indicates that parents, especially mothers, are giving their food to their kids. The National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) was published this week and shows that reported hunger among...
by Ferial Haffajee Covid-19’s devastation has seen three million people lose their incomes. And almost half of all households report going hungry in the past three months, a heart-stopping new survey reveals. On 27 March, the hard lockdown was declared to try to hold off the spread...
“The immediate impact of the public health crisis has revealed the deep fragility of the South African food system and exposed the injustices that underpin it. This has clearly been a disruption, presenting a period of deep uncertainty and change, creating an opportunity for a...
Civil society groups have played an important role in responding to the COVID-19 social crisis in South Africa. Examples include the “community action networks” in Cape Town and Gauteng, as well as similar initiatives in more rural areas, such as the Eastern Cape. They also include extraordinary crisis response efforts by...