State's interdepartmental strategy to tackle hunger hampers South Africans' right to food — report

Daily Maverick

09-06-2025

South Africans cannot hold a specific individual or department to account for the right to food not being realised because most of the national frameworks on food security are interdepartmental, says the author of the report released by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute. The report calls for the drafting of national framework legislation in relation to the right to food in the country.
The government of national unity (GNU) in South Africa has highlighted food security as part of its broader social and economic policies. According to its Statement of Intent, the GNU aims to tackle poverty, spatial inequalities and food security by providing a social safety net and improving access to basic services.
South Africa's National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security outlines strategies to ensure food availability, accessibility, utilisation and stability. The government has committed to promoting the right to adequate food, addressing hunger and improving food security through coordinated efforts across various departments.
Despite South Africa being food secure at a national level, household food security remains a challenge, with increasing food insecurity rates in recent years. The GNU's approach includes social support initiatives such as household grants and school feeding schemes to mitigate these issues.
In a report released by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri) on Tuesday researchers recommended legislative and policy shifts that will help South Africans to have better access to food and potentially eradicate hunger. This is part of multiple recommendations that address other socioeconomic factors that create food poverty.
The report recommends continued advocacy for the South African government to ratify the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which serves as a complaints and investigative mechanism for rights violations, including the right to adequate food.
The report recommends 'the drafting of national framework legislation in relation to the right to food in South Africa (e.g. a Food and Nutrition Security Act) in line with the recommendations under General Comment 12, as well as South Africa's National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security. This would set out the roles and responsibilities of the different actors in relation to food security in South Africa, including an interdepartmental body with oversight responsibility.'
It also recommends that the updated National Food and Nutrition Security Plan be amended to address and monitor affordability and food pricing and enable people's economic access to nutritious food (the ability to purchase food as opposed to direct access, which refers to growing one's own food).
The report, titled ' Food for Thought: Reflections on Food (In)Security. Laws, Experiences, Interventions ', aims to better understand how some of Seri's partners and client groups have been affected by, and responded to, food insecurity and hunger issues. Seri's research focused on the experiences of the leadership and of members as conveyed by leaders of the following partners: the Inner City Federation, the South African Informal Traders Forum, the African Reclaimers Organisation, the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agriculture and Allied Workers Union, the Izwi Domestic Workers Alliance and the Slovo Park Community Development Forum.
Other recommendations call for an awareness of vulnerability of certain groups in society when creating, amending and updating policies that foster food security:
'Acknowledge food system workers, for example farm workers and informal traders, and ensure and monitor that they have fair and safe working conditions, and receive living wages. Acknowledge how women might be differently affected throughout the food system, for example as producers, workers and consumers, and incorporate specific interventions to attain greater gender equality. This could take the form of monitoring and increasing the number of women who have access to land for productive purposes, addressing unsafe working conditions due to pesticide use on farms and low wages/seasonal work of female farm workers.'
The report further explains that sufficient funds have to be in place to implement these processes, which often need human and other resources to come to fruition. This is in line with the recommendations by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation in its evaluation of the National Plan.
The report took two years to compile, according to senior researcher at Seri Yvonne Erasmus. 'What is often missed is the issue of economic access, because food security has different dimensions, so national availability of food, whether food is nutritious, whether people have stable access over time, and a lot of the policy focus at government level is on the availability dimension. We do have more than enough food available nationally, we export a lot of our food and we waste a third of the food we produce.'
Erasmus pointed out that economic access to food seems to be what the government is struggling to create a sound and sustainable plan for. Also, one of the challenges was that South Africans couldn't hold a specific individual or department to account for the right to food not being realised, because most of the national frameworks on food security were interdepartmental.
Erasmus wrote the report and led the research, and legal researcher Michael Clark conducted the interviews and produced an earlier version of the report.
The national organising secretary of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union, Karel Swart, said he is not sure whether new laws and policy will change anything.
He said the past 30 years were a 'complete failure'. Black economic empowerment had failed dismally under the ANC government. 'Farmworkers believe there was more food under apartheid. The current agriculture system does not work for the majority [only] for a tiny minority. I believe in reforms, but the current system must be replaced by a people-driven system… that caters for farmworkers and farm dwellers as well as for South Africa and the world.'
Swart was a panellist at the launch of the report in Johannesburg on Tuesday and the union was involved in the data collection and providing experiences for the report.
Swart echoed the sentiment that people need money to access food.
'The farms are lobbying the government to change the minimum wage and change the sectorial determination for farm and domestic workers. They want to hire and fire,' he said.
'They don't understand their actions on human behaviour. Children drop out from school in large numbers. Teenage pregnancies and sexual abuse are on the rise… violence and murder are also on the rise. All these things emanate in a country where hunger and starvation is on the order of the day.' DM