South Africa is in a hunger crisis, with about one in four households suffering either moderate or severe food insecurity, and government attempts to ease poverty are inadequate, says the NGO FoodForward.
Andy du Plessis, MD of FoodForward, told Business Times the NGO’s recent report, “The State of Household Food Insecurity in South Africa 2026”, showed the crisis affected millions of South Africans and was getting worse.
“The report clearly shows the trajectory is moving upwards from 2019 to 2023... Of course, we are looking at the data from the StatsSA household survey,” Du Plessis said.
The report comes ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address on Thursday and finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech.
Du Plessis said the South African Reserve Bank and StatsSA have acknowledged that food inflation is high in multiple categories, even as the broader CPI figure eased towards the 3% target.
“What the Bank and StatsSA data is showing is a corroboration that high food prices globally result in food insecurity locally. We find that trend is continuing. Food inflation is sitting at 4.6% now and worsening, and those numbers are not looking like they are coming down in the near term.”
He said adding items to the list of zero-rated products would not help and a VAT hike would be detrimental to the poorest, most vulnerable households. He called on the government to consider doubling the child support grant, the old-age grant and the social relief of distress grant and said the national school nutrition programme should be expanded and better run.
“A zero-rated VAT goods expansion is a blunt instrument... We are sitting with historical inequality, high unemployment, especially youth unemployment, and severe poverty. We are operating in a low-growth environment, and economists say we will likely see 1.1% growth this year, and that is far from enough to create jobs.”
In just four years, South Africa’s severe hunger rate jumped from 6.4% to 8.0% — that’s over 1-million more people going days without food.
— FoodForward
FoodForward’s core focus is to “recover edible surplus food” and use it to reduce food insecurity. The NGO provides food to nearly 1-million people a day. Its report cites Stats SA figures that in 2019 the number of food-insecure people was 14.25-million and the number of severely food-insecure stood at 5.2-million. Four years later the numbers were 17.8-million and 8-million.
“In just four years, South Africa’s severe hunger rate jumped from 6.4% to 8.0% — that’s over 1-million more people going days without food,” the report says.
Briefing reporters on the review of the social grant system, South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) CEO Themba Matlou said the agency was engaging the National Treasury in a bid to tighten controls to ensure that only eligible people received payments and to eliminate “leakage”.
“There is a constant engagement with the Treasury. Outside the ordinary meetings we have, we have quarterly reporting processes on the progress… to ensure that we jealously guard the use of [resources in] the fiscus...The ultimate end is that the system must be guarded [and] we must be able to save costs.”
Speaking at a pre-budget virtual panel this week, Hannah Marais, Southern Africa chief economist at Deloitte, said: “When it comes to food inflation, I think we know that it disproportionately affects lower-income households. We do have a big focus around social spending in the budget. I don’t know if there will be specific announcements with regard to measures to assist in food inflation.”
Making the Bank’s repo rate announcement last week, governor Lesetja Kganyago said that while the December CPI print came in at 3.6%, food inflation was notably high.
“We are, however, keeping an eye on food inflation, especially meat prices, which are being affected by a serious outbreak of foot and mouth disease. We are also concerned about electricity prices, given that Nersa’s price correction may rise from R54bn to R76bn.
“More positively, inflation expectations have fallen, with the latest survey showing longer-term expectations at record lows. We look forward to expectations declining further, as South Africans experience ongoing lower inflation and learn more about the new target.”
Patrick Kelly, chief director for price statistics at StatsSA, said the average inflation rate for 2025 was 3.2%, the lowest since 2004 when it stood at 1.4%. That 1.4% level had last been recorded in 1969.
However, he acknowledged the pace of price acceleration in food categories, including meat and meat products, cereals, brown bread and pasta. “Meat inflation continued its upward trajectory, rising to 12.6% in December from 12.2% in November. In December 2024, the rate was -0.4%. This just shows how quickly meat prices accelerated over the year.”
Business Times
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