All of us who can must help our starving compatriots

It may sound odd to associate SA with malnutrition. In a middle-income country, the most industrialised on the continent and one that boasts an abundance of natural wealth, people should not, on paper, be going to bed hungry. But they are, and not only in the rural hinterlands — malnutrition is a crisis in urban townships as well.

Elsewhere in this edition we tell the story of Vincent Lekwai from Soweto. A cleaner at a restaurant, Lekwai has to feed a family of nine on his monthly salary of R2,800.

“For the first few days after payday, a meal for the family consists of pap and cabbage, or potatoes. If they can afford it, they will add chicken feet. But most days the adults don’t eat, so that the children can. Their meal could be a slice of bread each, or a shared packet of chips,” he told our reporter.

The family gets food donations from the Teddy Bear Clinic, whose role is supposed to be not hunger relief but supporting abused children through the criminal justice system.

There is no doubt that our children are starving. The child-support grant is not enough to feed them

—  Nokuthula Dladla, project manager of Siyaphambili Qondile

In rural Makhonyeni outside Jozini in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Simo Tembe, 17,  shares a dilapidated one-room structure with her mother, four siblings and a newborn baby. They rely on the child support grant and the R1,000 a month her mother earns as a cleaner at a local school. Obviously not enough to feed the family.

Nokuthula Dladla, project manager of Siyaphambili Qondile, a nonprofit organisation in Jozini, said malnutrition among children is rife because of poverty spawned by mass  unemployment.

“We had a child who died from malnutrition here two years ago. The mother left the area after that. There are probably more who have died at home but they just bury them and don’t report it to the authorities. There is no doubt that our children are starving. The child-support grant is not enough to feed them.”

According to the latest data available to the national department of health, 199 children died from malnutrition in the first two months of the year,  with KwaZulu-Natal hardest hit. The department said it was concerned many more child deaths might occur away from its facilities, especially in rural districts.

The World Health Organisation defines malnutrition as “deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients”.

Globally in 2020, the estimated number of children under the age of five who were stunted (too short for their age) due to malnutrition stood at 149-million, and the number of those who were wasted (too thin for their height) stood at 45-million.

That children are dying because there isn’t enough food at home can be blamed on failures at various levels, but is also a morbid consequence of inequality in SA. We live in a country where a top CEO earns R300m a year, while kids and adults go hungry in a township or a village.

Agricultural economist Wandile Sihlobo says SA has the highest level of food security  in sub-Saharan Africa and is a net exporter of food. The country exports half the food it produces, earning a record $12.4bn (about R190bn) in 2021.

“But SA still has roughly 6-million people who are food insecure,” Sihlobo says. People go hungry in SA not because food is expensive or scarce, he says, but because “households simply do not have any income. Even if something [costs] R2, to a man without R2 that is unaffordable.”

But who must feed the hungry? While the government bears the lion’s share of responsibility, it cannot do it alone. The private sector, civil society and ordinary individuals have to assist in tackling the issue. Food donations to organisations that feed the hungry should be encouraged.

The state has to ensure economic growth so that more people can find decent employment and take care of themselves. Until then, those who cannot afford food will have to rely on social grants and the benevolence of the more affluent.