It was heartbreaking to read in last weekend’s Sunday Times the number of young children who are dying from hunger across the country. In a food-secure, upper-middle income country such as ours, we should hang our heads that these young lives, full of hope and promise, have been cut short by a completely preventable condition.
It’s tragic and unconscionable but, sadly, not surprising. Civil society organisations have been sounding the alarm for years that malnutrition in SA is a crisis. Before Covid-19, a quarter of children under the age of five in SA were reported to be suffering from stunting as a result of chronic malnutrition. In other words, even before the pandemic, one in four children were nutritionally fragile, subsisting on empty foods, foods deficient in the nutrients necessary to live in full health, suffering from a hidden hunger; surviving but not thriving.
Then came the pandemic which made a bad situation very much worse. Initially, mothers shielded their children from hunger by not eating themselves, then benefited from brief respite provided through the top-up to the child support grant that was introduced in 2020. But when that was discontinued, food insecurity reared its ugly head again and children, already living on the edge of starvation, fell off the cliff.
And that’s where we find ourselves now — 199 children reported to have died from malnutrition and they are probably only the tip of the iceberg.
The government can — and must — do better to end the malnutrition crisis, but food producers, wholesalers and retailers also need to step up
But what did we expect when we opted not to increase the child support grant to the food poverty line against the backdrop of record unemployment and soaring food prices?
Are we surprised that children are dying of hunger when national surveys repeatedly warned us that a third of households were living below the food poverty line — before the pandemic — and that just 60% of children had access to the child support grant in the first year of life because of the various bureaucratic processes that make it economically prohibitive for the poor to obtain this life-saving cash transfer? Surely where we find ourselves now is exactly where we have designed ourselves to be?
Now that it is undeniable we have failed our country’s children, we must act, and act swiftly. The crisis needs the whole of society’s response. Yes, the government can — and must — do better, but major retailers, wholesalers and food manufacturers also need to step up. The government needs to strengthen the social security basket by ensuring grants meet the food poverty line and are extended to include the most vulnerable, such as pregnant women.
Still, these measures won’t go far enough if highly nutritious foods are not made more affordable. Items such as eggs, beans, tinned fish, fortified maize meal, peanut butter, Amasi, soya mince and full-cream milk powder are high in nutritional value. They protect vulnerable individuals from slipping into acute malnutrition but are becoming increasingly unaffordable.
Food producers and retailers need to stand in solidarity with SA’s families during these challenging times by providing a basket of nutritious foods at cost price. We acknowledge that many of these goods already have thin profit margins, but this solution could be limited to a few items per customer to avoid reselling in communities.
It’s not only an issue of social solidarity; malnutrition, chronic malnutrition in particular, not only stunts the growth and development of children but that of economies too. Stunted children perform worse at school than their healthy counterparts. They are also less likely to finish school and are more likely to live in unemployment and poverty as adults. Worse still is that stunted mothers are more likely to have stunted children, trapping families in intergenerational cycles of poverty, undermining our collective efforts to rebuild the economy.
As Nobel laureate Gabriella Mistral beautifully put it: “We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer ‘tomorrow’, his name is Today.”
South African food manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers: step up to the plate, be part of the solution, our children cannot wait.
• Dr Kopano Matlwa Mabaso is executive director of Grow Great
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