While millions of South Africans are going hungry, tonnes of food are wasted annually. The country needs to move beyond the notion of “charity”, to the constitutionally enshrined right to food when dealing with people facing hunger and nutrition insecurity. This was one of the key takeaways of an expert symposium recently presented by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) at Stellenbosch University (SU).
This year the annual expert symposium was themed Social Justice, Hunger, and the Constitution and included input by academics, policymakers, government officials, judicial representation chapter 9 institutions, hunger alleviation organisations and corporate representatives who came together to discuss addressing the crisis of hunger in South Africa.
The symposium paired the constitutional and universal right to food with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG2 that strives to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
The situation is particularly dire for children. Dr Eileen Carter, provincial manager for the South African Human Rights Commission in the Eastern Cape, shared alarming statistics from the province, where over 1 000 children were starving between April 2021 and March 2022, with 116 deaths due to severe malnutrition. This issue, described as “slow violence,” disproportionately affects children under five years old, contributing to long-term health issues like stunting and wasting. The symposium heard how hunger for South Africa’s most vulnerable is a critical issue requiring urgent and sustained attention.
The expert symposium was reported by GroundUp on the 9th of September 2024 and Stellenbosch University on the 12th of September 2024