Hunger and Poverty in South Africa

The Hidden Faces of Food Insecurity

Jacqueline Hanoman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315406046
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica africana

Hunger and Poverty in South Africa: The Hidden Faces of Food Insecurity explores food insecurity as an issue of socioeconomic, political, cultural and environmental inequity and inequality. Based on extensive original research in Free State Province, South Africa, the book explores how people living in poverty make meaning of their food circumstances within the socio-cultural, political and economic contexts of post-apartheid South Africa, how they view the government's food security policies and programs and their perceived agency to affect change.

The personal narratives contained in the book show that food insecurity is shaped by many issues, among which are structural poverty, racism, attempts or non-attempts at reconciliation during and after apartheid, public health issues such as HIV/AIDS, and environmental circumstances. At a time when most discourse around food insecurity focuses on how to provide more food to people facing hunger, this book's multidimensional approach is a valuable contribution to the contemporary dialogue on poverty, food security/insecurity, sustainability and democratic agency both within South Africa and around the world.

This book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of food security, multidimensional poverty, democratic agency and sustainable development, both in South Africa and internationally.

1 The hidden faces of poverty

Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings … Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.

—Former South African President, Nelson Mandela¹

Poverty in not natural, but is made by human beings and can be overcome and eradicated by us. We have the power in our hands to do this and should do it. These powerful statements by Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, the first Black President of South Africa, in his 2005 Campaign to Make Poverty History speech in London (BBC News, 2005), are still very relevant today. The fight to eradicate poverty, injustice and inequality, within their multiple dimensions and dire consequences for human life, is an ongoing one in which we are not making as much progress with as we should, despite the enormous efforts of individuals and organizations around the world, as well as the advances in knowledge, technology, industry and science we have made.

Poverty and hunger have many faces. Across the world, they manifest themselves in a myriad of ways, some more recognizable to the general public than others. The myriad faces of hunger are those of people having substantially varying levels of access to food and, in many cases, with this access not being sustainable. When people have sustainable access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life, they are generally considered to be food secure. Poverty and food insecurity are two of the worst problems millions of people around the world face today. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2014 Human Development Report (HDR) found that nearly 2.2 billion people in the world were living in or near multidimensional poverty, and of these, approximately 842 million people, 12% of the world’s population, face chronic hunger (UNDP, 2015b). In 2016, both the UNDP and the World Food Program (WFP) estimated that approximately 795 million today people do not have enough to eat, and one in three people in the world suffer from some form of malnutrition (UNDP, 2017; World Food Program, Zero Hunger, 2017). All of these figures depict grim realities of a significant percentage of our populations, despite the fact that these reports find that from 1990–2015, average human development has improved significantly around the world.

Of all the continents, Africa is often seen as the poster child for the problems of poverty and food insecurity. When many people think about Africa, they think about starving children with bulging bellies, famine and dire poverty, hunger at its very worst. This image may be the reality for some countries, and areas of countries of the continent, including Somalia, South Sudan and Kenya, as we have seen in the March 2017 UN report described in the introduction, but it is not so for all. The World Food Program operates in 42 of the 54 African countries, and South Africa is not one of them. It does, however, operate in the two independent kingdoms that are within the borders of South Africa; Lesotho and Swaziland, where socioeconomic conditions are worse than in South Africa and where there are high levels of food insecurity. Supranational, international and national organizations all project that food production and the import capacity of countries around the world will increase considerably over the next decade, thus increasing the possibility of food security in many countries. Notwithstanding, some of these same organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization and the WFP, estimate that despite these measures, food insecurity will rise in some regions. International assessments such as the International Food Security Assessment 2012–2022 carried out by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimate that the number of food insecure people in Sub-Saharan Africa will increase by 15.1% in this decade. Even so, the percentage of the food insecure in the region is estimated to decrease from 42% in 2012 to 38% in 2022 (USDA ERS International Food Security Assessment 2012–2022, 2012). These figures express the paradoxical nature of food security/insecurity in our contemporary world.

Africa is a very diverse continent with a very rich tapestry of cultures, languages, religions, nations and ethnicities that exist within it, as well as sociopolitical and economic systems that the 54 countries have had historically. Several of these countries are at present undergoing very interesting processes of transformation politically, economically and socially, of which South Africa is one. Today, South Africa is considered a medium developing country in the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index (UNDP HDI) index, with great potential for growth (UNDP International Human Development Indicators, 2015a). But despite this status, it is also one of the countries where there are hidden faces of food insecurity; where there is plentiful food, but where a large part of the population is too poor to have economic access to food on a sustainable basis.

South Africa: the road to democracy

South Africa is well known around the world as a country shaped by apartheid for the greater part of the twentieth century. The minority of Whites subjected the non-White population, mainly Blacks, as well as Coloreds and Indians, to acute racial, social, political and economic discrimination and segregation over this period. It formally became a democracy in 1994 with the election of the well-known son of South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, as its first Black president. As head of the government of national unity, he ushered in an era of many promises of racial, social, economic, and political reparation and progress. He was an icon of freedom and struggle greatly admired worldwide. He died in 2013, but his legacy lives on powerfully, both within and beyond South Africa, where he spent the greater part of his life fighting against apartheid and the social injustice and human cruelty of this system. His greater battle, nonetheless, was not only for these reasons. Once he and his comrades in the liberation struggle came into government, dismantling the apartheid system, his greatest concerns were with building up his country and confronting the widespread poverty, deep injustice and gross inequality within. Even after he retired from government and then from public life, he continued to speak out against these, and other, crucial issues of our contemporary world, as illustrated in the excerpt from his 2005 speech at the beginning of this chapter.

With President Mandela’s election, his political party, the African National Congress came to power in 1994 and has been in power ever since, even though Mandela himself only served one term. In 2014, South Africa celebrated 20 years of its winding road to democracy, a road that has increasingly been sorely tested, as civil unrest reigns in the country, with mounting protests to government corruption. The ANC has been losing its popularity in the country, and in the August 2016 municipal elections, it only won 53.91% of the total vote, an 8.04% decline as compared to the 2011 elections. This was the lowest percentage of popular support for the party since 1994, and this decline was most markedly in the urban areas. Even though it had marginal gains, and the ANC still holds the largest percentage of national, regional and local offices, it lost control of three metropolitan municipalities to its opposition party, the Democratic Alliance: Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape Province; the City of Tshwane; and the City of Johannesburg, both in Gauteng Province (Calland, 2016; Harrison, 2016). Johannesburg is South Africa’s chief industrial and financial metropolis and was a major political loss for the ANC.

The new era of democracy in South Africa began with promises of change to the societal dynamics of the country, righting the wrongs of apartheid and a history of Black African oppression by the Whites. One of the first instruments implemented to effectuate the transformation of the society into a more socially, economically and politically equal one was the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). This program had been part of the election platform of the African National Congress in the 1994 elections. The program formulated five major policy programs: (a) Meeting Basic Needs, (b) Developing our Human Resources, (c) Building the Economy, (d) Democratizing the State and Society and (e) Implementing the RDP. Within the first policy program of meeting the basic needs of the people of the nation, achieving national food security was a core objective as the people’s right to be free from hunger (ANC, 1994; RDP White Paper, 1994). In 1996, the new Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, establishing the legal guidelines for the societal transformation, was drawn up. In this constitution, food security became a fundamental right, where every citizen of the nation had the right to have access to sufficient food and water and where the state would ensure the realization of this right (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, “Statutes”, 1996, Provision 27).

The RDP was considered the cornerstone of the government developmental policy, but it was only partially successful. One of its main areas of success was in social security. Through the RDP, the government created an extensive welfare system for the poor, vulnerable and others in need, such as older adults, the disabled, children in need and foster parents who care for children who have been neglected, abandoned or whose parents have died. Through the social welfare system, pregnant women and small children were given free health care and a school food program was implemented for 3.5 to five million schoolchildren in situations of vulnerability (South Africa History Online: South Africa’s key economic policies”, 2014).

In view of what was considered the poor success of the RDP, the government introduced a macroeconomic policy framework, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy (GEAR), in 1996. It was a switch from a social-democratic model to a neoliberal one. GEAR had the goal of stimulating the more rapid growth of the economy, which was considered necessary to inject financial and human resources into the needs of the country, among which was the social security network. It, too, was only partially successful. Its main area of success was in achieving macroeconomic objectives, but it failed to reach its objectives in confronting the social challenges of the country, especially in the areas of poverty reduction and employment creation, which were sorely needed. It was also highly criticized for its neoliberal approach, especially by the Congress of South Africa’s Trade Unions (COSATU), which had been a fundamental actor in the fight against apartheid and in building the new democracy.

Building upon the RDP establishing food as a basic need to be met, the new constitution establishing food security as a fundamental right of all South Africans and following on the guidelines of the 1996 World Food Summit, where South Africa joined other countries in pledging to support the World Summit Plan of Action, under GEAR, a Food Security Policy for South Africa was established. The vision of this policy was that South Africa would become “a country where everyone has access to adequate, safe and nutritious food” (Food Security Working Group, 1997, pt.1.1). The following excerpt explains the rationale underlying this policy. It is important to include here because it explains the context within which the post-1994 path to building food security in South Africa was being carved.

In common with many countries, South Africa’s ability to satisfy essential needs stems from many sources, but poverty and hunger in South Africa are particularly shaped by the impact of apartheid. One aspect of this system was a process of active disposition of assets such as land and livestock from the black majority, while opportunities to develop, such as access to markets, infrastructure and human development, were denied them. Until 1985 food policies pursued self-sufficiency goals, and thus protected domestic commercial farm production, often at the cost of consumers, and resulting in a total welfare loss to the country as a whole. Despite the dramatic changes in South Africa during the 1990’s, many of the distortions and dynamics introduced by apartheid continue to perpetuate conditions that lead to food insecurity. The correct identification of these forces and the introduction of remedial policies is a complex task, and require careful conceptualization. A new food security policy needs to focus on individual and household level food security. Such a policy should address in a comprehensive manner, the availability, accessibility and utilization of food at a macro and a micro level.

(Food Security Working Group, 1997, pt.1.2)

This policy also established that for food security in the country to be achieved, the approach must be comprehensive and multisectorial.

Following upon these policies, the government developed the Integrated Food Security Strategy (IFSS) in 2002, which “defines food security as the physical, social and economic access by all households at all times to adequate, safe and nutritious food and clean water to meet their dietary and food preferences for a healthy and productive life” (Department: Agriculture. “The Integrated Food Security Strategy -South Africa”, 2002, p. 6). Over the following years, a number of policies and programs have been implemented towards fulfilling this right, with varying degrees of success, failures and disappointments for the people who have most needed them: the poor, vulnerable and marginalized. Under the Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP), the Urban Renewal Programme (URP) and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA), some of the objectives were to decrease levels of unemployment and poverty as well as accelerate rural and urban development respectively. The 2010 New Growth Plan (NGP) was focused on job creation, and, most recently, the NDP 2030 National Development Plan has the objective of eliminating poverty and reducing inequality by 2030 (National Planning Commission: National Development Plan 2030, 2013).

After several years of working towards ensuring food security, the government states that this has been achieved at a national level. Despite the numerous programs that have been implemented nonetheless, the government has also determined that household food security has not been achieved and over 12 million people – approximately one of every four people in the country – still face food insecurity (Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – DAFF, “Interventions for food security”, 2013). The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (SANHANES-1) (Shisana et al., 2013) determined that 26% of households nationwide are food insecure, while 28.3% are at risk of food insecurity. Framing this food insecurity, we can see that 56.8% of the population lives in poverty, with women being more impoverished than men: 58.6% of women as compared to 54.9% of men. The poverty gap is 27.9 percent, with a Gini coefficient based on HCE of 0.7% (Statistics South Africa: Poverty, 2016). These statistics clearly express the economic inequality of the population. In 1996, approximately 14 million South Africans faced food insecurity, and, 20 years later, the number of food insecure has only been reduced by approximately two million, despite the measures taken. Today, as was the case then, the majority of the food insecure are Black African, as well as many Coloreds. Over the years, however, there has also been a rise in White poverty, and there has been an increasing level of food insecurity among poor Whites.

With regard to the situation of food insecurity in the country, the South African government has established that beyond only aiming to solve food insecurity, the goal should be to achieve food sustainability, i.e., that people’s access to food should be sustainable through their participation in the production of their own food. Toward this end, the government approved a Food Security and Nutrition Policy and initiated an intervention, the Fetsa Tlala Integrated Food Production Initiative, “which seeks to afford smallholder farmers, communities and households the ability to increase production of basic food, and increase access and availability of it to attain basic food security at household and local levels” (DAFF, “Securing access”, 2013, p. 3). This initiative is now in process but has encountered a number of challenges.

The majority of the studies on food insecurity that have been conducted in South Africa have been on food insecurity in the rural areas, the former homelands where many Africans were restricted under apartheid, for these tend to be the poorest areas in the country, as well as in the more populated urban areas (e.g., see Twine and Hunter, 2011; Crush, Hovorka and Tevera, 2010). There has been less focus on food insecurity within some of the areas where food is produced in the country, despite the high levels of food insecurity in these areas. One such area is the Free State Province, one of the breadbaskets of the country and one of the two former Boer Republic...