OPINION | SA’s food system is not serving the public good

At a hearing convened by the SA Human Rights Commission to discuss the slow pace of implementing recommendations by the commission to address hunger in the Eastern Cape, it was emphasised that in the past 18 months, health department records showed that 973 children who had severe acute malnutrition died in facilities around the country.

Recently the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, highlighted the challenges faced by children in SA, pointing out that “only 21% of children under five receive a minimum acceptable diet, with a 5% prevalence of wasting and 29% of stunting among young children”.

Stunting occurs when a child’s height-for-age is low and is a chronic form of malnutrition that manifests over a relatively long period of time compared to other forms of malnutrition.

The challenge with data and statistics is that we fail to see those represented in the data; we focus on numbers and miss the human suffering that these figures represent.

Recently, colleagues and I asked why this hunger and related suffering had been so normalised in society.

In SA, stunting, hunger and other forms of malnutrition were high before 1994 and have remained stubbornly high ever since. Since the early 2000s many countries with the same economic status as SA, upper middle-income countries (Umic), have actively sought to address stunting.

Starting on a similar level to SA in the early 2000s, with just over 20% of children being stunted, these Umic regions have reduced the prevalence of stunting to well below 10%.

The trend line for SA is very different, with the percentage of stunted children increasing – now above 29%. In Umic, addressing stunting is possible.

Shortly after his release, in an address to the joint session of the house of congress of the US in June 1990, Nelson Mandela set out the aspirations for SA, stating that “we require an economy that is able to address the needs of all the people of our country, that can provide food, houses, education, health services, social security and everything that makes human life human, that makes life joyful and not a protracted encounter with hopelessness and despair”.

This quote presents three questions. First, whether SA’s economy is in fact “making human life human, making life joyful and not a protracted encounter with hopelessness and despair”? From the stunting, and malnutrition-related statistics offered, life for many in SA is not the life aspired to in that speech.

Second, given the extremely high diet- and nutrition-related challenges, why is this not something that garners far greater societal and political action, even active protest?

Third, what does our apathy to the intense, protracted suffering and lifelong marginalisation, the “slow violence” experienced by a large segment of society, say about SA?

The economy is certainly working for some. Recent financial results reported by SA food system-aligned businesses reflect significant profits.

Not all SA food system operators reflected the same profits, but the general trend is increasing profits and increased dividends paid to shareholders.

Some are making significant profits from SA’s food system, while for others that same food system is unable to prevent their extreme hunger.

The SA food system is clearly not serving the public good.

Those who lack access to food are forced to suffer the indignity of hunger and the associated shame felt when unable to feed their families, often relying on charitable handouts.

Why has the state not done more to ensure the constitutionally guaranteed right to food?

In SA, food security is worsening; poverty and hunger have been normalised. How can any society justify such suffering and the subjugation of large groups, particularly children, to extreme hunger?

This cannot be the easy justification of state failure. It is not just the inability of NGOs to fill the gaps left by the state. It is not just the failure of the poor, framed in prejudicial ways.

It is all of society that has failed SA, and particularly, SA’s children. What the suffering of children highlights is that as a society, SA has lost its humanity.

Food offers a unique lens, a litmus test, to reflect our values, as individuals and as a society. For those children facing stunting and, for the most part, sentenced to a life of slow violence, SA, as a country and as a society, has stopped caring.

Food security is a public good requiring public sector action to ensure that it is universal, indivisible and interdependent with other human rights, but this does not excuse society from action.

As a society we can no longer tolerate the slow violence that SA’s food system failure represents. We all need to act. Issues such as stunting can be reversed, as other countries have shown.