UN FOOD REPORT HIGHLIGHTS SA’S METRICS OF SHAME

“YOU can never forget where you come from or the people who have helped you get here. A lot of us just need an opportunity. I'm hoping that we have given people some hope to pull together as a country. Your past doesn't determine your future. When I was a kid all I was thinking about was getting my next meal,” emphasised Siya Kolisi following his appointment in 2018 as the first black South African to captain the Springboks.

The stark reality is that 28 years into democracy too many South Africans, especially children, are still suffering the same hunger pangs that their rugby icon endured growing up.

The tragedy is that South Africa is the universal rule, not the exception.

A recent UN multiagency report warns of “a dramatic worsening of world hunger in 2020, with an estimated tenth of the global population – up to 811 million people – undernourished”. This is 161 million more than in 2019. Some 2.37 billion people had no access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of 320 million people in just one year.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 report, the first global assessment of its kind in the pandemic era, makes dire reading for Asia, Africa and Latin America, the three continents most affected by hunger and food insecurity. While no region in the world is spared, over half of the world's undernourished are found in Asia (418 million) and a third in Africa (282 million). Compared with 2019, some 46 million more people in Africa, 57 million more in Asia, and 14 million more in Latin America were affected by hunger in 2020.

For South Africa the report highlights a new range of metrics of national shame. It is in a Group of 20 countries considered to be facing food insecurity crises, and in the top 56 countries with the largest number of undernourished people. What an indictment of ANC governments for their neglect of agriculture and still today bereft of a coherent policy on farming, land reforms and food security. The main driver of food insecurity is South Africa's entrenched economic downturn thanks largely to the Zuma kleptocracy. But policy and investment deficits are equally important.

South Africa trails several peer countries. The prevalence of undernourishment in the total population for the 2018-20 period is estimated at 6.5%, up from 3.4% in 2004-06. The figure for severe food insecurity rose from 18% in 2014-16 to 19.3% in 2018-20. Similarly in 2020, an estimated 3.4% of South African children under 5 experienced muscle wasting, 23.2% growth stunting and 12.9% obesity. Adult obesity is also on the increase at 28.3% of the population in 2017 while diet-related anaemia among women aged between 15 and 49 increased to 30.5% in 2019.

Food systems governance in South Africa typically involves health, agriculture and education mechanisms to co-ordinate nutrition work. The report found “that the existence of three governance mechanisms created various challenges as the dominance of single government bodies in programme implementation limited flexibility in policy responses and lacked stakeholder participation. Such co-ordination mechanisms may need to be further expanded to ensure a whole-of-government approach and for increased policy coherence”.

For an economy plagued by high debt, a bloated bureaucracy and public-sector wage inflation, high unemployment and food insecurity impacts already depleted Treasury coffers and millions of South Africans through no fault of their own. Today an estimated 18.2 million South Africans receive social grants compared to 2.5 million in the first decade of ANC rule.

The UN agencies' recipe towards food systems transformation gives little relief for the short term. It is longer-term in ambition and beyond the processing of those affected whose immediate priority like the child Kolisi's “is thinking about where the next meal would come from”. Something for The UN Food Systems Summit 2021 later this year to ponder!