SA on brink of hunger crisis

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, 23.8% of the population, about 14 million people, faced extreme hunger and the figure is expected to soar to catastrophic levels.

Officials from the department of social development presented these figures to parliament’s portfolio committee on social development during a hybrid sitting yesterday.

The department’s acting director-general, Linton Mchunu, said due to Covid-19, the food distribution strategy was altered.

“Since the outbreak of Covid-19, more than five million people have been fed by the department in partnership with various organisations as well as other ordinary citizens,” he said.

“Statistics SA projects the economic impact to leave about 50% of the population at risk of being food insecure. So more still needs to be done.”

He also said the department needed millions more to deliver food parcels for the next three months.

“The gap is still very much large and we are doing our best, as government, and ourselves we are not going to make it alone. It’s not possible. We need a level of partnership between the private sector and civil society to be able to meet this great need. What we require is R868 million that is just for a period of three months,” he said.

The department had so far delivered more than one million food parcels and had reached an estimated six million people.

Slightly more than R540 million had been spent on the food parcels. To date, R383 million had been spent in Gauteng, R41 million in Mpumalanga, R39 million in Limpopo and over R40 million in the Free State.

Delivering an executive statement to parliament on Thursday, Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu revealed that so far, five million people have been paid the R350 special Covid-19 relief grant.

Mchunu said as South Africa faced the peak of Covid-19, the challenges of an economic crisis were being felt mainly by the poor and vulnerable.