{"id":6159,"date":"2019-10-25T12:21:08","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T09:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6159"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:38","slug":"south-africa-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-on-the-right-to-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/25\/south-africa-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-on-the-right-to-food\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa still has a long way to go on the right to food"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Brittany Kesselman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fifty-four percent of South Africans are hungry or at risk\nof&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsrc.ac.za\/uploads\/pageNews\/72\/SANHANES-launch%20edition%20(online%20version).pdf\">hunger<\/a>.\nHunger affects people\u2019s health, as well as their ability to live full and productive\nlives. That\u2019s why hunger represents a violation of their basic human rights \u2013\nnot only the right to food, but also the rights to dignity, health and\neducation, since all of these are affected by hunger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hunger, malnutrition and related illnesses are not evenly\nspread. There are significant race, class and gender differences. For example,\nblack South Africans are 22 times more likely to be&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.hsrc.ac.za\/uploads\/pageNews\/72\/SANHANES-launch%20edition%20(online%20version).pdf\">food\ninsecure<\/a>&nbsp;compared with white South Africans. Food insecurity is\ndefined as not having physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe,\nand nutritious food that meets dietary needs and food preferences for an active\nand healthy life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This unequal distribution indicates a situation of severe\nfood injustice in South Africa. Yet from my research with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/researchspace.ukzn.ac.za\/handle\/10413\/16310\">urban farmers<\/a>&nbsp;it\u2019s\nclear that people do not know of the right to food, and don\u2019t see unequal\naccess to nutritious food as an injustice. As a result, questions of hunger are\nlargely absent in South African politics. While there are frequent protests\naround access to jobs, education, housing, water and electricity, we rarely, if\never, see protests about access to food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are international examples of governments taking their obligations seriously with regard to the right to food. In the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, for example, the government has rolled out numerous\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/south-africa-should-learn-from-brazil-about-how-to-tackle-hidden-hunger-118613\">food and nutrition security programmes<\/a>\u00a0to combat hunger. In India, activists used\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/foodsecurity.ac.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/CoE-FS-WP3-Accountability-and-the-right-to-food.pdf\">litigation<\/a>\u00a0to hold the government accountable, leading to the enactment of the National Food Security Act in 2013, and various anti-hunger programmes such as school meals subsidised grain distribution and assistance to pregnant women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/south-africa-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-on-the-right-to-food-125423\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Brittany Kesselman Fifty-four percent of South Africans are hungry or at risk of&nbsp;hunger. Hunger affects people\u2019s health, as well as their ability to live full and productive lives. That\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}