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Today is both World Hunger Day and the beginning of Child Protection Week in South Africa.

This gives cause for reflection on how the children of South Africa are affected by inadequate food security.

We encourage every South African to sign the Ending Hunger petition to indicate that they find it unacceptable that close to one billion people are chronically hungry and to call upon governments to make the elimination of hunger their top priority until that goal is reached.

Access to food is a fundamental human right, recognised in the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states that every person has the right to be ‘free from hunger’ and our own Constitution which determines that ‘everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water’.
South Africa received a ‘moderate’ food security warning in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (FPRI) Global Hunger Report. High levels of poverty and inequality, however, mean that the country’s poorest areas, particularly informal settlements and remote rural areas, remain pockets of severe food insecurity.

Despite this commitment to creating a world “free from hunger”, one in three South African households report that they run out of money to buy food each month, and one in five children report being hungry because of insufficient food.

Earlier this month, the Democratic Alliance (DA) launched a food security campaign in which we outlined proactive steps which we would be taking to lower the cost of food for consumers, improve the efficiency and competitiveness of our country’s food markets, and to put the right conditions in place for food producers to increase production on a sustainable basis.

Key short term steps include:
Introducing a Private Member’s Bill in the National Assembly requiring the South African Government to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, which will oblige the state to take appropriate measures to realise the human right to food;
Engaging both established and emerging food in order to ascertain the core challenges limiting food production growth, thus augmenting the already extensive consultation and information gathering processes conducted by the DA-run Western Cape Government;
Establishing a dedicated website with a food price tracking system providing South Africans with up-to-date information regarding food prices;
When in office at a national level, the DA will do the following:
Increase the budget of the Competition Authorities and the National Consumer Commission;
Introduce a Comprehensive School Feeding Scheme based on the successful Western Cape model; and
Establish a Climate Change Fund for farmers, based on the Western Cape Agriculture Department’s Farmer Support and Development Programme (FSD), which will help farmers adapt to the warmer temperatures and lower rainfall caused by global warming.
Access to food is a fundamental human right enshrined in our Constitution, and the DA is committed to making this right a reality for all.