The Union Against Hunger (UAH) welcomes the SA Human Rights Commission hearings into hunger that will start on Thursday, 12 March at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. We are happy to see that the hearings will also be broadcast live on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@SAHRC1.
We congratulate the SAHRC on these first steps to end the crime of hunger in South Africa.
The hearings will hear evidence from a range of UAH members and civil society coalitions, including the Just Transition in Food Systems and the Universal Basic Income Coalition; SERI and Section27; the Association for Rural Advancement, amandla.mobi and others.
It will also see seven government Ministers accounting for what they are doing (or more importantly, why they are not doing what they should be doing) to alleviate widespread hunger and malnutrition.
These hearings are urgent and overdue. They are necessary because:
– Approximately 30 young children die a day (11,000 a year) due directly or indirectly to hunger and malnutrition.
– 29% of children are stunted by the age of five, pointing to chronic malnutrition.
– In a land of plenty and agricultural and food surplus, up to fifteen million people experience hunger, many every day.
– Hunger is one of the worst manifestations of inequality in our country, and testing food as a way of making excessive profits rather than a human right is a significant factor behind hunger and diseases of hunger and income-poverty.
The UAH has made a major written submission to the SAHRC, available here: So have many of our partners: available here (Just Transition in Food Systems group), here (Universal Basic Income Coalition), here (Children’s Institute, UCT), here (Section27), here (Grow Great). We hope the SAHRC will release a list of all the submissions they have received and make them public.
However, the UAH is not complacent about these hearings. We don’t want to see another talk-shop. There has been a great deal of lip service to hunger and little action to address it at scale. The SAHRC has held conferences, hearings and produced reports on hunger in 1999, 2013, 2016-17 and 2023. This raised expectations but led to little change in the day-to-day experience of hunger.
We appeal to the SAHRC that this must not happen again.
In this context, the UAH also expresses to the SAHRC our concern about serious omissions in the programme of hearings and urges the SAHRC to address them:
– We do not understand or accept why no major food producer (such as Tiger Brands) or retailer (such as Shoprite) is appearing before the commission. Affordability, excessive pricing, and poor food quality are major factors behind hunger and malnutrition. The public needs to know why they are being excused from attendance and accountability?
– Although the SAHRC recognises that children are on the hardest end of hunger and malnutrition, and has held an important inquiry into malnutrition in the Eastern Cape (2023 report), these hearings do not have any dedicated focus on children, or on the government department that claims responsibility for children’s welfare and rights. The Presidency is not being asked to account for its failures in this regard. Why?
– The National Treasury, whose short-sighted policy of austerity is literally causing starvation, is visible by its absence. Why?
– We are concerned by the lack of community voices. NGOs and think tanks are important intermediaries, but they are not a substitute for hearing from people who live and die with hunger. Nothing about us without us. The UAH will attend the first and last days of the hearings with community members who can speak directly to the pain and indignity of hunger.
For comment contact:
Mark Heywood 083 634 8806
Nzama Mbalati 082 734 5414
Claire Ndlovu or Tebogo Gabang 062 177 6937 or 087 822 295