Under the lockdown, the national government shut down its massive school feeding programme, depriving nine million children of daily meals. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks) 
First published by GroundUp
Summary
- National government has comprehensively failed to feed poor people during the lockdown it imposed on them.
- Under the lockdown, the national government shut down its massive school feeding programme, depriving nine million children of daily meals.
- The national government had no plan to ensure food reached poor households.
- It has been left to civil society – individuals and organisations, as donors and as volunteers – to try to fill the gap, with assistance from provincial and local governments.
- Civil society deserves massive praise for its effort, but it has not even been able to fill the gap left by the suspension of the school feeding programme.
- The total number of food parcels distributed is less than one-tenth of what has been needed urgently.
- Because of the suspension of national school feeding, much less food has been distributed in total under the lockdown than before it.
Full story
The deepening food crisis
The national government comprehensively failed to feed poor people during the lockdown imposed on them. Parliament has done nothing to hold the government to account. It has been left to civil society – individuals and organisations, as donors and as volunteers – to fill the gap, with some assistance from provincial and local governments.
National government should be ashamed. Civil society deserves much, much praise.
South Africa was already experiencing a food crisis prior to the lockdown. This was evident in a study published in 2019 by the parastatal Statistics South Africa (StatsSA, 2019) and in assessments by civil society organisations. The national Department of Social Development acknowledges that, in 2018, close to one million households had “severely inadequate access to food” and another 2.5 million households had “inadequate access” – giving a total of close to 14 million people, prior to the lockdown.
The lockdown worsened the food crisis. Millions of people depending on informal livelihoods have been left without any income. Civil society experts have estimated that as much as half of the South African population needs food aid.
So the government suspended school meals
The immediate effect of the lockdown was that South Africa’s existing public feeding schemes were suspended without any plausible plan to set up compensatory emergency systems. Put simply, just as the need for food escalated, the state locked the doors of its food cupboard and walked away.
The closure of schools meant that nine million children no longer received daily school meals under the National School Nutrition Programme. When asked (in May) what measures the Department of Basic Education had put in place to feed schoolchildren, the Minister lamely replied that a National Food and Nutrition Security Task Team – apparently located in the presidency itself – had agreed to bear schoolchildren in mind when handing out food parcels through the national Disaster Relief and Social Relief Management Programme.
South Africa has had for decades a series of national plans and task teams dealing with food security, coordinated by ‘task teams’, but this process seems to have stalled. A new five-year National Food and Nutrition Security Plan was drafted in 2017, by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), which is located in the presidency (although it is not clear whether the plan was ever approved or adopted). But I cannot find anybody who has ever heard of this grandly-titled National Food and Nutrition Security Task Team (or its Disaster Relief and Social Relief Management Programme). Neither the education department nor the DPME have replied to my requests for clarification.
The government was therefore left sitting on an unspent budget for feeding schoolchildren of close to R1-billion per month (R7-billion for the school year). This budget falls under a conditional grant to the national Department of Basic Education; it is earmarked for school meals. I am told that the national Department of Basic Education refused to allow provincial education departments to use the conditional grant to continue with school feeding under the lockdown. Very early in the lockdown (on 27 March), the National Treasury circulated a memorandum advising provincial governments that they could use up to 5% of the annual funding for the school feeding scheme to run emergency feeding schemes for school children – subject to parliament approving this. I am told that the national Department of Basic Education never organised parliamentary approval. I assume that the funds remain unused.
The Department of Social Development tells me that “At the beginning of the lockdown we contacted the Department of [Basic] Education” asking about plans for school feeding; “we were told that kids will eat what they used to eat while schools were closed”. (The Department of Social Development does not appear to have known about the Treasury’s attempt to make funds available for emergency school feeding.) It is said that the education department was viewing the lockdown as a school holiday and schools would catch up on teaching days – and, presumably, school meals – later in the year. With hindsight this (if true) was a bad call, but even at the time the education department surely erred in thinking that the prospect of school meals later in the year was any substitute for feeding children during the lockdown.
In short, the government suspended a massive feeding scheme (the biggest such scheme in Africa), appears to have had no plan, and appears to have failed to take advantage of the opportunity to reallocate some of the budget for emergency feeding.
The Department of Basic Education’s school feeding programme was not the only feeding programme to be suspended during the lockdown. Until 1 April, the Department of Social Development financed a countrywide network of 235 Community Nutrition and Development Centres (CNDCs) that provided cooked meals for poor people. Most or even all CNDCs were closed for the first part of the lockdown, so these cooked meal schemes were suspended. Under a pre-lockdown agreement, these CNDCs were transferred to provincial control on 1 April. Some of the CNDCs resumed feeding operations, with a mix of funds (as we shall see below).
The lockdown also made it difficult for the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to expand its existing Social Relief of Distress food parcel scheme. This scheme is aimed at people in “such a dire material need that they are unable to meet their families’ most basic needs”. It is a much smaller scheme than the national school feeding scheme, with an annual budget of only just over R400-million (compared to R7-billion for school feeding). It does provide a minimal safety-net of sorts and one might have expected that it would be massively and quickly expanded under lockdown.
Lockdown regulations meant, however, that Sassa’s local offices were closed. By the end of the second month of lockdown Sassa had distributed only 73,000 food parcels nationally – which is about the number that Sassa distributed every two months last year. Unlike the Department of Basic Education, Sassa did not shut down its feeding scheme, but it was unable to expand it in response to the emergency.
Feeding schemes through early childhood development centres were also shut down.
Did the government have any plan when it shut down its feeding schemes under the lockdown? I have not found anyone inside or outside the state who is aware that there was any plan. When the Solidarity Fund – established under the lockdown to raise and allocate donor funding – and non-profit organisations met to discuss emergency feeding schemes, they were under the clear impression that there was no government plan. I have asked government officials if there was any plan. No official has produced any evidence of any plan.
Emergency food parcel programmes have not filled the gap
Government officials apparently promised that one million emergency food parcels would be distributed under the lockdown. Officials have regularly reported on progress towards this target.
The Acting Director-General in the Department of Social Development
style="font-weight: 400;">told the parliamentary portfolio committee on 21 May that “we have increased our numbers from last week from 525,000 food parcels to just over 670,000 food parcels, feeding approximately 2.7 million people”. One of his Deputy Director-Generals, provided an updated figure: “We are distributing food on a daily basis … We are already at 720,000 food parcels.”
On 29 May the Deputy Director-General reported to another meeting of the portfolio committee that a total of 788,000 food parcels had been distributed.
This total of 788,000 food parcels falls short of the target of one million, but it might still sound like a lot. It is, however, small compared to the need. If we assume, conservatively, that the number of households facing “severely inadequate access to food” doubled under the lockdown, then the figures endorsed by the Department of Social Development itself imply a desperate need for nearly 2 million food parcels per month, i.e. five times the total number of food parcels distributed by 29 May. This takes no account of the millions of households facing merely “inadequate access to food”.
Moreover, these food parcels have been a poor substitute for the suspension of the school feeding scheme. The official standard food parcel contains enough for two meals per day for a family of four for one month, i.e. a total of 248 meals. Critics are skeptical that a food parcel stretches anywhere near this far – and many of the distributed parcels have been smaller than the standard package. Even if we generously assume that the average parcel provided for 200 meals, then the total of 788,000 food parcels distributed over nine weeks corresponds to just over 150 million meals.
In fact, as we shall see below, the actual number of food parcels distributed is higher than the total reported by the Department of Social Development. Even taking this into account, however, the volume of food is very much smaller than would have been provided through regular national feeding schemes. Over nine weeks, the suspended NSNP alone would have provided nine million meals per day, or 45 million meals per week, or 400 million meals over nine weeks.
Faced with the national government suspending school meals (as well as meals in early childhood development centres and other schemes), civil society and some provincial and local governments stepped into the gap, through emergency school meals and other hot meal schemes (at least in the Western Cape) as well as food parcels. This made a huge difference for some poor families – but even in the Western Cape it has failed to fill more than a fraction of the gap left by the suspension of national feeding schemes.
In total, emergency food parcels and feeding schemes have provided less than half of the food that would have been provided through school meals and other national schemes had they not been shut down by the national government. They have made only a small contribution to addressing hunger under the lockdown.
National government provided very few of these food parcels
Officials’ claims that the national government has distributed 788,000 food parcels is, moreover, wildly misleading. As the Department of Social Development has acknowledged elsewhere, the total figure of food parcels includes parcels distributed by civil society or provincial and local government.
The Department of Social Development provides apparently precise data. On 29 May, it reported that 73,000 food parcels had been distributed by Sassa, 218,000 food parcels in partnership with the Solidarity Fund and 523,000 by the national Department. The latter figure was then broken down by province: 153,000 in Gauteng, 67,000 in the Western Cape, and so on.
As far as I can tell, the national government has paid for and distributed only 73,000 food parcels through Sassa and co-financed another 55,000 food parcels distributed through the Solidarity Fund. Most of the food parcels for poor people under the lockdown have been financed and distributed by civil society.
Insofar as the state has come to the party, it has been provincial governments and municipalities, not the national government. This is true also of emergency feeding schemes that are not included in the figure of 788,000 food parcels. It has been civil society with provincial and local governments that have tried to fill the gap left by the suspension of national feeding schemes.
Providing precise data is almost impossible. This is in part because getting food to people who need it involves two stages. First, funds need to be raised and food purchased, or donations of food secured. Bulk supplies of food may need to be warehoused and packaged. Second, food needs to be distributed to selected households (through what is sometimes called ‘last mile’ distribution).
These multiple stages mean that it is easy to double-count the distribution of food parcels. First, an institution (or even more than one institution) reports that it has funded and/or purchased food and distributed it to selected neighbourhoods. Then one or other local organisation reports that it has distributed the same parcels to deserving households. Collating data is a nightmare, for researchers and state institutions alike.
So, who had delivered how much food?
Let us start with the Solidarity Fund, established under the lockdown. Donations to the fund have passed R2.5-billion (as of 28 May), including initial seed money of R150-million from government. Just over half of this had been disbursed. Most of the fund’s expenditure has been on medical supplies and activities, with smaller sums allocated to emergency feeding.
In mid-April, it committed R120-million for food parcels for poor households, using existing civil society organisations. One half of this budget was allocated to four large non-profit organisations (NPOs): Food Forward, Afrika Tikkun, Islamic Relief and the Lunchbox Fund.
These NPOs bought food in bulk and delivered it to their networks of more than four hundred local organisations to distribute to poor households. One quarter of the Solidary Fund’s food parcel budget was allocated to the CNDCs for households that would usually benefit from cooked meal provision. The national Department of Social Development itself more-or-less matched the Solidarity Fund contribution, putting in an additional R20 million. The final quarter of the Solidarity Fund’s food parcel budget was allocated to community- and faith-based organisations at provincial and local levels, especially in rural areas; the Solidarity Fund worked with two logistics companies to source, pack and deliver food to the local organisations.
Through these channels the Solidarity Fund ensured a total of 280,000 food parcels between 15 April and 22 May – somewhat more than the Department of Social Development reported on 29 May. More than 154,000 parcels were distributed through the four big NPOs, including 86,500 through FoodForward alone. Just under 60,000 were distributed through the CNDCs (using the combined Solidarity Fund and Department of Social Development funding). Slightly more – 66,000 – were distributed through community and faith-based organisations.
The NPOs used other sources of funding to provide additional food. The Lunchbox Foundation, for example, told me that it supplied a total of about 105,000 ‘family food boxes’ between about 20 April and late May, using funds from the eNCA and Hosken Consolidated Investments Foundation as well as the Solidarity Fund.
FoodForward is a food redistribution agency that receives surplus food from retailers (including Pick n Pay and Woolworths) and farmers. It stores food and then redistributes it through approved local organisations. It told me that it has redistributed about R55-million worth of donated food in addition to the food purchased using money from the Solidarity Fund (and other donors). In the first weeks of the lockdown, FoodForward distributed large volumes of food. In the second half of April, it concentrated on distributing the food parcels paid for by the Solidarity Fund. In May, it