Treasury Director-General Duncan Pieterse says if the earnings thresholds of parents or caregivers were raised, fewer parents or caregivers would qualify for the child support grant, meaning the grant could be increased. (Photo: Deon Ferreira) 
Twenty-five children under the age of five died of severe acute malnutrition in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in the past 12 months, and hundreds more had to be treated for less severe conditions triggered by starvation.
Statistics released by the Eastern Cape Department of Health reveal that in the past 12 months, 237 children under five were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition and 501 with moderately severe and acute malnutrition, with more than 100 children being diagnosed in March alone.
Alarmingly, the numbers have almost doubled since 2023, when 14 children under the age of five starved to death in Nelson Mandela Bay and another 216 new cases of severe acute malnutrition were confirmed over 18 months between 2022 and 2023.
Read more: A silent killer is stalking babies in Nelson Mandela Bay
Nelson Mandela Bay is widely regarded as the most prosperous metro in the province. Despite being the largest metro in the province, it has been allocated only R855,283 for its Social Relief of Distress programme by the provincial Department of Social Development. Between August 2024 and March 2025, only 241 food parcels were distributed by the department in the metro.
The Human Sciences Research Council’s National Food and Nutrition Security Survey, which was published last year, showed that in the metro 40% of children were stunted to some degree, with 14% being diagnosed with severe stunting, and 1.5% diagnosed as “wasting”, meaning their weight is lower than average for their height.
According to the survey, 20% of households in the metro were experiencing severe food insecurity.
In September 2024, the Eastern Cape Social Economic Council unpacked a provincial strategy to address hunger in the Eastern Cape.
This followed the release of a report on hunger in the province by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), which said child malnutrition in the Eastern Cape should be declared a disaster in terms of the Disaster Management Act, compelling the government to intervene immediately and decisively.
It found that a substantial percentage of children in the Eastern Cape were suffering from malnutrition.
The SAHRC suggested that the government should increase the Child Support Grant (it was R480 at the time and is now R520) and extend the school nutrition programme to early childhood development centres.
The Eastern Cape head of the SAHRC, Dr Eileen Carter, said the data that was provided to them had shown that from 2021 to 2022, more than 1,000 children in the province were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, and 120 of them had died. The data also showed that 25% of the province’s children were stunted. This has now increased to 40%.
With the automotive sector being the heartbeat of the province’s metros, the Automotive Business Council of SA’s CEO, Mikel Mabasa, this month warned that the Eastern Cape was facing a humanitarian crisis because of high export tariffs imposed by the US that will probably come into effect on Friday. The tariffs have put a potential 100,000 jobs on the line. DM