---
title: "South Africa needs an emergency food plan — now"
description: "The question is no longer whether we have enough evidence of hunger. We do. It is whether we have enough political will to act on it."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "HUNGER EMERGENCY"
author: "Mark Heywood and Busiso Moyo"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/mark-heywood-and-busiso-moyo/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-08-26-south-africa-needs-an-emergency-food-plan-now/"
published: "2026-08-26T22:11:50"
updated: "2026-08-26T22:28:40"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 1757
---

# South Africa needs an emergency food plan — now

> The question is no longer whether we have enough evidence of hunger. We do. It is whether we have enough political will to act on it.

By Mark Heywood and Busiso Moyo · Published 27 August 2026, 00:11 SAST · Updated 27 August 2026, 00:28 SAST

## Key points
- South Africa produces enough food, but millions go hungry — hunger is driven not by production but by affordability, distribution, inequality and a lack of political will; child deaths from severe acute malnutrition are rising (official counts cite 1,400 deaths in 2023-24, with wider estimates of malnutrition contributing to roughly 11,000 child deaths a year).
- The country is in a policy vacuum: the National Food and Nutrition Security Plan expired in 2023, the proposed Food Council hasn’t met and institutional fragmentation means responsibility is scattered across departments while nobody declares an emergency.
- The Union Against Hunger demands a 12‑month Emergency Food Plan before World Food Day (16 October) with clear budget, authority and targets — immediate actions include expanding school and ECD nutrition beyond the school week, bringing down essential food prices, raising the Child Support Grant, protecting informal food systems and preparing for El Niño.
- This is a constitutional and political crisis (Sections 27 & 28 guarantee the right to food and child nutrition) — the authors argue delays are deadly and call for money, accountability and urgent action now, not another decade of meetings.

## Content

South Africa produces enough food to feed all its people, yet millions go hungry. This is not a failure of agricultural production. It is a failure of affordability, distribution, inequality and political will.

The evidence is not abstract. It is measured in empty stomachs, children going to bed without food, parents skipping meals so their children can eat, and, increasingly, in disability and deaths, particularly in very young children.

![MC-Food Emergency](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/RqK7hJV2ptK8g1nGzPVBhZFRJ9s=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/DSC_5617-copy-1.jpg)

*More than 29% of South African children up to the age of five are stunted due to severe acute malnutrition. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)*

For example, in 2022, the South African Medical Journal [reported children dying from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in the Eastern Cape](https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.7196/SAMJ.2022.v112i5.16571). The South African Human Rights Commission subsequently found that 116 children died from SAM in that province between April 2021 and March 2022.

The deaths have continued.

National health data show that more than [1,400 children died from SAM in 2023 and 2024](https://www.businessday.co.za/bd/national/health/2024-12-08-more-than-1400-sa-children-die-of-hunger-in-two-years/). In 2024 alone, [more than 600 children were reported to have died from malnutrition](https://www.citizen.co.za/news/at-least-618-children-have-died-from-malnutrition-in-sa-in-2024/) in public health facilities. The crisis did not end there. Parliamentary data show that between May and September 2025, [206 children under five died in public hospitals](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-05-20-malnutrition-tragedy-155-sa-children-have-died-this-year-alone/) with SAM as an underlying condition, alongside another 92 deaths associated with moderate acute malnutrition.

Official hospital statistics capture only deaths recorded within the health system and where malnutrition is identified as an underlying or associated condition. They therefore do not represent the full number of deaths.

Neither do they capture the exceptionally high recorded levels of wasting and stunting in children.

![MC-Food Emergency](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/hC7zdG0gPeLDwa7cJNh6KfvOP0E=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/MC-FoodEmergency_257516.jpg)

*South Africa needs an emergency food plan — now.*

Research and child-health experts have long pointed to a much wider mortality burden. Estimates cited by the Union Against Hunger (UAH) and others suggest that malnutrition may contribute to about 11,000 child deaths annually.

### A country without a food plan

What makes this crisis particularly indefensible is that South Africa has spent years talking about food and nutrition security while failing to establish the political machinery capable of responding with urgency. [The government’s most recent National Food and Nutrition Security Plan (NFNSP) expired in 2023](https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/40199/).

We have spent three critical years in a policy vacuum. The Department of Agriculture’s (DoA’s) own planning documents have identified the development of a new NFNSP as a priority, alongside the establishment of a National Food and Nutrition Security Council. Yet the development of the new plan has dragged on, and the council is AWOL.

![MC-Food Emergency](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/GlOKs0G-WOIp6I6fpQoSjls6cXU=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/0000161654-1.jpg)

*Research shows that poverty in South Africa largely affects women, who bear the brunt of food scarcity as primary caregivers. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Felix Dlangamandla)*

Sadly, despite the evident gravity of the hunger crisis, the state continues to behave as though the problem is waiting patiently for another policy cycle.

Food policy has become paralysed by institutional fragmentation, competing departmental mandates, inadequate coordination and an absence of political urgency. The DoA talks about production; Social Development talks about grants; Health treats malnutrition; Basic Education feeds children at school; Treasury worries about expenditure. Trade and Industry considers markets and competition.

And sadly, hunger falls between them all.

Although the Deputy President is supposedly the chair of the Food Council, it hasn’t met, and no single institution appears to have sufficient political authority to say: this is an emergency and the state must act accordingly.

### The right to sufficient food and
basic nutrition is a political question

But if this were not bad enough, it’s about to get worse. Experts now talk about the inevitability of a [global food crisis next year](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/05/el-nino-could-push-50m-people-acute-hunger-next-year), due to a combination of war and the [impact of the El Niño weather event on food production worldwide](https://www.wfp.org/stories/what-el-nino-how-does-it-affect-hunger-and-how-does-wfp-respond). Even if big agriculture in South Africa is prepared for a summer of delayed and diminished rainfall and extreme heat, as [claimed by Wandile Sihlobo](https://fm.co.za/opinion/2026-08-21-wandile-sihlobo-don-t-fear-el-nino/), small farmers and poor consumers are not.

Although food profiteer Shoprite claims food prices are at their lowest in years (!), that is not the experience of people who buy food, as documented month after month by the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Project. Read their [latest report](https://pmbejd.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PMBEJD_Key-Data_July-2026_29072026.pdf) on food price movements in July 2026.

![MC-Food Emergency](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/ntuY_2oJUNgB2Bm2iDLf3vxlCz0=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/MC-Tuesday-Editorial_3.jpg)

*Millions of people in South Africa already cannot afford to eat. More than a quarter of households are moderately food insecure, and almost one in five are severely food insecure. (Photo: EPA / Nic Bothma)*

Factor into this the rising costs of fuel, electricity and, for many, the cost of water as water systems break down across the country.

Waiting until food prices spike (again) and harvests fail is not disaster management. It is disaster exacerbation.

Millions of people already cannot afford to eat. More than a quarter of households are moderately food insecure, and almost one in five are severely food insecure ([HSRC, 2023](https://hsrc.ac.za/news/safe-communities/food-survey-shows-need-for-area-specific-interventions-in-sa/)). Only around 36.5% of households are fully food secure.

We cannot continue responding to this crisis by telling poor households to grow vegetables in their back yards. Most South Africans buy their food, and if food prices are rising faster than grants and wages, then the food system is failing regardless of how many people are encouraged to plant spinach.

![MC-Food Emergency](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/AiiMwb5SoWyIcIY9JaDijYnHfxM=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/attachments/orphans/h_56114888_563934.jpg)

*The question is therefore no longer whether we have enough evidence of hunger. We do. It is whether we have enough political will to act on it. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Nic Bothma)*

After several years of delay, the government is suddenly working on a new NFNSP. Suddenly there is a flurry of superficial public consultation. The emerging NFNSP is being positioned as a long-term response to all dimensions of food security. A worthy objective, but a 10-year plan cannot be an excuse for further postponing immediate action.

If the new NFNSP begins only in mid-2027, it will be budgeted for only in FY 2028. And if the NFNSP is inadequately funded, it will repeat the failures of the last one.

As usual, the problem is that there is a gap between policy and power, between commitments and budgets, between promises and implementation. That is why we argue the new NFNSP must be accompanied by something it currently lacks: a sense of emergency.

### **South Africa needs an Emergency Food Plan**

The UAH is therefore calling for the development and immediate implementation of a “12-month Emergency Food Plan”. This should not replace the NFNSP, but it should fill the gap between the emergency we face today and the longer-term architecture of food and nutrition security that the government is attempting to build with the NFNSP.

An Emergency Food Plan should have a clear budget, clear responsibilities and measurable outcomes. It should immediately address the things that are killing and impoverishing people now:

1. Save our Children: Expand nutrition support beyond the school week, strengthen the National School Nutrition Programme and ensure that vulnerable children are not left without food during weekends and school holidays. Expand the NFNSP to early childhood development centres (ECD) with urgency.
2. Bring down essential food prices. Government must intervene where market structures, excessive margins, anti-competitive practices or other factors are contributing to unaffordable essential foods. It has a constitutional right and duty to do so.
3. Raise purchasing power: The Child Support Grant must be brought closer to the actual cost of feeding a child. Social assistance cannot be considered adequate when the grants available are insufficient to purchase a basic nutritious diet.
4. Protect and strengthen informal food systems: Street traders, spaza shops, small-scale producers and informal markets are part of the solution. They should be supported, not pushed further into precarity.
5. Establish a national food emergency monitoring system and a national Right to Food Council involving all critical stakeholders in the food system: Government must regularly publish data on hunger, acute malnutrition, food prices and hunger-related deaths. We cannot manage a crisis that government cannot – or will not – adequately count or see.
6. Protect the most vulnerable against climate shocks: South Africa must prepare now for the food security consequences of climate variability and the emerging El Niño threat. [Current forecasts](https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-update) indicate that the 2026-27 El Niño could become exceptionally strong, with southern Africa among the regions exposed to drought and agricultural disruption.

And finally, dear leaders, don’t make us fight for an emergency plan. Section 27 of the Constitution says that “everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water”. Section 28 recognises every child’s immediate right to basic nutrition. These are not aspirational statements. They are binding constitutional duties.

![100 loaves of bread arrive from the Nkosi's Haven's bakery at the Ikageng community centre, Orlando West, Soweto.
The Ikageng welfare organisation usually helps to support homes where there are children affected by HIV/Aids but have since tried to help with emergency food parcels for those in need since the lock-down. 
(Photo: Chris Collingridge/Gallo Images)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/6T1IKOqV0euDJawbFtIgCNw8sd8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/MC-Hunger_8.jpg)

*Experts now talk about the inevitability of a [global food crisis next year](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/05/el-nino-could-push-50m-people-acute-hunger-next-year), due to a combination of war and the [impact of the El Niño weather event on food production worldwide](https://www.wfp.org/stories/what-el-nino-how-does-it-affect-hunger-and-how-does-wfp-respond). (Photo: Chris Collingridge / Gallo Images)*

The language of “food insecurity” can sometimes make hunger sound technical and bureaucratic. But hunger is not an abstraction. Hunger is a political condition. It is produced by the maldistribution of income, land, markets, infrastructure, power and opportunity. And when children die because they did not have enough food, we should be asking not only what went wrong in the clinic, but what went wrong in the economy, the food system and the state.

### Patience cannot abolish starvation

South Africa does not need another year of meetings before acting. It does not need to wait for the perfect institutional arrangement. It does not need another decade in which responsibility is dispersed across departments while nobody is ultimately accountable.

And, as local government elections get closer, with most political parties still silent on the invisible hunger that seeps through our communities, government certainly does not need to tell hungry people to wait patiently for the next plan. Malnutrition and starvation in a modern food system should haunt our politics.

![JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - APRIL 28: Parkmore waste pickers receive food parcels that was assembled by children on April 28, 2020 in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is reported that recycling reclaimers have been included in SA’s Solidarity Response Fund to be provided with emergency food parcels during the lockdown. (Photo: Gallo Images/Luba Lesolle)](https://cdn.dailymaverick.co.za/i/7X_-cl2RHZ8e4DWssRKly8bRwr8=/200x100/smart/filters:strip_exif\(\)/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/MC-David-Lewis-2704_3.jpg)

*Food policy has become paralysed by institutional fragmentation, competing departmental mandates, inadequate coordination and an absence of political urgency. (Photo: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle)*

The question is therefore no longer whether we have enough evidence of hunger. We do. It is whether we have enough political will to act on it.

We call for an Emergency Food Plan to be developed before World Food Day on 16 October, backed by money, authority, targets and accountability. Yes, we need the long-term NFNSP, but we also need immediate action to stop people going hungry while government coordinates plans for the future.

South Africa must stop time-wasting around hunger and start acting against it. The future cannot be built on the graves of children who were hungry today. **DM**

*Mark Heywood and Busiso Moyo are co-founders of the*[*Union Against Hunger*](https://unionagainsthunger.org/)*.*