Hunger is a crime. Who are the criminals?

Hunger is a crime against the people of South Africa. Who are the criminals?

Why is hunger a crime?

South Africa’s Constitution commits the state, as duty-bearer, to ensure that everyone has access to sufficient food (section 27), and that every child has basic nutrition (section 28). This makes everyone living in South Africa – including all children – a claim-holder on the state to take practical and policy measures to ensure they have access to sufficient food and basic nutrition. Anyone who is hungry or malnourished in South Africa is suffering a violation of this fundamental human right, as acknowledged by the South African Human Rights Commission.

How badly is the right to food being violated?

The right to food is being violated for millions of people, not just on World Food Day, but every day.

In an article in Daily Maverick on World Hunger Day (28 May), the Union Against Hunger highlighted 10 unacceptable facts about hunger in South Africa. These include: 11,000 children die from hunger and malnutrition every year; 29% of children under five (1.5 million) have stunted growth, up from 23% in 1994; 10 million tonnes of food are wasted every year; the Child Support Grant (R560 per month) and the Social Relief of Distress grant (R370 per month) are inadequate to buy even a basic household food basket, costed at more than R5,400 per month; and 25% of South Africans (14 million) survive below the food poverty line (R796 per month).

Who is responsible?

It is all too easy to blame the poor and hungry for being poor and hungry, by labelling them lazy and irresponsible. But the poor live in a country where structural unemployment leaves millions of people unable to find jobs, the education system is failing pupils, the health system is failing the sick and malnourished, and social grants provide inadequate assistance. Not all of us live in that South Africa, but millions do. These intersecting inequalities reproduce their poverty and hunger across generations, while preserving and growing the wealth of the privileged minority.

In 2015, following a People’s Tribunal on hunger, food prices and land, the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign declared “the state responsible and complicit in perpetuating hunger, a crime against humanity”, and “food corporations guilty of perpetuating hunger”.

As this June 2025 report by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute reveals, 10 years later, nothing has changed.

Accused #1 – the state

Hunger persists in South Africa despite the government’s rhetorical commitment to food security and the existence of numerous policies and programmes across several ministries. South Africa has no shortage of impressive analytical reports, policy documents and resources to finance anti-hunger interventions. The Achilles heel, as always, is implementation.

Back in 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food conducted a mission to South Africa, noting that, unless and until a rights-based approach is adopted and accountability mechanisms are put in place, “the various strategies adopted by the government may remain ineffective, since there will be no sanction associated with a failure to deliver”.

Again, what has changed?

Many parts of the state can be blamed for the failure to deliver the right to food. Here are some of the culprits – readers might want to add their own.

1. Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development: Failure to implement substantial land redistribution, land restitution or tenure reform, which would empower small farmers, communities, farm workers and women to grow their own food;
2. Department of Employment and Labour: Failure of labour inspectors to ensure that workers in the food system are paid the national minimum wage, and are registered for unemployment insurance. This leaves low-income workers underpaid and unprotected, and exposes farm workers to seasonal hunger;
3. Department of Health: Failure to identify, monitor and treat malnourished children early enough, leading to thousands of avoidable child deaths every year. Failure to introduce regulations to ensure the affordability of essential food, and to protect people from unhealthy foods that cause diseases such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension;
4. National, provincial and local governments: Failure to effectively implement a coordinated strategy for reducing food insecurity, which continues to rise, causing preventable malnutrition and in extreme circumstances death, even in major cities. Failure to release adequate financing from Treasury to Social Development and other departments to end hunger. Failure to regulate profiteering private actors in the food system, to ensure the availability and accessibility of affordable, nutritious food to all.

Accused #2 – Supermarkets and privately owned corporate food producers

People buy most of their food from supermarkets, spaza shops, open markets and street traders, not the government. Although private sector actors, like the big supermarket chains, are not direct constitutional duty-bearers, they have both a moral and a legal duty not to act in ways that undermine human rights and the ability of people to have access to sufficient food and to live healthy, dignified lives. This includes refraining from making excessive profits at the expense of access to affordable food, and not promoting unhealthy foods to customers.

People also buy food from formal and informal sources, but South Africa’s food retail sector is dominated by a small number of highly profitable supermarkets.

Read more: Confronting SA’s hunger emergency — From constitutional rights to empty plates 

For example, Shoprite is the largest supermarket retail chain in South Africa. Last year, Shoprite/Checkers recorded a trading profit of more than R13-billion. In total, based on their reported profits, we estimated that the companies that dominate the retail food sector earned profits of more than R20-billion in 2024. This is achieved in no small part by pricing the poor completely out of the food market and leaving even middle-class people struggling to afford the cost of living (literally).

In return for high profits, CEO Pieter Engelbrecht has been handsomely rewarded. He is South Africa’s highest-paid retail boss, with his remuneration amounting to R83-million in 2024, or R7-million a month, or R228,000 every day of the year.

This is close to 1,000 times more than the lowest-paid employee at Shoprite earns, a gross indicator of the high and rising inequality that is an underlying cause of hunger and malnutrition in our upper-middle-income country. Research based on Shoprite’s own reports reveals that, of all the companies in the retail sector, it is the lowest payer of its staff.

According to Just Share, in the sector as a whole the average CEO earns 597 times what the lowest-paid worker earns.

Corporates also have legal obligations not to profiteer by abusing their market dominance to charge excessive prices.

But the abuse is not limited to supermarkets. Twenty years ago, the Competition Commission prosecuted and sanctioned powerful food corporations including Pioneer Foods, Premier Foods, Foodcorp and Tiger Brands for forming cartels that fixed bread prices at levels that harmed poor consumers.

Fresh food markets are another important part of the food system. Recently, the commission found evidence of anti-competitive behaviour and exclusion of historically disadvantaged farmers in the fresh produce market. In 2024, it also initiated an inquiry into the poultry industry, noting that “low-income consumers are heavily dependent upon poultry for protein”.

In September 2025, the commission published its first Cost of Living Report, which looked at the difference between producer prices and retail prices, on key food items. It distinguishes between what it calls “responsible” pricing and “price stickiness”, where prices fail to respond to “shifts in supply, demand or broader economic conditions”.

In the cases of eggs and sunflower oil, producer prices have fallen significantly during 2025, but retailers failed to pass on these lower costs to consumers. Similarly, the commission finds rising retail prices of maize meal “concerning, given that producer prices have been relatively stable throughout the period and margins are now on the high end of historical levels”.

In our view, such unethical behaviour by food producers and retailers makes them guilty of excessive pricing that has the effect of violating the right to sufficient food, sometimes criminally.

Access to food is a social justice issue

Civil society is campaigning vigorously on the right to food and ending hunger in South Africa:

• A legal case against the government is being prepared, focusing on the state’s failure to address child malnutrition, and its failure to take reasonable measures that could dramatically reduce food waste;
• As an example of action against corporates, the Union Against Hunger has launched a petition called “Shoprite, bring your food prices down!”, which has collected more than 20,000 signatures to date;
• On World Food Day, the South African Human Rights Commission and the Union Against Hunger are hosting a public webinar on “Food Sovereignty and the Right to Food” (register here); and
• The day after World Food Day, President Cyril Ramaphosa will speak about food security at the 7th Social Justice Summit at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, hosted by Professor Thuli Madonsela. The Union Against Hunger, Masiphumelele Creative Hub, Callas Foundation , We The 99 and the Movement For CARE are organising a Hunger Vigil outside the convention centre. They will hand over a memorandum to the President, including a list of 10 demands for achieving food justice in South Africa.

It goes without saying that food is essential to life. Access to food is also essential to most of the other rights recognised in our Constitution, including dignity, autonomy, basic education, health, wellbeing and children’s rights. Conversely, violating the right to food by omission (not taking measures that could ensure people can eat) or commission (setting unaffordable high prices) amounts to a crime. Only with united citizen action can the promise of World Food Day be achieved in South Africa, a country with more food than it needs, and more hungry people than is morally or constitutionally acceptable. DM