Hunger is economic violence inflicted daily on SA’s poor

As workers, our starting point will always be the lived experience of the working class. We do not analyse hunger from boardrooms. We analyse it from factory floors, mine shafts, farms, warehouses, hospitals, classrooms, taxi ranks and working-class homes.

And what are workers telling us today? They are telling us that even when they have jobs, they cannot survive. This is the era of the working poor.

Workers wake up at 4am. They travel long distances. They work exhausting shifts. They build this economy with their labour. Yet at the end of the month they cannot afford food.

The latest Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group figures show that the average Household Food Basket now costs more than R5,400 per month, while a basic nutritious basket costs about R6,600 per month. Yet the national minimum wage of a paltry R30 per hour translates roughly to between R4,800 and R5,800 a month, depending on the hours worked.

In other words, a minimum wage worker cannot even afford a basic nutritious food basket before paying for transport, electricity, rent, school uniforms or debt. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group shows that electricity and transport alone consume about 58% of the national minimum wage for many workers before food is even bought.

Social grants

Now compare this to social grants. The Child Support Grant is only R560 per month – nearly R300 below the Food Poverty Line of R855 and far below the estimated R965 needed monthly to feed a child a basic nutritious diet.

The Social Relief of Distress grant remains a scandalous R370 per month – barely enough to survive for a few days in today’s economy. This means millions of unemployed people and mothers are expected to survive on grants that are nowhere near the actual cost of food. That is institutionalised hunger. And the result is devastating.

Research shows that millions of households are now forced to reduce meal sizes, skip meals and remove nutritious foods such as meat, eggs, vegetables and fruit from their diets because they simply cannot afford them. More than 11 million South Africans survive below the Food Poverty Line of R855 per person per month – less than R28 a day. Nearly one in three children under five – 28.8% – are stunted because of chronic malnutrition.

The Department of Health records about 10,000 child deaths linked to malnutrition every year. Think about that carefully. Children are dying from hunger and malnutrition in one of the richest countries on the African continent.

At the same time, food prices continue escalating: maize meal, cooking oil and basic staples have risen dramatically in recent years, while vegetables, potatoes and proteins continue to become unaffordable to poor households.

And while workers and the unemployed suffer, corporate executives continue enriching themselves.

Organised economic violence

The CEO of Shoprite reportedly earns more than R87-million a year while many retail workers cannot afford the food they pack, transport and sell. That is not merely inequality. That is organised economic violence.

The rich speak about “market confidence” while workers speak about empty pots. And we must be honest: this crisis did not fall from the sky. It is the result of decades of neoliberal policies: privatisation, deindustrialisation, casualisation, labour broking, wage suppression, austerity and the destruction of decent work.

Permanent jobs were replaced with precarious labour. Young people were abandoned into an economy of unemployment and hopelessness. Today, SA has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the world. That is why the SA Federation of Trade Unions’ (Saftu’s) Section 77 demands call for massive public investment in youth employment programmes, apprenticeships, artisan training, industrialisation and socially useful public works to give young people work, skills and hope instead of despair.

And because those in power fear the anger of hungry masses, they now encourage scapegoating. They want poor South Africans to blame immigrants for unemployment and hunger.

But workers know the truth. Immigrants did not destroy factories. Immigrants did not impose austerity. Immigrants did not create starvation wages. Immigrants did not loot municipalities and state-owned enterprises.

The problem is an economic system that places profit above human life.

That is why Saftu says the struggle against hunger is inseparable from the struggle for decent work, living wages and economic justice.

We therefore demand:

• An immediate Basic Income Grant of at least R1,500 per month for the unemployed and working poor.
• An increase in all grants to at least the food poverty line.
• Food price regulation and action against profiteering.
• Mass public employment programmes.
• Support for small farmers, cooperatives and informal traders.
• An end to austerity cuts.
• A comprehensive programme of industrialisation and decent work creation.

We reject a society where workers produce wealth but live in poverty. We reject a society where children go hungry while billionaires display obscene wealth and conspicuous consumption. And we warn: no society can remain stable when millions are hungry.

History teaches us that hunger eventually becomes anger. And anger eventually becomes resistance.

Food is not a privilege for the rich. Food is a constitutional right. DM

This article is based on the input Zwelinzima Vavi made to the Union Against Hunger press conference held on 7 May 2026 at the Nelson Mandela Foundation.