Our People are Starving
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement 28 May 2025
Millions of our people have been impoverished by the system of oppression that makes the poor to be poor and the rich to be rich. Hunger is a very painful part of impoverishment. Some people feel ashamed and hide this pain and suffer alone.
Many parents are missing meals to feed their children. Some are even boiling weeds to at least give their children something. Almost a quarter of children live in what is called ‘severe food poverty’, and almost a third suffer from stunting due to a lack of sufficient nutritious food. More than 15 million people live with what is called ‘food insecurity’. These terms are used to hide the pain of real people and real families who suffer from hunger and in some cases outright starvation. Since January 2025, 155 children under the age of five have died from malnutrition in public health facilities.
People were made poor by colonialism and capitalism and have been kept poor by neocolonialism, capitalism and the predatory elites who captured the national liberation struggle. For as long as people must live without land, there is mass unemployment, grants are not enough to afford healthy food, food remains commodified and the supermarkets dominate the food system, people will continue to go hungry.
The commercial value of food trumps its social value and we continue to export food while our people are dying like dogs because they cannot afford food. Profit maximisation is put before human life. Many supermarkets, restaurants and rich people are throwing good food away while there are those who go to sleep without anything to eat.
The good question is not only about quantity. It is also about quality. When poor people can buy food we often cannot afford to buy healthy food. The food crisis is not only about access to food. It is also about access to healthy food.
The food question is not only about distribution. It is also about production. Land is very important in our struggle. Land is not only used for housing. We also grow healthy organic food on the land we have occupied. When we are denied land we cannot grow our food. Evictions violently deprive people of land to grow their own food.
Some of the supermarkets make huge profits and their owners and managers are extremely rich in a country where hunger is endemic and some people are starving to death.
Starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Palestine, the Congo and elsewhere. This is correctly recognised as a crime against humanity. However hunger is not treated as a crisis in South Africa. It is mostly ignored by elites because we are not counted as human.
Today is World Hunger Day. Abahlali baseMjondolo is part of the Union Against Hunger and today we make the following ten demands:
1. Immediate measures must be taken to reduce the price of food. These measures must include zero rating of basic food in terms of tax and generous subsidies for basic foods. They must also include strict regulations to prevent supermarkets and others from selling basic food at inflated prices.
2. A basic monthly food basket for a family costs just under R5 500. The system of grants must be urgently expanded and increased so that no family has to go hungry.
3. Measures must be taken to stop supermarkets and restaurants from throwing good food away.
4. Supermarkets must be regulated to reduce profit-taking and limits must be set on executive salaries and bonuses.
5. There needs to be a major programme of urban land reform. This must include releasing new land and regularising existing land occupations. Evictions must be stopped. This programme of urban land reform must be accompanied by a massive project to support urban farming with training in agroecology and cooperative management and the provision of seeds, irrigation and tools.
6. Rural land that is unused, or held for speculation, must be expropriated, placed under democratic forms of collective management and used for food production.
7. Community markets need to be established so that poor people can sell their produce to each other and not have to rely on the supermarkets. These markets must be able to accept SASSA cards.
8. Free and nutritious food needs to be provided at every school and hospital.
9. There needs to be a massive public health campaign to educate our people about which foods are healthy foods and which are unhealthy. Unhealthy foods must carry clear warning labels. Unhealthy foods must also be taxed and the money used to subsidise healthy foods.
10. Advertising of ultra-processed junk food, especially to children, must be banned in the same way that advertising of tobacco products has been banned.
The activation of all these measures must be fully public and transparent, and overseen by credible democratic membership-based organisations, to ensure that there is no corruption.
Hunger must be understood as a serious crisis and urgent measures must be taken to end hunger in South Africa. It must be understood that the crisis of hunger is directly related to the land question and that it is a matter of dignity as well as health and survival.
As our comrades in the MST say ‘Without food sovereignty, there is no sovereignty at all’.
Contact:
Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Bathabile Makhoba 065 861 5707
Mqapheli Bonono 073 067 3275
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