A coalition of civil society and academia has taken the first steps to launch the Union Against Hunger (UAH), a new movement which aims to be a community-led dynamic South African movement dedicated to eradicating hunger and malnutrition in South Africa as soon as possible.
Hunger and malnutrition are a national catastrophe, with one in four South Africans facing severe food insecurity. Every year, ten thousand children die due to severe acute malnutrition and more than one in four children are stunted by the age of five. Out of twenty-one million children in South Africa, nine million are hungry right now.
For this reason UAH will be consulting and mobilising around an urgent campaign to ensure children’s rights to adequate nutrition, as enshrined in the Constitution of South Africa.
However, the movement’s broader vision aims to ensure that all people in South Africa have access to sufficient food and nutrition that they need to reach their full potential in life. This will be done through public awareness campaigns, direct food support initiatives in communities, and advocacy for systemic reform. UAH seeks to transform the food security landscape across the nation by reshaping policies, reducing food waste, and holding government and the food-producing and retailing sector accountable to ensure food is accessible, affordable and healthy.
With the ongoing review of the National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security coupled with South Africa leading the G20 and the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty recently established under its auspices, there has never been a more critical time to act.
Dr Edzani Mphaphuli, Executive Director at Grow Great and steering committee member of the UAH emphasised, ” In a country where there is a surplus of food, it is unforgivable that so many people – especially the children – are on a spectrum of severe food vulnerability ranging from running out of money for food sometime during the month to millions of children going to sleep hungry every night. That so many young children are stunted as a result of malnutrition is not only a source of severe suffering and indignity, it is also an existential
threat to this country and, if urgent action is not taken, the situation will continue to escalate. As the UAH, our immediate focus will be on the resolution of demands that can make a rapid and significant difference to this gross injustice.”
The organisations that have initiated the UAH include the Healthy Living Alliance of SA (HEALA), Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Grow Great, and the Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape. But the intention is to rapidly expand the leadership and build mass support for the movement.
At the launch event, hosted on 26 February at The People’s Pantry in Victoria Yards, Johannesburg, more organisations and individuals pledged their support for food and dignity in South Africa, including Women on Farms Project, the Treatment Action Campaign and SAFTU.
The UAH is calling on all people in South Africa to stand against hunger. We demand urgent action focused on realising everyone’s constitutional right to enough nutritious food including halving child stunting by 2030, increasing the Child Support Grant to the upper-bound poverty line, extending ECD and school nutrition to all children at all times, making nutritious food affordable and accessible for all, ensuring access to land for small-scale agriculture, introducing programmes to address seasonal hunger, halving food waste by 2030 to release more food for hungry people, introducing wealth taxes to finance anti-hunger interventions, and establishing a Ministry of Food and a National Food Commission.
Dr Busiso Moyo, UAH steering committee member, said, “We have enough food, land and other resources as well as the knowledge on how to end hunger in South Africa. What is needed now is the collective will to act decisively and implement solutions that ensure no one goes to sleep hungry. It is time for bold, collaborative solutions and unwavering commitment from all sectors of society.”
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