You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW JEREMY MAGGS: Now this is a worrying turn of events. The South African Human Rights Commission chairperson, Chris Nissen, has urged authorities in the Eastern Cape government to implement what he terms sustainable food security programmes to prevent more people from dying from hunger.
So at that stage we did say that there needs to be a consideration that the Eastern Cape be declared a disaster area in respect of malnutrition and hunger. But we also have a massive socioeconomic concern in terms of poverty and unemployment, which are significant barriers to achieving food security. That is why we need to intervene quite urgently because it’s a generational concern. When children are hungry now, the effect of malnutrition on them is not going to be only felt now, it’s going to be felt in the future as well.
Historical land dispossession continues to affect the African majority’s ability to produce food and it exacerbates food insecurity. So we need to look at this as a wholesale approach and not in an abstract manner. So there are also bigger issues than that, Jeremy, 30% of produced food in South Africa ends up in landfill sites. So that amounts to millions of tons of wasted food annually.