South Africa's Hidden Hunger Crisis: Why Millions Starve Despite Abundant Harvests

South Africa produces enough food to feed everyone within its borders, yet millions go hungry. This is not a failure of agricultural production. It is a failure of affordability, distribution, inequality and political will — and it is letting the country’s youngest citizens die of hunger.

Between May and September 2025 alone, 206 children under five died in public hospitals with severe acute malnutrition as an underlying condition, according to parliamentary data. Another 92 deaths were associated with moderate acute malnutrition during the same period. In 2024, more than 600 children were reported to have died from malnutrition in public health facilities. Those figures capture only deaths recorded within the health system where malnutrition was identified as a contributing factor. Child-health experts estimate that malnutrition contributes to roughly 11,000 child deaths annually.

The deaths are not new. In 2022, the South African Medical Journal reported children dying from severe acute malnutrition in the Eastern Cape. The South African Human Rights Commission subsequently found that 116 children died from this condition in that province between April 2021 and March 2022. National health data show more than 1,400 children died from severe acute malnutrition in 2023 and 2024 combined. The crisis persists not because of agricultural failure but because of failures in affordability, distribution, inequality and political will.

The human toll extends well beyond death. Parents skip meals so their children can eat. Children go to bed without food. Wasting and stunting remain exceptionally high. More than a quarter of households are moderately food insecure, and almost one in five are severely food insecure, according to 2023 research from the Human Sciences Research Council. Only around 36.5% of households are fully food secure. Millions of people already cannot afford to eat.

What makes this crisis particularly indefensible is that South Africa has spent years discussing food and nutrition security while failing to build the political machinery capable of responding with urgency. The government’s most recent National Food and Nutrition Security Plan expired in 2023. For three critical years, the country has operated in a policy vacuum. The Department of Agriculture identified a new plan as a priority and called for the establishment of a National Food and Nutrition Security Council. The development has dragged on. The council remains absent.

Food policy has become paralyzed by institutional fragmentation. The Department of Agriculture talks about production; Social Development discusses grants; Health treats malnutrition; Basic Education feeds children at school; Treasury worries about expenditure; Trade and Industry considers markets and competition. Hunger falls between them all. Although the Deputy President is nominally the chair of the Food Council, it has not met, and no single institution appears to hold sufficient political authority to declare this an emergency and act accordingly.

The situation is about to worsen. Experts now describe the likelihood of a global food crisis next year, driven by war and the impact of El Niño on worldwide food production. Even if large agricultural operations in South Africa claim readiness for a summer of delayed and diminished rainfall and extreme heat, small farmers and poor consumers are not. Current forecasts indicate the 2026-27 El Niño could become exceptionally strong, with southern Africa among the regions exposed to drought and agricultural disruption.

Meanwhile, food prices continue to rise faster than grants and wages. Although some retailers claim food prices are at their lowest in years, that is not the experience of people who actually buy food, documented month by month by the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Project. Rising costs of fuel, electricity and water compound the problem as water systems break down across the country. Waiting until food prices spike again and harvests fail is not disaster management. It is disaster exacerbation.

The government is now working on a new National Food and Nutrition Security Plan, with a flurry of public consultation underway. The emerging plan is being positioned as a long-term response to all dimensions of food security, a worthy objective, but a 10-year plan cannot become an excuse for postponing immediate action. If the new plan begins only in mid-2027, it will be budgeted for only in fiscal year 2028. If it is inadequately funded, it will repeat the failures of the last one. The gap between policy and power, between commitments and budgets, between promises and implementation, remains the persistent problem.

The Union Against Hunger is calling for the development and immediate implementation of a 12-month Emergency Food Plan. This should not replace the longer-term National Food and Nutrition Security Plan but should fill the gap between the emergency facing people today and the longer-term architecture the government is attempting to build. A clear budget, clear responsibilities and measurable outcomes are the minimum requirements.

Such a plan should immediately expand nutrition support beyond the school week, strengthen the National School Nutrition Programme and ensure vulnerable children are not left without food during weekends and school holidays. Government must intervene in market structures and excessive margins that make essential foods unaffordable. The Child Support Grant must be brought closer to the actual cost of feeding a child. Street traders, spaza shops, small-scale producers and informal markets should be supported, not pushed further into precarity. Government must regularly publish data on hunger, acute malnutrition, food prices and hunger-related deaths, and must prepare now for the food security consequences of climate variability and the emerging El Niño threat.

Section 27 of the Constitution states that everyone has the right to access sufficient food and water. Section 28 recognizes every child’s immediate right to basic nutrition. These are not aspirational statements but binding constitutional duties. South Africa does not need another year of meetings before acting. It needs an Emergency Food Plan developed before World Food Day on 16 October, backed by money, authority, targets and accountability.