This article originally appeared in City Press on 8 September 2024.
Erin Brockovich, the paralegal made famous by the eponymous Oscar-winning movie for taking on a big corporation for ground water contamination resulting in illnesses, deformities and deaths, once said: “Most of our citizenry believes that hunger only affects people who are lazy or people who are just looking for a handout – people who don’t want to work – but, sadly, that is not true. More than one third of our hungry people are innocent children, who are members of households that simply cannot provide enough food or proper nutrition.”
Indeed, the assumption that poor and hungry people are unemployed people, who are in such condition because of own poor choices, is a view held by many who oppose the continuation of the social relief of distress grant and, even more, its translation into a permanent basic income grant.
Defining human rights
This was not the view taken by multidisciplinary experts who gathered at the Bertha Retreat in Boschendal, Pniel, in the Western Cape for the Expert Symposium on Social Justice, Hunger and the Constitution.
A premier event of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) at Stellenbosch University, the annual symposium brought together representatives from the legislature, executive and judiciary, and top-level academics from disciplines such as law and human rights, particularly child rights, land rights, agriculture, environmental science, water conservation and public administration.
The symposium paired the constitutional and universal right to food with SDG2 on Zero Hunger, under the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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The quote by Chilean Nobel literature laureate Pablo Neruda and social justice advocate, “For now I ask no more than the justice of eating”, was a central piece in my framing of the discourse.
The quote was made famous by Judge Sulet Potterill, who attended and presented at the symposium, in Equal Education v Minister for Basic Education, a case that ordered the government to continue the school feeding scheme during Covid-19.
Potterill outlined opportunities for the judiciary to define the content of human rights, including the right to food, and to identify and hold accountable the duty bearers.
She also cautioned about the limits of lawfare, indicating that, among other limitations, judges can only deal with what is brought and framed by lawyers.
However, she highlighted the value of amicus curiae (friend of the court) submissions by civil society, whose data and insights broaden judicial perspectives.
Right to food
Quotes by Nelson Mandela on the nexus between freedom, hunger and justice abound, as were references to section 27(1)(b) of the Constitution of South Africa, which states that “everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water”, and 28(1)(c), which states that?“every child has the right to basic nutrition”.
It was emphasised that the right of every child to basic nutrition was a peremptory immediate right and not one to be realised progressively.
On the progressive realisation of the right to access to food, as per section 27(2), it was emphasised that this must take precedence over nice-to-do things.
This was so because section 237 of the Constitution requires constitutional obligations to be put first, which, according to the Constitutional Court in Grootboom, includes steps to remedy the consequences of past legalised injustices and to make social and economic rights real, with deliberate speed.
I personally attributed the failure to realise the right to food to failure to adhere to the ubuntu-anchored social justice the Constitutional Court has repeatedly said undergirds the societal blueprint in the Constitution, as initially declared in the court case S v Makwanyane.
Under ubuntu, which has a strong human solidarity ethos I said, no one is allowed to go hungry.
Child hunger, student hunger and the plight of those not in employment, education or training, were extensively mooted.
The key question was if the right to food and adequate nutrition is a right as entrenched in section 27 of the Constitution, and international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and People’s rights, whose right is it and who is or are the duty bearers to be held accountable in cases of violation?
Child stunting
Deputy minister of justice Andries Nel gave one of two keynote addresses, saying “hunger is a violation of human rights”.
He outlined the constitutional and international treaty provisions that entrench and frame the right to food. In Nel’s view, hunger is not a challenge due to scarcity, as there is plenty globally – it is the result of a confluence of lapses in the implementation of available laws and policies.
Nel further drew the link between the right to food and lapses in access to justice, including the cost of litigation and justice delayed.
He assured the symposium that these matters were receiving his department’s attention through a review of the case management system with judges. Nel also alluded to climate change and war, including that going on in Palestine, as drivers of hunger.
Jonathan Jansen – a professor who recently released his memoirs titled Breaking Bread as a personal account as an educator whose life is intertwined with South Africa’s odiously racist history – also gave a keynote address focusing on the nexus between the right to food and the right to education.
He highlighted the nexus between food insecurity and poor education outcomes in the basic education system and economic freedom, providing many haunting examples of learner hunger, particularly during the Covid-19 lockdown and the aftermath.
The most haunting stories were of child hunger and nutrition deficiency, which is a driver of child stunting.
Stellenbosch University’s Umezuruike Opara, an agriculture engineer, gave a systems overview of the hunger problem, explaining that, though often posed as an agriculture problem, it is primarily an economic disadvantage issue.
Opara asserted:
Hunger is not a problem of scarcity for there is plenty of food in this country and globally.
He suggested that questions should be asked about who controls food and what the impact of that is on the right to food. He further opined that hunger is not simply a matter of quantity.
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The most haunting stories were of child hunger and nutrition deficiency, which is a driver of child stunting. For example, Eileen Carter – the provincial head of the Human Rights Commission in the Eastern Cape – related a gut-wrenching story of a mother who was mixing mud and pap (maize porridge) to feed her baby to enhance satiety. This was sourced during their Human Rights Commission’s investigation into child hunger in the Eastern Cape.
Thokozani Simelane advised that a National Food and Nutrition Survey he was part of had found that many working class commuters spend 40% of their meagre salaries on fares to work.
Zinzi Mgolodela, who is the director of Corporate Social Justice at Woolworths, confirmed this.
She also said many food sector workers could not afford enough meals and/or nutritious meals. Against this backdrop, Woolworths had decided to pay a just wage.
“Though it is a step in the right direction, a minimum wage is not a living wage and a living wage is not a just wage,” she opined.
Student hunger
Student hunger was also heartbreaking. In my framing presentation, I related personal accounts given by students in response to my Nelson Mandela Day lecture in 2023 and Social Justice Café’s on student hunger thereafter.
A student narrated how she and other food insecure peers have to choose between food, data, transport, stationery and rent. Many spoke of days of going to class hungry and unable to learn.
The summit ended on a high note.
There was a sense of hope that something could be done to end hunger. It was clear that if the constitutional promise of establishing a society that is founded on social justice and human rights was achieved, and everyone’s life was improved and potential freed, the right to food should be real for all – no matter who or where they are.
It was agreed that for the right to food to be realised, government must improve its adherence to constitutional governance and accountability.
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This does not simply mean efficient administration and eschewing corruption, though necessities, it means adhering to the constitutional blueprint on public governance.
Another professor, known as Olivier, added the importance of cooperative governance, and that deviation from it was a factor in food insecurity, particularly for children.
The CSJ advised government to social justice stress test all planned laws, policies and programmes to predict the likelihood of their disproportionately adverse impact on socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, thus exacerbating inequality, poverty and vulnerability to hunger.
We concluded that, though the challenges we face regarding eradicating hunger and realising the right to food are immense, through our collective expertise and commitment, we can forge a path towards a South Africa where the justice of eating becomes a social justice in that it is equitably real for all.
Professor Madonsela is the director of the Centre for Social Justice at Stellenbosch University, Law Trust Research chair in Social Justice and founder of the Thuma Foundation