21 October 2024
Social Justice Champion Awards, 5th International Social Justice Conference and 6th Social Justice Summit
Media Statement for immediate release
Participants Pledge United Action Against Hunger at International Social Justice Conference and Summit
The 5th International Social Justice Conference and 6th Social Justice Summit ended on a high note with participants pledging to undertake united, coordinated and accelerated global and domestic action to end hunger by 2030. The pledges and resolutions were the outcome of a three-day combo of events that commenced with the Social Justice Champion Awards on Wednesday the 16th, followed by the International Social Justice Conference on the 17th and ended with a domestic Social Justice Summit on 18 October 2024.
The Social Justice Conference and Summit took place at the Artscape Centre Theatre in Cape Town, while the Social Justice Champion Awards, that saw exiled state capture whistle-blower Dr Athol Williams take the Social Justice Champion of the Year Award, took place at the Erinvale Country and Golf Estate in Somerset West, South Africa. The events combo was hosted by the Centre for Social Justice at Stellenbosch University (CSJ) with partners that included the South African Government (DPME and DIRCO), United Nations South Africa (UNSA), National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and Artscape Theatre Centre, supported by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) and various civil society actors, including corporate organisations.
The “who’s who” at any given stage in the room included keynote speakers: Minister in the Presidency Hon Khumbudzo Ntshavheni; former UN General Assembly President and current Cities Alliance President, Ms Maria Fernando Espinosa; Ret. Constitutional Court Justice Edwin Cameron, Mrs Elita De Klerk, Ms Rebecca Oppenheimer, Dr Marlene Le Roux, Miss World South Africa, Zoalize Jansen van Rensburg and Godfrey Mashamba. Freshly minted University of Pretoria Vice Chancellor Prof Frances Petersen gave a closing address at the conference, while Stellenbosch University (SU) Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Innovation, Research and Postgraduate Studies, Prof Sibusiso Moyo, gave the opening address, SU Vice Chancellor Prof Wim de Villiers gave the summit welcome address, SU Law Dean, Prof Nicola Smit gave closing remarks, DVC Transformation at SU, Prof Nico Koopman, gave the closing summit address, while Kenyan Poet and Director of the Uaria Trust, Dr Mshai Mwangola, served as the Conference Chief Rapporteur and programme director at the Social Justice Champion Awards, together with SABC News Anchor Liezle Wilson. Conference and Summit programme directors were Earth Africa Founder Ms Catherine Constantinides and Broadaster-Lawyer Nqaba Mabece.
Members of Parliament from the ANC, DA, Good and BOSA, Hon. Cameron Dugmore, Hon. Dirk Wessels, Hon. Brett Herron, and Hon. Mmusi Maimane also showed up and added their voice regarding the justice of eating and freedom from hunger. Ambassadors from Germany, Turkey, Brazil plus a representative of the Ambassador of France were also there to share insights on their their country approaches to domestic food security for all and assistance offered to South Africa and other developing countries in a session facilitated by the Director-General of the Department of International Relations (DIRCO), Mr Zane Dangor. FAO’s Director General Dr Babagana Ahmadu and Agri-SA’s Mr Johann Kotze, also spoke.The UN resident Coordinator, Mr Nelson Muffuh and Deputy Minister of Electricity and Energy, Hon Samantha Graham -Maré addressed the events remotely.
The common purpose that brought participants together was to deliberate on the right to food and the global sustainable goal on Zero Hunger: SDG2. The thrust of deliberations centred on assessing progress achieved towards ending hunger by 2030, identifying drivers of hunger and food insecurity, sharing good practices that are moving the needle in the right direction and agreement on progress accelerating action to close the gap. The latter included pledges on what the participants planned to do to accelerate the pace, having agreed that despite international law obligations and social policy endeavours such as the SDGs, hunger remains a grave global and domestic challenge with food security backsliding trends in some cases, especially in communities affected by war, climate change and extreme levels of poverty and inequality.
Having flagged student hunger as a major part of the hunger challenge, Prof de Villiers led the pledges charge by example when he ended his welcome address at the Summit by stating:
“Let me reaffirm Stellenbosch University’s commitment to being a leader in social justice and the fight against hunger. We believe that by addressing this issue head-on, we can create a learning environment where all students have the opportunity to thrive academically, socially and personally.”
This followed addresses that had identified students in tertiary institutions as a group at risk of hunger compounded by the lack of clarity regarding the primary duty bearer responsible for social assistance to realise the right to food for those without means. The challenge underscores the fact that though all agreed that since the right to food is a human right, ending hunger is a collective duty, that starts with individual agency but for which the state bears the ultimate responsibility, it is not always clear on a case-by-case basis who the duty-bearer is. During the international conference, Prof Moyo had also called for support for the #Action4Inlcusion student debt eliminating quest.
Pretoria High Court Judge Sulet Potterill underscored the ambiguity of accountability for the right to food when she discussed the process she undertook to decide against the government of South Africa’s suspension of its National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She nonetheless applauded government’s initiation of the scheme and the country’s elaborate social security and assistance system that includes assistance from birth to old age through the child grant, no fee schools, further education bursaries under the NSFAS scheme, disability grants, Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grants and old age grants. However, she lamented the inadequacy of the child grant and the fact that adherence to laws and policies was not always in place. She opined that there was room for ensuring greater accountability through the judicial system as appropriate NGOs did in the Equal Education case she adjudicated regarding the NSNP.
Pervasive themes during the three days included acceptance that hunger is a violation of the right to food and adequate nutrition. Event host, Prof Thuli Madonsela, who also applauded the government of South Africa for the elaborate social security and assistance scheme, lamented the fact that this was not enough as data by the National Food and Nutrition Security Survey of 2024 revealed that 63% of households in the country are food insecure, while 17% are in dire straits. She highlighted the fact that “in terms of section 237 of the Constitution, ensuring the right to food takes precedence over nice-to-do things and that in terms of section 28, every child’s right to basic nutrition is an unconditional instant right that is not subject to the availability of resources.” She further asserted that the right to food and adequate nutrition in an international human right.
In the context of South Africa, it was emphasised that hunger is primarily a failure of transformative governance to address enduring racial and race gender overlapping and disability inequalities that flow from colonial, apartheid, patriarchal and disability reinforcing laws, policies and programmes of the past. These disparities, it was noted, impact all areas of life and are major determinants of who is hungry or at risk of being hungry, including children.
The impact of hunger on children was a recurring theme. Social Justice Champions Award Dinner Keynote Speaker, Fernanda Espinosa, poignantly remarked:
“Today, as we commemorate World Food Day, we must confront an unsettling reality: in the fight against global hunger, we aren’t just stalling, we are losing ground. Over 733 million people faced hunger last year. This means that 1 in 2 people globally, and 1 in 5 in Africa, suffer from hunger. 9 million people die yearly for causes related to hunger, many of them children under five. This is a problem that is only worsening. By the end of the decade, 582 million people are projected to be chronically undernourished, with more than half of them in Africa.”
The following day, conference keynote speaker Justice Cameron stated that:
“Hunger haunts our world…The fact that it exists is intolerable. Why? Because we have the means to remedy it: starting with hunger amongst children.” … “ The World Health organization reports that about 148 million children were stunted – and 45 million were wasted.”
Cameron explained that malnutrition resulted in stunting, which refers to damage to physical and cognitive underdevelopment, while wasting related to child development delays and death. The SAHRC also weighed in on the human right of children to food, indicating that the right is owed to all children and yet some are left out.
A third pervasive theme was that of hunger as a multidimensional food systems issue, the economic, social and environmental determinants of which transcend the availability or production of food. In clarifying the critical elements of the food system that must work synergistically to ensure no one is hungry or food insecure, SAHRC Chairperson Dr Chris Nisson declared that:
“In both international and domestic law, the right to food has six components built into it, and they include: availability(of food at national level); access (at household level); in a sustainable way (accessibility and availability extend to present and future generations); of quantity and quality; free from adverse substances; and possess adequate amount of requisite nutrients for human dietary needs; and culturally adequate food.”
There was consensus that hunger is primarily a matter of maldistribution of food, as opposed to a shortage of food and that the shortage primarily affects those that are trapped in structural inequalities regarding other dimensions of life, including land ownership, wealth, and income disparities and that for this reason it is a social justice issue. In this regard, summit keynote speaker Minister Ntshavheni observed:
“[hunger] is a multifaceted challenge that affects our economy, health and social fabric. In a nation as rich in resources as ours, it is unacceptable that millions of South Africans still face food insecurity. …South Africa is a food-producing nation, where millions experience hunger, leading to malnutrition, stunting and dietary related diseases such as obesity. Therefore we must pursue food security with urgency and determination.”
The fourth pervasive theme was the multidimensional causes of hunger and food insecurity. Key impediments to accessing food were identified, that need to be unlocked in this regard, including the need to unlock small scale subsistence and commercial farming capabilities to localise food sovereignty while boosting local economies. This was linked by most to the need for equitable land distribution, which was flagged as a major social justice and food security challenge in South Africa, where the white population that is less than 8% owns and controls over 70% of both urban and rural land. The nexus between health and hunger was part of this discussion, key being the fact that the two are mutually defining from pregnancy to old age and that illusory savings on social assistance, in pursuit of parochial fiscal efficiencies to end hunger, end up being more expensive health costs.
The affordability of food was discussed extensively, the focus being on the availability of income, which is linked to decent paying jobs and wealth distribution and addressing the spatial disparities that force victims of apartheid to spend up to 60% of their income on transport. The cost of food was also highlighted as a factor in food security, a matter flagged by many of the politicians and the food sovereignty social movement. The issue of income security through converting the SRD grant into a permanent Basic Income Grant (BIG) was highlighted by the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), among others, while many pleaded for an increased child grant and giving consideration to a pregnancy grant as malnutrition related child development issues start in pregnancy.
The issue of climate change was dealt with as part of the polydimensional causes of hunger and food insecurity, with participants acknowledging that although the world taken together has plenty of food, some local communities are food insecure and also that unaddressed environmental degradation and water shortages might cause future food insecurity. This dimension was canvassed by all keynote speakers, particularly the FAO and Minister Ntshaveni. Deputy Minister Graham-Maré’s speech that focused on renewable energy, affordably energy and private public partnerships that can expedite such, with job creation being one of the outcomes, also had climate change undertones.
A fifth pervasive theme was the need for intentionality and coordination of efforts within each sector and between sectors as well as across countries to ensure a synergistic approach to ensuring that nothing in the domestic or global food systems impacts negatively on access to food and/or nutrition by any group. Intentionality and coordination were said to be the keys that enabled countries such as Brazil to end hunger. This was in recognition of the intersecting factors that either foster or undermine access to food that need coordination. Two areas of coordination that were highlighted included the possibility of a law on food, with the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign offering a draft model statute for the purpose titled the “People’s Food Sovereignty Act.” Food sovereignty was added as a separate and complementary factor to food security that can banish hunger and assure nutrition security sustainably for generations.
War and hunger emerged as a major theme, that evoked emotion, particularly regarding the weaponisation of starvation in the waging of war, which has been primarily documented by UN agencies in Palestine. Participants noted that while hunger fuels war, war itself causes hunger even without deliberate blockading of food as a weapon of war in violation of international law. In this regard, peace was seen as the solution.
A 7th key theme that was reinforced by Prof Madonsela and Prof Scot Drimie of the Southern African Food Lab, was the need to adopt a systems approach to both food security and the design and implementation of any policy, law or programme, mindful that many factors that undermine the realisation of the right to food or trap marginalised social groups in hunger, are laws that are not directed at food security but have an unintended impact of causing or exacerbating hunger. Prof Madonsela referred to these as “stray bullets”. The theory of change is to avoid one size-fits-all policies that unintentionally take away capabilities that enable people to access food. The idea is to recognise the humanity of all, thus tailor for all by meeting all where they are, while reparatively addressing existing systemic inequalities, including gender and spatial disparities that drive hunger.
Both professors suggested subjecting all intended policies, laws and programmes to an AI enabled, legislated Social Justice Impact Assessment Matrix (SIAM), which is a disaggregated data enabled policy impact foresight tool, that enables policy makers and legislators to implement their intended laws, policies and programmes in a virtual setting to predict and mitigate possible exacerbation of inequality, poverty and hunger through a disparate or disproportionate impact on economically and socially marginalised groups. Madonsela indicated that the SIAM tool had been successfully piloted to predict unintended inequality, poverty and hunger consequences of COVID-19 regulations as early as April 2020. The proposal is legislated and gov-tech supported anticipatory impact assessments for policy design, law reform and programme design to avoid exacerbatibg hunger, poverty and inequality.
The deliberations on the consequences of hunger did not end with negative impacts on children but also covered consequences on mental health, violent crime, health, the economy and social cohesion. There was agreement with UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres, as quoted by Mr Nelson Muffuh, that “[i]n a world of plenty, no one should go hungry or suffer the cruelty of malnutrition. A world free from hunger is within reach, but we must act together, urgently & with solidarity.”
Towards the conclusion of the Summit, participants were pressed to indicate whether they: (1) accepted that hunger is a human rights matter relating to the right to food and a social justice matter relating to embracing the humanity of all by ensuring equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms including the right to food; (2) believe that while government has a primary duty to ensure the conditions, capabilities and assistance that enable the realisation of the right to food for all, all individuals and organizations, domestic and international have some proportionate duty, to respect, advance and not directly or indirectly undermine access to food, and: (3) commit to do something or more to play a part in ensuring zero hunger by 2030. The majority of panelists said yes to all three and the Summit resolved to support the Musa Plan For Social Justice (Musa Plan) whose short Video voiced by the globally iconic Dr John Kani was played throughout the three-day social justice events combo.
Justice Cameron’s parting shot was:
“We sit here this morning, nourished and gleaming with health. There is nothing sinful in that – provided we use the benefits of our health and wealth and power to make sure that others can be freed from the debilitating oppression of hunger.”
Fernades Espinosa appealed for a relationship reset, stating:
“A new social contract is a prerequisite for achieving social justice, peace, sustainable development, and the full enjoyment of human rights. Central to this is the concept of human security. It is about ensuring that we live free from fear and free from want. It is not just about livelihoods; it’s about human dignity, inclusion, and power sharing… ‘Together, we may be able to plan a less painful future. Separate, we can only anticipate further ruptures and deeper loneliness’.”
Resolutions passed
The conference and summit concluded with pledges and the adoption of resolutions, signalling a shared commitment by all delegates representing the various sectors of society to tackling the hunger crisis head-on, including the following programme of action to address these challenges collectively, to align with SDG 2, and to scale and fast-track the Musa Plan and its key result areas. The full resolutions will be disserminated shortly. Key contents include the following:
- Strengthen Legal Accountability for Food Security and Food Sovereignty, appreciating the interdependence of food systems,
- Support the Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD Grant),
- Promote Sustainable Agricultural Practices,
- Address Food Distribution Inefficiencies,
- Address Nutrition and Food Quality, including holding corporates accountable,
- Encourage Public-Private Partnerships,
- Execute Anticipatory Social Justice Impact Assessments (SIAM),
- Ensure Inclusive Communication.
The essence of the Social Justice Summit resolution was:
Hunger is not just a charity issue but a social justice issue;
By focusing on the constitutional right to food, strengthening policy and legal accountability, promoting sustainable agriculture, agro-ecology and addressing systemic inequalities that cause a barrier to access to food, South Africa can make meaningful progress toward the attainment of SDG 2 by 2030;
Collective action must include civil society stepping up more meaningfully in a collaborative, "all-hands-on-deck" partnership aimed at leaving no one and no community behind;
Call for a renewed commitment to achieving Zero Hunger by addressing the root causes of food insecurity through a social justice framework;
Hunger is not merely a technical problem but a profound social injustice that demands urgent and coordinated action across all sectors of society.
We therefore pledge to lead by example.
These resolutions will inform the agenda for the upcoming United Nations-hosted Second World Summit for Social Development in 2025, ensuring that the voices of all stakeholders are represented in global efforts to achieve Zero Hunger.
Looking Ahead
Conference host Prof Madonsela expressed hope that the conference and Summit outcome would lead to increased awareness on SDG 2: Zero Hunger, more insights on why hunger persists and is growing in some spaces and that there will be more transdisciplinary and intersectoral coordination and collaboration on anti-hunger efforts going forward. At the end of the summit Prof Madonsela said:
“My deepest hope is that we will see more individual, institutional and country pledges that reflect appreciation of hunger as a human rights and social justice issue, belief that we all have a part to play in ending hunger and commitment to take urgent, coordinated and collaborative action to ensure visible progress is made by the time we convene for the 2025 Social Justice Conference and Summit. I thank all who made the three day combo of social justice events possible and exceptionally productive.”
Enquiries: Thembaletha Seyisi – Centre for Social Justice: socialjustice@sun.ac.za / tseyisi@sun.ac.za or 072 785 3218.