How civil society groups can help resolve food insecurity in SA

A new study on emergency food relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, by researchers Camilla Adelle and Ashley Haywood, shows how civil society groups can help to restore South Africa’s ailing food system in the long term, and why government needs to aid the process by providing an enabling environment.

- Camilla Adelle and Ashley Haywood

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa was experiencing a food crisis, but this was deepened by the lockdown. Low-income households bore the brunt: three million jobs were lost; two out of every five adults reported that their households had lost their main source of income; existing government funded feeding schemes closed; and social grants from government were slow to be paid out.

All of these factors had a grave effect on food security in the country: 47% of adults reported that their households ran out of money to buy food in April 2020 and, while this figure declined in May and June 2020, they were still well above pre-COVID-19 levels.

However, the pandemic has not just shed light on existing problems; it has also identified entities that might be able help to tackle these issues in the longer term: civil society organisations (CSOs).

In South Africa, these groups performed a heroic task during the initial COVID-19 crisis, supplying millions of meals to people in need. In the Western Cape, for example, CSOs provided more than half of the food aid distributed in the first few months of the lockdown, reaching 5,2 million people.

Without these organisations, the humanitarian crisis would have been far greater. However, their work is ongoing, as the need for emergency food aid has continued. This is because CSOs didn’t only respond to the effects of the pandemic, but also dealt with the fundamental inequalities of a food system that is designed to make profits for large corporate retailers and food-processing companies rather than provide the majority of people with safe and nutritious food.

Based on our research, we believe that CSOs should be drawn more formally into food governance. There are three main reasons for our argument.