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Hunger in the land of plenty
Mail & Guardian
|M&G 06 February 2026
In November 2011, the Sowetan reported on four children from Verdwaal in the North West who had set out on foot to find their mother and sister, who had left home in search of food.
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Having walked more than 10km without sustenance, the children succumbed to hunger and dehydration, their bodies found on a lonely stretch of veld. Postmortem examinations confirmed that they perished from hunger and thirst.
The heartbreaking case of Sebengu, 9, Mmapule, 7, Olebogeng, 6, and Oarabetswe, 2 shouldn’t belong to South Africa’s past. Yet the latest State of Household Food Insecurity in South Africa Report 2026 makes clear that a deepening hunger crisis persists today.
Millions of South Africans struggle daily to find enough food in a country that produces more than enough to feed its people. The horror of the Verdwaal children’s deaths haunts the present because hunger has outlived public shock and become a statistic.
Cette histoire est tirée de l'édition M&G 06 February 2026 de Mail & Guardian.
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