Who eats well, who doesn't?

In South Africa, we often speak about hunger as though it were an unfortunate side effect of poverty, climate shocks or global food prices.

- Philile Ntuli

Scarcity in the land of plenty: It is an anomaly that in a country like ours - capable of feeding all - there are people who still go without food, especially children under five, who face chronic malnutrition, according to Unicef's State of the World's Children report.

(Photo: Benjamin Anguandia)

But this framing obscures the firm truth: widespread hunger persists not because the country cannot feed itself but because the way food is controlled, distributed and governed actively excludes millions of people.

South Africa produces ample food. Yet large numbers of households struggle to secure regular, nutritious meals.

Children continue to suffer lifelong consequences such as stunting and impaired brain development from undernutrition. These outcomes are neither mysterious nor accidental.

They are the result of policy choices, market structures and historical decisions that continue, in the present day, to shape who eats well and who does not.

The roots of this crisis run deep. Systems of land dispossession and agricultural restructuring under colonialism and apartheid dismantled local food economies and concentrated productive land in a few hands. These patterns did not disappear in 1994. They evolved and remain entrenched.