Dear Editor
Today, on World Food Day, the Democratic Alliance (DA) recommits to tackling the food poverty crisis head on.
The DA will be increasing oversight to schools to inspect the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) provision, particularly in KZN, Gauteng, Eastern Cape, and Northern Cape. We will also increase oversights to clinics and community nutrition and development centres (CNDCs) to see whether they’re effectively serving local communities to address food security and nutrition.
We will continue to submit parliamentary questions and call Departments and provinces to Parliament to account on successes and failures to implement programmes to address malnutrition.
63.5% of South Africans face some form of food insecurity, with 44.2% being moderately to severely food insecure. Between 20.9% and 23% of households are moderately to severely hungry. 13.8 million people live below the food poverty line.
The struggle for not only food security, but access to nutritious food, has dire consequences. More than 2.7 million children are in households unable to meet their nutritional needs; 28.8% of children in South Africa are stunted.
Between just January and April 2025, 155 children under the age of five died in public hospitals with malnutrition as an underlying condition and 4 759 children were admitted to public hospitals with moderate or severe acute malnutrition. It simply cannot be business as usual.
Malnutrition and food and nutrition security is a wide-spread complex problem that needs a multi-government approach. It requires strong political will – a mantle that the DA is taking up – to ensure that people do not continue to suffer from hunger and malnourishment in the country.
Regards
Bridget Masango MP
DA Deputy Spokesperson on Social Development