If Mzansi’s leaders are serious about nutrition security for as many households as possible, they should get serious about affordability as well, says Mervyn Abrahams, programme coordinator of the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group. He says while the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development’s Food and Nutrition Security Policy looks fine on paper, it loses relevance considering the realities that poor South Africans face.
The Food and Nutrition Security Policy is one of several included in the department’s annual performance plan for the year ahead. It seeks to ensure the availability, accessibility and affordability of safe and nutritious food at national and household level across the country.
But Abrahams says it cannot be realistically implemented. “If government is serious about ensuring that as many households as possible have nutritious meals, they will also ensure that there is a balance in terms of affordability. They have good policies, [but] they are not realistic.”
Abrahams explains that the unemployment rate is high, for one, plus that the social grants currently given to beneficiaries are below the poverty line. The grants simply cannot buy households nutritious food and the balance is especially off for children.
“The current child support grant is R480 while one needs at least R787 to serve a child nutritious food [throughout the month]. So it boils down to affordability. If our government wants people to have nutritious food, they need to relook the amount given as social grant.”
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Abrahams and his group further explained recently that, even if they do earn wages, South Africans in low income groups can steadily afford less and less nutrition.
“Households do not prioritise paying for food first out of the wage. Instead, households paid low incomes are forced to secure non-negotiable expenses like transport and electricity before food,” the group said in its report on its most recent Household Affordability Index.
“Other important expenses, like debt servicing, scholar transport, education and burial insurances, including household domestic and personal hygiene products, also compete viciously in the purse.
“Where the money remaining is short, women have no choice but to drop foods from their trolleys or reduce the volumes of nutritionally rich foods in their trolleys.”
When digging into nutrition specifically, needed for healthy development in children, the gap widens even further. Abrahams tells Food For Mzansi that the country’s child grant is currently 42% below what is needed to give a child the full range of nutrients.
This means that households cannot even afford try to serve nutritious meals. “The social grant money is divided into so many [expenses] that the idea of a nutritious meal does not come up.”
Add to that the unemployment rate, the current economic climate and unexpected external factors such as the unrest in KwaZulu-Natal in July last year, and the impracticality of the policy becomes clear, says Abrahams.
“Only those who can afford it will have the nutritious food that the policy outlines. The reality is that many households are not able to afford it right now. We need to fight for the social grants issues.”
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