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Titled “World Hunger Day 2020 Challenging False Narratives in a Global Crisis: Reflections on Human Rights, Inequality and Securing Food Systems”, the
publication forms part of marking International World Hunger Day today.
Reflecting on human rights, equality and securing food systems, the compilation of papers was written by academic, business and community experts on food systems and security from South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and the US.
The papers provide insight and recommendations including how we build new food systems and provide a sense of what it will take to build them.
The writers found that the pandemic had exposed the inadequacy of existing governance processes and structures; the right to food – as enshrined in the Constitution – was a fallacy; geographic location and income were directly linked to food sources; there was a need for better communication and collaboration between the government, civil society and the people.
They concluded that there was a need to reinvent food security in a post-Covid-19 South Africa.
Community Chest
chief executive Lorenzo Davids said: “In a time of the pandemic crisis and with the president’s Freedom Day call to South Africans to invest in a new society, a new consciousness and a new economy, we should now begin to ask ourselves a series of deep questions about our developmental trajectory, and in particular in relation to food security for vulnerable communities.
“Have we been wrong about our strategies about poverty eradication, poverty elimination and poverty reduction? Have we been asking the right questions about how to engage the poorest 31million citizens about a more food-, health- and education-secure future?”
The publication is co-edited by Southern Africa Food Lab director Professor Scott Drimie and Zenariah Barends, Community Chest head of the Sediba Global Partnership Office.
Barends said: “While Covid-19 has not been the reason, it has exacerbated and starkly illuminated the food security crisis South Africa and the world already faced.”
Drimie added: “The collaboration with Community Chest to make sense of the disruption of the food system during Covid-19 has exposed the structural inequalities and fault lines of our society.
“There is clearly a need to respond immediately to hunger, to facilitate connections across our joint networks and to catalyse action that supports sustained access to good nutrition in vulnerable communities beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Cape Times
